A Day in the Life 1/30/09

Shew!  This day is done!  For a Friday, it was not bad.

I started the day by participating in the interview for our candidate for our Research and Development position.  They did a nice presentation, focusing on wide reaching technologies and tools for service, location, communication, and collaboration, instead of a summary of tools.  I enjoyed the theoretical approach.

Then, off to a meeting.  I’m chairing the Student Conversations group, and we needed to update and outline future work.  Like many libraries, we are in massive flux, reorganizing departments and units, and raising money for a new building.   Like many organizations, we want input on what our users think and want from us as we plan our change.  It’s a quick meeting, and then we’re off to the next event.

I head off to the second part of the R&D interview, the small group questions specific to instruction and reference.  It’s a pleasant gathering and the candidate does well.  We dont delve too far off topic too many times, which is good.

After that, I’ve got 20 minutes till I’m on the desk, and I’m STARVING.  I drop my bag at the desk, run across the street to the cafe on the graduate school campus, and look at the dismal offerings that weren’t snatched up by the lunch rush.  I’m left with an egg sandwich and chips… I dont have time to order anything from the grill, unfortunately, because this place makes a mean burger.  Ah, well… I settle on my egg sandwich (which turned out to be quite disappointing; onions and red peppers have no business in egg salad, btw), stuffing half of it in my maw while bolting back across the street.  I loiter outside the door in the sun, stuffing my face, making it to the desk with only moments to spare.

The desk is typically busy, and pass the two hours very quickly.  I should mention that at my library we have no reference desk; when I’m there my office door is open, and when I am not there, students and staff find me on IM or by phone.  So when I work the desk, I’m on the main library desk… and that’s always a challenge. Today, I help some young Japanese girls locate some articles for a paper on elementary education.  The language barrier is nearly impossible to work around, until I ask them to write out the keywords they’re thinking about.  Once I figure out what they want, I find them a few things, and send them a detailed email linking to ERIC and Google Uncle Sam, with some suggestions on keyword searching.  I also try to help a senior working on her thesis who returned “that book” that had all the crucial information on a particular painting… and she cant remember what the title of it was… we look and look and look for information on this painting, but I Fail at this sort of thing, so after 40 minutes I refer her to the Art librarian.  In between, I get some easy questions and a lot of circulation action.

Finally, I bolt from the desk and go hide out in my BFF’s office.  She’s giving me a lift since I am car free, and while she works I hammer out the last bits of my presentation for UIUC’s Science Refernce class next week.  Of course I’m using LOL cats.  : )

So now I’m home… and reflecting back on the week.  It’s been busy, but good, and although I’m looking forward to my down time this weekend, I know next week is going to be just as awesome.  : )

A Day in the Life 01/27/09

Today begins with the typical check email/answer midnight questions/prioritize the To Do list, mixed in with a few IM chats.

We went live with Libraryh3lp last week, and it is SO COOL! We’ve got a widget on our website that looks just like a Meebo Widget.

Libraryh3lp uses the jabber protocol, so you can use any IM aggregator like Trillian, Pidgin, or Adium (I use Adium) to handle the incoming chats. When a chat comes in, the chat window comes up on everyone’s computer who is logged in to the Libraryh3lp.  You can even see if someone answers the chat.  This is what the window looks like to the librarian.

As you can see from the image, you can also transfer chats to others who are logged into the system.  Clicking on the ‘transfer’ link will take you to a webpage that shows who is online and lets you send chats to them.  It’s great if, say, the music librarian is online and the question you’ve got is just out of your depth.

And, unlike Meebo, you can easily tell when the user has left the conversation.

I REALLY like Libraryh3lp!  I’m impressed with it, how easy it is, and it’s awesome seeing all the chats that come in, not just when you’re logged it.  I totally recommed this for ANY library who does chat reference for their communities.

