Library Day in the Life Project - Round 7

Bobbie Newman has been diligently convincing library bloggers to participate in the Library Day in the Life Project, semi-annually, where we each talk about what it is really like to be a working librarian. This is Round 7. Over 200 librarians are participating this time! What a resource.

This is my second time participating. Last time there were two posts. The first covered Monday, and then there was a summary post for the rest of the week.

Post-ALA, it has rained a fair amount. The weekend was quite rainy. Monday was, well Monday. One of the reference staff is out for some surgery this week, and that went well for her. That also means that the remaining three of us are spending more time than usual, staffing the two public service desks. One nice aspect of Monday was that, since my wife was off of work, she drove to Baton Rouge, and we got to have lunch together! Doesn't happen very often any more. Much of the rest of the day was either on the desk, or dealing with email.

Tuesday, I was motivated to get moving (for some reason), and it was "gas day" for me. [Since I drive 80 miles, each way, every day, I get gasoline in the car every other work day, or about every 320 miles or so. What a racket.] In addition to being on the desk, today's activities included my first meeting as the Volunteer Coordinator for the book festival held at the end of October. I learned even more about what is expected, and have now started with a number of new tasks. The afternoon was pretty quiet, with a fair amount of desk time.

Wednesday dawned. This was the first of three days in a row (two of them open to the public), when there are only two of us in to staff the two desks. That means that except for lunch and the occasional "comfort break," we are both on the desk all the time we are at work. It was pretty slow for me in the morning, and I was able to catch up on assorted professional reading. The highlight of the day was an interesting reference question. The patron was looking for information on “nazzorites.” One of the things we started doing a while ago was keeping a wiki with a number of things including interesting reference questions. [More on this below.] I look at it as a way to provide the library administration with some concrete, real-life examples of the service we provide. Thank goodness, the drive home was very uneventful, and I had a chance to chat with my eldest son on his birthday.

Thursday was day 2 of the long reference days. Had a quick hour on the desk, then a database/discovery tool demo which ran more than 30 minutes longer then I expected. More desk time, lunch, desk, then a meeting with other staff here. Whew! In the mail were several "prisoner letters." These are reference questions which we receive by mail from the inmates of several prisons of the state. We try to answer them as best we can, knowing that they do not have any internet access. The questions about Louisiana, we can send to that section of the library, and the legal questions we forward to the state's Supreme Court Law Library. We do track the "prisoner letters" on the internal Wiki. I started doing that just to get an idea of where the questions were coming from. I'll also note that we have some "regular" correspondents who make frequent requests.

Since July 1, the library building is not open to the public on Fridays. Staff still reports to work, and for my department, it means that we can actually have a departmental meeting (which we did last week, this week there are only two of us here.) It is also officially a casual dress day. My day started with a blood draw (just routine stuff). Then, it seems that no matter how hard I try, the day gets chopped up. Some of my accomplishments today include:

• Getting a second Center for the Book staff member set up on Facebook for tagging photos (so we can publish the work site page)
• Creating an email reminder on entering statistics, and getting the language approved
• Typing up notes from Thursday's meeting for my staff and a fellow department head the latter of whom was called away
• Reading many, many emails
• Working on an (e)mail merge for libraries who are missing data
• Sent that email (with only one strange error)
• Entered data from the 5 libraries which responded immediately
  
• Spent time in the stacks with our gun books to answer questions from two different parish libraries
• Almost cleared off my desk
• Sent an overdue email to participants in the Library Support Staff Certification class from this spring.

Whew! What a day. I am glad that the week is over!

Library Day in the Life - Round 6 - Part 2

For the rest of the week, here is a short daily re-cap:

Tuesday: I was worried that the rain would affect my commute, but it did not. Good news for me is that the temp is still in the mid 50s (above zero). Watched "the regulars" come in this morning. It is interesting how each library has its own group. Here some of them are homeless, and use the library as a place to hang out. They also often know each other. I have gotten many of them to greet me with a hello each day. (I try to be welcoming.) There are periodic changes in the group as someone gets a job, or moves away, but this is a pretty well behaved group.

One of my tasks each morning is to open the seminar center if a group is using it. Yesterday and today it has been a training session for math instructors and is being done by staff of the Department of Education. This morning one of them asked me about our services, so I had the opportunity to promote the library.

I also have now become the "go-to person" for stats, and get to play with the state's system of gathering statistics from our agency. And, today, I was asked to help with the library's Facebook presence. Moving forward!! Had a very productive afternoon meeting with the folks who run the other public service departments. We resolved several issues.

