A Day in the Life of the Dogeared Librarian

Introductory notes: I work as an Information Assistant (a non-professional role) at Nottingham Trent University's Clifton Campus Library in the UK; I attained my professional qualification last academic year, and am seeking a professional post; I have also recently begun working toward Chartership, a qualification offered by CILIP, the UK professional body for information professionals. This blog post has been written for the Librarian Day in the Life Project (round 7), and is separated from other blog posts because a) it's quite long and b) it serves as a vaguely-useful introduction to what I do during working hours (outside of term time!).

The following takes place between 6.30am and 10.30pm, 27th July 2011
After a few days of Annual Leave, Wednesday was my first day at work this week. As all workdays do, it began with the alarm going off at 6.30, leaving me lying there bleary-eyed deciding if I felt rubbish enough to phone into work sick (this rarely happens, but it’s nice to relish the option). A few sit-ups and push-ups later, I wandered off for morning ablutions. Fed the dog, realised I forgot to buy cereal yesterday, and left the house a little before 7.30. I live quite a way from work, so the drive takes about an hour on a typical morning; today was pretty average, with light traffic on the motorway and a 5mph crawl for the last leg of the journey. During the drive, I listen to podcasts - today, it was an edition of the Nerdist podcast with Neil Gaiman, focusing largely on Doctor Who and writing, which was right up my street. Got into work a few minutes before opening time, put my badge on and then opened the door for the throngs of awaiting users one student who was waiting.

First up, I had an uneventful on-desk period, catching up on work emails, checking my calendar and slightly amending the ‘about me’ part of this blog. Whilst Twitter and social networking are discouraged during work time, I confess that I did creep on briefly to post that I had joined up for 'Library Camp UK', and to highlight that there were not many places left. I also checked into the record of a student who was having problems as a result of transition from undergraduate to post-grad student status and created a library record and card for a Sconul user from another University; I also gave this user a quick verbal induction to the relevant parts of our collection. Following this, I had a brief meeting with the library manager about a contractual matter and then a catch-up briefing with another supervisor about the audio-visual stocktaking project I’ve taken ‘point’ on, during which we agreed the steps to be taken to complete the project. I then spent around half an hour proof-reading a user guide which a Liaison Librarian colleague had produced for an ePortfolio plug-in of our Virtual Learning Environment.

Following a quick break, I then had another period on-desk, during which I spoke to several students, including: 
  • reminding one pair about CLA copyright restrictions on copying journal articles
  • several students whose student status had expired following completion dates for their studies
  • a student who phoned after receiving an invoice for fines on items they had let another student borrow on their card; it’s hard to give a slap on the wrist over the phone, but I tried! 
I try to be understanding and lenient within the strictures of library policy, but rules are rules and sometimes we have to firmly refuse requests for clemency; I try to think of these instances as ‘teaching moments’, though I suspect that most students get less out of them! I also used this time to work through some professional reading via RSS, including:
  • Pretty QR codes - whilst I'm not sure we'd put this kind of thing into practice, we do use QR codes for skills training event bookings amongst other things
  • Bravery-based Librarianship - I've bookmarked this to read again properly, but the onus seemed to be on allowing for a little chaos amongst the ordered planning of a library, which seems rational to me
  • Phil Bradley’s Weblog, on hashtagify.me - I had a little play with tags I commonly use, with interesting, sometimes-unpredictable results
  • Meredith Farkas’ #libday7 blog from Monday - which demonstrates how much more valuable this can be if you are in a higher-up, professional position
  • Awful Library Books  - what?! It’s nearly professional reading!
QR code + Nerdy + Own this shirt = totally relevant for inclusion here!
It’s possible I may also have read a few articles from my personal RSS... Comic-Con has made my ‘unread items’ list quite long, and I ran out of professional reading about 90 minutes in! This led off onto a tangent about whether we should encourage the new generation of Star Wars fans to venerate clones who will eventually kill hero-Jedi and become the oppressive clenched fist of a tyrannical regime (which is obviously totally appropriate to be reading during work...). During this period, I also assisted a student whose password had expired and discussed with a colleague how to remove copy-protection from a USB stick (blind diagnosis of technical problems has become something of a speciality of late), and made a note to pay a conference fee after receiving an email outlining how to do this.

After a quick chat with a colleague who was coming on-shift, I popped across to the campus shop and grabbed a sandwich (one of the four they had left) and ate it as I listened to the remainder of the Gaiman podcast. I considered writing a short blog post about some of the content, but decided against it as the interview was a few months old and wasn’t particularly revelatory (or library-related! I may need a second, nerd-focused blog). Having spent most of the morning in front of a PC, I spent lunchtime... in front of a PC. I had a flick through job listings on RSS, earmarking one worth applying for, then read more SDCC articles, scanning for the nerd-properties which interest me and trying to glaze over where US releases are ahead of the UK (I’m still frakking bitter about the delay on Torchwood, but blame the BBC not Starz). Highlight: this observation. 

After lunch, I was back on the desk for another hour. There was a small group of primary-school pupils with a Student Ambassador who were looking at the library, but I didn’t have any substantial interaction with them. I’d identified this period of the day to catch up with a data-entry aspect of the AV stocktake; however, the materials I required only became available towards the end of my desk-stint. I made Sconul cards for two of our students to use other local University libraries and spoke to a former student who wanted to borrow one of our items to support preparation for an interview but wasn't willing to follow our standard procedure of paying to become an Alumni Member of the library in order to do so; I passed his case to the responsible subject Liaison Librarian, advocating for his sincerity, who made the decision that his case was worth making an exception for.

I then spent an hour manning the library's Virtual Reference Desk, which incorporates live chat and manning a shared mailbox for general library and light IT queries. During term time, this position can be very busy; however, today it was quiet, allowing me to make significant head-way into marking-up the results of the AV stocktake. I also produced labels for several boxes of withdrawn items which members of academic staff had requested be retained. I also listened to a briefing about our next stock-review project, including some variations from our standard practice on these projects. Finally, a colleague directed me to a blog discussing games in a library; whilst I remain unconvinced by this particular iteration of the concept, I am quite keen on both the use of augmented reality to boost library usability and the use of game theory in innovative approaches to fines and library policies.

In a final hour on desk, I completed my AV stocktake task, producing interim lists to be cross-checked against items which are still on-shelf. This project can then be considered completed and I can focus on another task during my off-desk hours. This neatly took me to 5pm, when I was relieved by the security guard who would be on the desk until the library closed at 7pm, meaning I could go home.

Another drive later, this time accompanied by Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Wittertainment Film Review Podcast, I arrived home, fussed a very excited dog (who raced around for 10 minutes before falling asleep), wrote up the remainder of the first draft of this blog and then wandered off to do something about dinner. During the evening, I read a sample Chartership portfolio from someone in a similar position to myself, making notes of ideas which I could introduce into my own practice; I also watched Falling Skies, which stars someone who did a great deal of damage to the zeitgeist perception of librarians, and is now conscientiously doing to same thing to history professors. Then I went to bed and dreamt of DDC 025-027, 823 and 999.

No comments:

Post a Comment