Friday

Slowing down – but still have one more day in my work week.

8:30 Went to work a half-hour early to attend a meeting with the person who is putting together the search for a new library director.  That means I get an hour and a half for lunch, because I can’t leave early.

9:30 Check reference schedule, check e-mail, and take short break, before  heading to 3rd floor to open all the public computers. Library opens at 10.

10:00 Two hours assisting users with opening files from floppies, explaining Internet access procedures to visitors, helping a nice couple get an e-mail address so they can get W-2s from previous employers in another state, etc.  I am still trying to collect titles to feature in the Audio Books Bulletin.  I do actually manage to bib-check both “best audiobooks of …” lists.

12:00 An hour in Telephone Reference. Nothing unusual today, except the lady who said she had received a $350 bill from the library. I connect her with Circ Help. And I don’t want to know the details.

1:00 Begin my long lunch hour – visit colleague in Collection Management who is retiring today. We worked closely together developing the procedures for cataloging and processing circulating software.  She requested no party or celebration, but there were lots of cookies anyway.

2:30 Handle a couple of tech-support issues for patrons who sent e-mails or called in the last couple days.  Our Tech Assistnt is on vacation, and I’ve inherited the job for a week.

3:00 An hour in Kids’ Place, where I finally complete the February Bulletin.  It will be automatically published on Feb. 2nd.  Sinking feeling when I realize that next week I’ll need to do it again for March.  It’s got to get easier – Boss said it would!

4:00 An hour off desk. Check e-mail one more time, find memo with instructions for how to forward phone calls and deliver to Director’s assistant as requested. Stack routed journals in date order for perusing tomorrow morning. Call patron referred by branch staff to deliver news that our Harvard Business Review subscription was dropped in 1994 and offer alternatives for finding the article she needs.

5:00 Another hour in Kids’ Place.  At 5:45 I help Russian family locate books, children’s software and exercises in Kids’ database that will help their son improve his reading comprehension.  They go upstairs to checkout, thoroughly impressed with the library.  I feel good.

6:00 Library closes.  Drive to El Torito restaurant for middle-manager’s retirement party – which turns out to be a kick and a half!

8:30 Drive home, and arrive simultaneously with Husband, who is returning from a week-long business trip in London.

Done for today.

Thursday

Today is my “downstairs” day.  I work every Thursday for 8 hours in the Collection Management department to handle tasks related to our e-resources.  So here’s what I did:

8 – 8:30  Verify with upstairs Boss details about a series of art programs to be offered at Central this year for the related blog post I’ve been asked to write.  Complete today’s tangram – (I liked last year’s tangram-of-the-day calendar so much, I bought another one for this year)  Troubleshoot a colleague’s misbehaving Outlook client (inadvertently set to work offline), pack up my mobile office (aka booktruck) and head down to Collection Management.

9 – 10:30 Check e-mail; receive answers from vendor’s tech support and send instructions to cataloger to download some MARC records from said vendor and upload to catalog.  He complies in record time. (Oops! inadvertent pun.)  Inside access works beautifully; ask our IT department to test remote access.  It doesn’t work.  Need to try it myself at home tonight and contact vendor again in the morning.  Play with a business database trial obtained by our Marketing deparment in prep for conversation with someone in Finance department.

10:30-11:30 Meet with Webmaster and members of web team to discuss how passing a query from our new home page through to our databases might work.  It won’t, for two reasons: remote users will be stopped by the authentication challenge, and, more importantly, I want patrons to have access to all our databases, not just the one being queried.  We spend too much money on those subscriptions to deliberately hide them.  Webmaster and web team agree, and are re-thinking the location of the link.  They give me the address of thepage on the production server so I can monitor the progress as the change is made and content is added to the site.

11:30-12:15 Meet with Finance officer to learn more about why Marketing wants to buy access to the business/GIS/stats tool and how they expect to use it, because  I think they can get much of the same info from American Fact Finder for free. He will take my questions to the Marketing dirctor, who arranged the trial.

12:15-1:15 Lunch.  Packed some of that yummy beef and vegetable chowder I made last night for dinner. Tastes even better today!