Wednesday: Had to get gas to start the morning trip...But today was sunny. It was 10 degrees (F) colder today when I left than yesterday, and, as usual, got colder as I drove from the city into the more rural areas (i.e. swamp). One staff member is out today, so more desk time than usual. Yesterday it was nice to have a full staff. Quiet at the Reference Desk this morning. I forget what it is, but Wednesday morning there is some event which has our "regulars" arriving late, like 8:30 - 8:45. It was quiet enough that I took the first steps to set up the Facebook page for the Library.

Thursday: Both the wife and I got up very early (middle of the night) so we did a first run at the taxes. Getting a refund! Woot! However, that could be the down payment for her to purchase the car she has been leasing for the past three years....I left earlier than usual, and had an uneventful drive, but the sunrise (in the rear view mirror) was spectacular. There were just enough clouds in the East to make the colors glorious as I drove across the swamps. Down one staff member today (as opposed to a suddenly down 2 yesterday) means less desk time than yesterday, but more than a normal day.

Got a lot done at work, in spite of spending a lot of time on the desk. Spent about 45 minutes, off and on, with an electrician who had been to a job center. They took his resume and reformatted it to post it to the job folks web site. However, this guy, an admitted "three finger typist" did not like how it looked. We went through, cutting it, pasting it, re-formatting it, saving it to Google Docs, and for insurance, emailing it to himself. It reminds me of how much I really do know!

On the drive home I was reminded again about the beauty around me. First of all, there were enough Eastern clouds, that the setting sunlight was reflected nicely in it. Right by where the Interstate leaves the swamp/lake and enters the metro area are two sights that always amaze me. I noticed the firs early in my first spring. There is a large, tall tree which has a cluster of sticks in a crook near the top. One day, I saw a bird there....I looked closely, and it was an American Bald Eagle. I have seen both male and female birds, and even the heads of the young, over the time I have been doing the commute. It is on the south side of I-10, right by the I-310 cut-off. On the other side, there is an area of "bushes" (maybe they are mangroves?). In the morning, and sometimes in the evening, it looks like white plastic shopping bags have been caught on the branches by the water. But that is not what they are....they are roosting egrets. I see egrets all over the place. They are water birds, and a bunch of my drive is along water. I have also seen them in Audubon Park here in the city. A final note is that I can tell when it is "wet" or "dry" based on the level of Lake Pontchartrain along "the Spillway." Lately it seems like the levels are dropping. We are in winter, and I guess that is OK. All the snow up north will melt, and run down, eventually into the Mississippi River, the Spillway is an outlet to keep New Orleans from flooding by diverting water into the lake. We'll see!

Friday: It is payday. Yay! It is also another gas fill-up. But, gas prices are down to $2.81! Got to work and got the last info I needed for my first time entering the departmental data into the state-wide data collection platform. It was an interesting experience, and not as difficult as I feared. Of course some of that is that folks in the other library departments are good about entering their data monthly into an Excel spreadsheet which is the basis for the organization wide data. It was a relatively quiet morning on the Reference Desk with the usual questions about tax forms....and I asked for more state forms from the folks up in the Louisiana Section (who collect all state publications, and therefore deal with the tax forms for us). I will be glad when the instruction booklets come in!

The mail brought professional journals, ads for publications, and letters from the prison. One of our jobs is to respond to requests for information from prisoners. This spring, I started an internal wiki to keep track of both the types of questions and the prison from which we were getting them. One of these days (maybe around the first anniversary, or at the new fiscal year), I'll have to sit down and analyze them.

Bonus: When I was growing up, and when my kids were growing up, we often played variations on the "license plate game" while on long trips. There are many visitors to Louisiana. Here is a list of state license places seen on the highway this week (other than Louisiana), in rough order of appearance: New Jersey, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oregon, Ohio, South Carolina, Wyoming, Colorado, New York, Missouri, Washington, North Carolina, Illinois, Maryland, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Iowa, Nebraska. That's 28 out of the 50 states. I did not see any Canadian or Mexican license plates -- this week.

Blog Bonus: I read 162 different blogs in Google Reader. But I want to give a shout out to one of my favorite Monday - Thursday cartoons. It was created by half of the creative genius team behind Unshelved, and revolves around computer programing. The title says a lot Not Invented Here.

Library Day in the Life - Round 6 - Part 1

I have never formally participated in this project before, but in looking through my blog archives I found this posting from August 2005 about what administrators do, and this one from September which is a very brief snapshot of that interesting day. I did participate in the Library Routes project and posted my route here.

While I live in New Orleans (NOLA), I work in Baton Rouge at the State Library of Louisiana. My drive from NOLA to Baton Rouge is about 80 miles (each way), and as a result I put a lot of miles on my car. I passed a milestone earlier this month.