So after I got done with a few ref questions that came in, I had to wander down to the main library.  Once of my tasks was to follow up on one of the IM ref questions I got, that I could  not handle at my homebase of Sprague.  I also had a few other things I needed to take care of, and then a few meetings anyways.  I walk in, and the service desk at the main library is SLAMMED.  I jump in, start answering questions, checking stuff out, answering phones, and looking for books.  I easily killed an hour before my first meeting with my VIPEr chemists, and although I didnt get done what I wanted/needed to get done, I did help out and people were appreciative.

I next attend my web meeting with my VIPEr chemists and we talk about usability testing.  We are going to create a survey for registered users to see what they like, dont like, use, wish we had, &c, as well as plan some screen/video/voice capturing of specific tasks at the up coming CAS symposium in Salt Lake in March.

Then, I’ve got my managers meeting, where the director sits down with his direct reports to share any relevant news with us, and for us to share news with each other.  It is a quiet, quick meeting, for which I am thankful.

I finish up my day by preparing a ppt for an upcoming guest lecture at UIUC’s Science Reference class, which is next week.  The ppt is very simple, as I plan to talk most of the time, but will at least outline my major day to day responsibilities and provide contact info for future follow up, should anyone want to do that.

A busy day, but I didnt get as much done as I had hoped.  Ah, well… Tomorrow is another day!

A Day in the Life – Work

Work, originally uploaded by jezmynne.

A pic of my work environment; notes @ flickr

I’ve been really busy lately, mounting a semi revolution and generally attempting to take a stand ’round these parts.  I was motivated to re-think things at that math meeting a few weeks back.  One of the mathematicians stated frustration that no one stands up and says, “THIS is what we are going to do” about the library.  I’ve had my ideas nixed by coworkers, I’ve waited for my admin to make a move or a decision, I’ve waited for HMC to do something, so I am just as guilty as anyone else in this mix.  But, I can change that.  And I have.

A few days ago I decided we’d do three major things here that I want for our new collaborative work space.

1.  The third floor will be a designated Food and Beverage Okay area.  That means people can have pizza or thai delivered for all I care.

2.  That floor will be accessible to the math community 24 hours a day.  ‘Safety’ of the books be damned; I’ll buy another one if I need to.

3.  The downstairs kitchen will remain unlocked and therefore open to users.

This was all prompted by the math department’s request to have the Math Club use the new space.  So, I gave them an always locked study room (dont ask – I could never get the staff here to just LEAVE THE  THING UNLOCKED (the staff here do not report to me, hence, no authority to make them do anything)).  I wrote up this pretty little document indicating what I wanted to happen.  I then immediately emailed it to our brilliant director soliciting approval.  And I got it.  And I then told my boss what I’d decided, with a ‘put on your tough pants, this is happening’ stance.  If my users need someone to be stronger about advocating the library, well, so be it.  Change is happening around here, and I am going to make sure I instigate as much as I can that will benefit the users and the library.  I am not afraid to take risks, and see what works, and change what doesnt.

So, I feel much better about work than I did say, 2 weeks ago.

Other projects… making videos for the Sakai Administration Team and a few for math or whatever else strikes my fancy.  I am using Screenflow, which is so freakishly easy… except that I cant automatically make a big, giant arrow and text box about something.  There’s this ‘insert media’ feature, that I am going to try to monkey with next.  I gather I can make ‘media’ that is an arrow and text box and insert it somehow.

So I guess I should quit messing around with blogging, pictures, flickr, and whatever else I’ve done for the last hour (which, I guess can technically count as lunch.  I *was* eating while doing most of this) and get back to work.

Library Door Signs

Library Door Signs, originally uploaded by jezmynne.

Seen that Far Side cartoon with the kid leaning on the door? That happened too much here. These help, and users find them damn funny.  The major problem with this entrance/exit is that things are backwards for us Americans; you want to travel on the right, like you drive, but you can’t.  It’s confusing.

We like to keep things simple ’round these parts. : )