1:15-3:45  Check e-mail again, and forward a patron complaint about the public PCs to IT.  Demonstrate new web page prototype to downstairs Boss and explain my thoughts about location of links to databases.  Discuss new wrinkle about remote authentication and the use of user-ids vs library card numbers. We may have to add a proxy-rewrite to the MARC records after all; we decide to let the implications percolate for a day before deciding how to proceed.

Bib-check “Best audiobooks of…”" 2007 and 2008 for my Audio Books Bulletin – make significant progress in identifying titles in our collection with enough copies and no holds.  Will finalize the Bulletin tomorrow, and it will be published on Monday.

4:00 Meet with Marketing staff about content for database information brochure we can give to patrons.  We renewed all our e-resources for the calendar year, so the flyer will be good for at least 12 months. Webmaster sends login for editing my branch’s page on the new web site, and I spend a little time becoming familiar with the site’s structure in advance of the official staff roll-out in two weeks.

5:00 Fly to bus stop and catch 5:04 bus. Upon arrival at home, jump into car and return downtown for 6 p.m. City budget workshop, wherein is presented the dismal picture for the balance of this year and for the next two years.  The bad news is that there is a $50 million gap predicted for the 2009-10 fiscal year, so furloughs, layoffs and cutbacks are inevitable.  The good news is that the city is required to have a balanced buget, and therefore deficit spending cannot compound the gap in future years.  SO glad I’m not a city employee, and that city funds are only one component of the Library Authority’s budget!

8:00 Arrive home, have a salad and a slice of ham for dinner, test remote authentication (it doesn’t work) and e-mail screen shot of error message to vendor’s tech support.  Work day done.

Wednesday

7:30 – Catch bus to work.  Begin reading Persuasion IQ. Halfway to town, get phone call from Daughter who requests a sick day from school because of a “massive headache” and nausea.  Great!  Can’t concentrate on the book any  more.

8:00 – 9:30  Arrive at work and call School to report Daughter’s absence. Check e-mail and find IT was as good as its word, and the faulty circuit breaker that caused our computer chaos yesterday has been replaced. All is again well in network-land.  Remind co-workers to log off and then log on again so they can see their network drives.

Send a few of my “Top Ten reasons to work at SPL” to HR as requested.  (But we’ve got a hiring freeze going, so um, …) Forward announcement of free staff training opportunity to all public service staff in the system.  Update telephone reference phone system’s time, because it runs about 3 minutes slow every month.  Clear Telephone Reference’s inbox and discover a question from HR about the number of registered cardholders we have.  I run a web access management report, but find I must perform calculations to get the number HR needs; find a better answer in statistical report on staffnet and relay info.

Turn on 44+ public and staff computers and check printer paper on the 3rd floor – this our public access internet floor, and it also houses the fiction collection, government documents, and periodicals.

10:00-12:00 Reference Shift on the third floor. Tech Assistant finds wallet in computer lab while setting up for his e-Mail Basics class..  We don’t see its owner on the floor, so we send it to lost and found.  I ask him about wi-fi access in the lab, because I’m teaching a computer class there on Saturday.  He shows me the extra switch on the laptop that turns the card on and off.  Library opens; I scoot to reference desk.

Someone smelling of alcohol and acting dizzy in the stairwell prompts a request for Security to investigate.  Patron requests we log in to his college web site so he can print a tuition receipt as proof of address to submit with his library card application. (I comply. We want people to have library cards.)

Loud, unhappy patron complains we are intentionally preventing him from getting a computer this hour (they’re all booked), spraying spit on the desk because of the lollypop stick in his mouth.  He trashes the stick when I point out the hygiene issue, but fails to comprehend the system and cannot be pacified, even by Suprvisor.   Maybe if he took out his earbuds … A dozen other patrons stand around, watching the drama.

Attempt the Audiobooks Bulletin task again, because next publication date is Feb 2 and there are over 400 subscribers I cannot disappoint.  But am unable to make any progress between requests for program registration, holds-placing, accompanying visually-impaired patron to 4th floor to find a book, discussion with patron about furries,  iPod Touches, and Internet security, and explaining our Internet access policy to visitors.

12:00 Lunch meeting

1:00 My work day is done!  I’m taking 4 hours off to compensate for the 4 hours I worked on Sunday.  Bus home and  find Daughter curled up on the couch with lingering headache, but otherwise feeling better.