I serve as a "Library Consultant" as part of Library Development, and as the Head of Reference.

Here is how today went:

Went to bed last night feeling "off." I think that my headache (which woke me up at 2 am) was more about dehydration than about anything else. I got up at about 4:50 (am) well before the time my alarm was set for (5:15). I went through my usual routine which includes looking at my checking account online, reading personal email, the usual morning ablutions, making breakfast (a slice of toast from homemade sourdough bread) for me and Miss R, and making sandwiches (lunch) for the two of us. Miss R actually was up for a few minutes for a nice morning good bye. I am sure she went back to sleep! I was out the door by 6:15. Because I had planned ahead, I did not have to stop for gas this morning -- I got it last night when I ran the holiday decorations back to the storage locker. Because I drive 160 miles each work day, I get gas every other day. I am getting about 27-28 miles per gallon, but with prices going up again, it costs me about $17.00 per day for gas alone. I haven't done the metric conversions, but I noted today that Shell is at $2.95/gallon and Exxon is $2.87. I get gas at the gas station in between them which is $2.83. Now, that is lower than elsewhere in the country. But, I'll note that I see about a half-dozen refineries on my travels every work day, so it is pumped out of the ground here, and made into gasoline here, also.

The drive was almost uneventful. My route takes me on the Interstate (I-10) past the airport. I was thinking this morning about my first post-Katrina trip. Driving from the airport, the access road dumps cars going towards New Orleans on to the highway. I was there for the American Library Association Conference in June 2006, and was one of the Board which had to decide whether we would hold the conference there. That trip, I remember seeing some less devastation than I had expected, but there were many businesses which were clearly not in operation, and many of the homes had roofs covered in blue tarps. I think the latter is probably the clearest memory of that whole stay. This summer, ALA returns. It will be interesting to actually live in the host city for a big conference which I am planning to attend.

When I leave New Orleans each morning, it is before sunrise (at this time of year), the traffic in my direction is pretty light. However, by the time I get to Baton Rouge, not only has the sun risen, but I am in the midst of the daily heavy traffic flow through the city towards the university and downtown. Today was no exception. Traffic was stop and go from Essen Lane onwards. Why? Well someone had a bad day...after Acadian Thruway, there was an accident where a smaller car had rear-ended a pick-up truck. After that point traffic cleared, and I was at work, on time, for my 7:45 opening of the desk to be ready for the public at 8 am.

It has been a relatively quiet day for me. Not much activity at the desk. After my first shift at the first floor desk, I took a walk around the green space being created across the street from the library. Every day, at least once, I try to get outside the building and walk around. First of all it gets me away from work. Second, it gets me to do some (very moderate) exercise. Third, I get to breathe some fresh air, and fourth, during some of the year, it lets me warm up.

While eating lunch, I listened to the archived version of a web cast by Toby Greenwalt called "Designing Customized Library Services: Book-a-Librarian and BookMatch." It was a good session, and since I have been asked to develop a "book a librarian" kind of service for my library, I will probably go back to it again.

I then returned for a second, short stint at the first floor desk. Although, we recently integrated our books on MP3 into our spoke word audio collection (along with the comedy "albums/collections"). A patron came up and asked about them, and I said that they were integrated. He looked disappointed, and I called the head of technical services to see if we could search for them in the catalog. The format information is there, just not search-able, yet. She quickly sent me spreadsheet listing them (which made the patron very happy), now we are working out how we can add that as a search in the catalog.

The rest of the afternoon was on the third floor (where the circulation collection 000-899 are located. (900s and biographies -- for now -- are on the fourth floor.) Here I was able to spend some time catching up on professional weeding, talking with the stacks manager about some shifting and weeding projects, and working on the files I need to send so that we can begin data collection for the federal report.

It was raining by the end of the day. That meant that traffic started off very slow, however after a few miles it picked up, and was pretty steady all the way into New Orleans. That's where it got bad. Just before the I-10/610 split, there was a spin out into the median wall. That slowed folks down. Then, as I continued on I-10, just before my exit, another spin out into the median (thank goodness I was getting off the highway!). The rest of the trip was uneventful. About an hour and 45 minutes home, home just after 6 pm.

On my way in, I finished listening to My life as a fake by Peter Carey, read by Susan Lyons, and then I started Stonehenge: [a novel of 2000 BC] by Bernard Cornwell, read by Sean Barrett.

So, this is supposed to be A Day in the Life but runs for a week. This has been my day...on Friday, I'll post any highlights between now and then.

For now, the rain is pouring down, and I hope that does not affect tomorrow's commute. As you can tell, commuting is a big part of my life!