Enjoying the un-planned free afternoon: making a big pot of chowder for tonight and boiling a chicken to use for a pasta salad tomorrow; computer playtime after dinner, while Husband is out of town.

Tuesday

Today is my late day.  Get up early to see Daughter off to school, then read the paper over breakfast.  Roll up my sleeves and finish the oven-cleaning task I started yesterday before getting called in to work unexpectedly.

10 – Gas up the car and drive to work.  Remember to pick up bus pass for February and also parking stickers so I can bail the car out of the garage tonight at 8.

11- Arrive at work to chaos: the circuit that powers the system’s server room is down, so there is no Internet, no Outlook, no ILS!  IT staff persuades Telephone Reference staff to telephone each branch to explain the outage (no Outlook, remember?).  I turned on the emergency message that stops calls from coming in, so callers can’t get into hold queue hell while the calls are made.

11:30 – Meet briefly with Boss about the remnant of our old phone system that is still being manually forwarded and un-forwarded by administration every day. Boss took my history and my suggestions to the library director, who implemented them.

12 – Servers back up, sort-of. Something about a faulty circuit-breaker that will be fixed tomorrow morning. Things still go down unexpectedly, like right between writing a blog post and trying to save the draft.  Glad I’m not on the public desks this morning!  Check e-mail, follow-up with the vendor from yesterday. Discuss downloading 40k MARC records with Collection Manager, as well as my ideas for pushing our databases on the system’s newly-designed web site that will be unveiled to staff in the next couple of weeks.

1 – Leaf through journals routed to my desk – would love to actually read some of the articles in Online and Computers in Libraries, but … I just flag them for later bookmarking in Delicious and continue leafing.  I complete leafing through several PWs and Booklists and Public Libraries and send them on their way.

2 – My first reference desk hour is in Kids’ Place.  Not too many questions – California water resources, books for 2nd graders, American Girls mysteries, DVDs about Teddy Roosevelt.  I spend the time between questions selecting titles for the next Audio Books Bulletin, which will be published Feb.2. (Obama’s favorite books? African-American authors? Recent – but under circulating – titles?)

3 – An off-desk hour. More Audiobook selection – I’m looking for titles by African-American authors that have no holds, and a minimum of 5 copies in the system.  As I find them, I add them to my ‘bag’ in the OPAC.  Then I lose all my carefully-selected audiobooks by inadvertently clicking the ‘Start Over’ button. Rats!!!  I decide to do something different for a while. I delete old news from the Telis Tipsheet, a web page with topical information for the Telephone Ref staff, and add new information about branch closures during the first week of February.

4. Dinner hour.  Enjoy a broccoli and mushroom crepe from Danielle’s Creperie with two colleagues, then back to the library for 3 hours of Telephone Reference.

5 to 8 – Answer a zillion calls from the Crossword Lady, who considerately only asks for answers to two clues per call.  Try to find the address of a country music group (yay Marquis Who’s Who on the Web!); walk a 74-yr old patron through the steps to logging in to her account online and offer to print screen shots of same and mail them to her; refer a dozen callers to the circ help desk (wish they listened better to the phone prompts, so they wouldn’t have to wait in the hold queue for nothing.) Actually, I like phone duty.

7:55 – Shut down the unused PCs in Tel Ref and pack my briefcase.

8 – Did NOT forget I drove in, as I did once.  I waited for Husband for 15 minutes, that time, before I remembered I had the car. Drive home, with a brief detour to Walgreen’s. Make a cup of tea, catch up with Daughter’s day and receive a phone call from Husband, who is in London for the week.  Watch local news on TV, and then done!

Monday

This is technically the second day of my ‘weekend’.  However, I was expecting a follow-up from one of our vendors, so I checked my e-mail and responded to him as well as to a meeting request from my branch manager.

Bought a new pair of Birkenstocks today that I hope I will be able to wear to work for many years. I really miss the Eco pair I’ve worn, like for ever and had resoled 4 times.

Tomorrow’s my “late” day. I start work at 11, so plan to do a little domestic upkeep before heading into town.

Library Week-in-the-Life II

This go-round I’ll be blogging Sunday – Saturday.  I intended to start on Tuesday, the real beginning of my work-week, but I got an urgent (desperate-sounding, really) call from the library asking if I’d be willing to work four hours this afternoon in return for compensatory time off.  So, … instead of enjoying a LOT of me-time (Husband is in London, Daughter spent the night with friends), here I am at work on Sunday.  I’ll be spending an hour on the phones, an hour on the 3rd floor with all the public-access computers, and two hours in Kids’ Place.

I wear several “hats”: I am, primarily, an adult reference librarian, and I also manage the centralized telephone service (circ and reference) for Sacramento Public Library.  One day a week, I work in the collection management department and manage our e-resources subscriptions.  This used to be a full-time position, but it was cut in a budgetary downturn about 5 years ago.  However, as they say, somebody has to do it! And anyway, it’s a part of librarianship I really enjoy.

2009 and 23 Things

This year will probably become the Year of Presentations. Or the Year of Social Everything. I’m a member a team just gearing up to begin a “23 Things” style campaign in the system.  We’ve set up a Ning space and have dabbled at posting, updating profiles, and scheduling meetings.  However, the asynchronicity – and the holidays that so inconveniently intervened between F2F meetings – have us all a little frustrated. We haven’t got the timing nor the momentum to make it work very well yet.  Howeve, we’re meeting in person this week to put together the plan for the “SPL2point0″ campaign.

This year, I’m also getting more active with adult programming and outreach.  I’m going to actually use a lession I prepared for an InfoPeople class a couple years ago. In fact, the class is coming up in a couple of weeks, so I need to get on it and do some link-checking and customizing, get the handouts and evaluations printed, check the wi-fi in the computer lab (it wasn’t working a couple of weeks ago), and prepare a plan B in case it’s sstill not working.

I’ve been invited to speak about our e-resources to the school librarians in the Twin Rivers school distict next month, so I’m collaborating with one of our youth services librarians to adapt my “Use your library @ home” presentation for the teacher/student environment.  This is a great opportunity to promote some of the resources we have that are specifically designed for students, more especially so since some of the schools in the district are in lower-income areas of the county.

Schools in California have been hit very hard by the current economic doldrum, and have been forced to cancel their online subscriptions and have lost their book budgets as well.  Even though we say our public library does not support the educational curriculum, we really do – in several ways. I’m glad I’m in the public library house!

I’m an Adult Learner

Time passes faster each year. Remember when a school year was as long as a lifetime?  The same amount of time that once equaled 20% of my life as a Kindergartener accounts for a mere 1.6% of my life today.

It seems that the rate at which things chage has also speeded up.  PCs are now obsolete after only a few years.  New services debut weekly. I know I’m not the first – nor the only – one to bemoan the time and effort needed to stay current.  However, my occupation as a public librarian is the best possible career for me, because it allows me to dabble in the new stuff – a grown-up sandbox, if you will – under the guise of keeping library services relevant to members of all ages and abilities.

I just finished reading Clay Shirkey’s book, Here Comes Everybody.  Although his theme is about the power of ad hoc organization made possible by new methods of communicating,  one of the strongest thoughts I brought away is that established organizations almost never understand that customary operating models are hamstrung if “everybody” decides to “do something” to influence the organization.

I see libraries struggling to accommodate the more traditional members of their communities while reaching out to those whose first resource is the Internet.  However, because libraries are handicapped by an infrastructure that is slow to change, there’s no way to make a nimble corporate leap into the present. Retrofitting the collection, the catalog, and the ILS is just too huge an undertaking to be completed in the short amount of time that would be required.  Easier to start a new library from scratch.

As the manager of our Telephone Reference Service, I’ve thought for years that the phone, rather than the Internet, would become more important as a vehicle for delivering library services, but was unclear about whether we could change our delivery processess to take advantage of that medium.  Today, phones equipped with web browsers and MP3 players are in the hands of so many people, adults and children, that we cannot continue to ignore the capabilities of today’s equipment and the expectations of their users.

I.ve been learning how to network on Facebook (still struggling), Twitter (also still struggling), Ning (awkwardly struggling), and by texting (got that one down!) I just hope I can learn fast enough to become conversant with all these new things, and perhaps integrate them into our service delivery, before the next 20% of my life passes. By then, I’m going to have the fastest great-grandmotherly thumbs in the west!