Library Day in the Life: Day 2

I read a post from another librarian on this topic and liked how he did his more like a diary, with times noted for all his activities, so I think I'll do the same.

8:30 Wake up. I slept in a bit just to be sure I'm getting enough rest to (hopefully) get over this cold quickly; not only did I sleep in, but I was generally sluggish and remembered only at 9:45 that I had a meeting at 10:30. Ooops! Had to race to finish getting my hair done, my makeup on, and my lunch packed, and made it in only five minutes late to the meeting (there were only four of us in the meeting, and two others came in after me, so I didn't feel too bad).

10:30-11:00 Met with colleagues regarding creation of an editorial style guide for our big website redo. Our whole campus is working on updating and improving the university's website (both graphics and content), and the library has the largest number of pages of any campus entity except for the Office of Information Technology, so we have LOTS of work cut out for us. The person in charge of the project is Christy, our web content editor. She asked for some volunteers to help out with the style guide, and since I have ten years of experience as a copy editor, I spoke up. The other two volunteers will be great to work with; CD is also an experienced copy editor, and Evelyn is a published author with a strong eye for detail. This was our first meeting, so we discussed some basic logistics (timeline, division of duties, etc.) and finished up quickly. My responsibility for now is just to review a couple of other university's style guides and let the group know what I think of them. After we find one that we all like, we will ask the responsible party at that institution whether we can copy it wholesale and simply adapt parts of it to our needs. Why reinvent the wheel?

11:00-11:30 After the meeting, I stopped by the reference desk to sign in (we keep a notebook there where we liaison librarians are supposed to note our whereabouts so that the people working at the reference desk will know where to find us if they need to refer a patron to us). As I got off the elevator, I noticed a student at the desk whom I had helped on several occasions previously; she's an excellent student in the interdisciplinary studies program. She was looking for me, so my arrival was fortuitous. We came up to my office together, and she asked me to look over her reference list -- part of a larger research project that she's turning in tonight. She had some specific questions that I answered for her, and I found a few other details that needed fixing.

11:30-1:00 I had 76 messages waiting in my email, so I had to slog through that. Only one actually required a response, but it took me a while to answer. It was from a faculty member in interdisciplinary studies, and she had two questions, the first of which was a really simple one about APA style, but the second wasn't so quick. She noted that she has had several students turn in references that they swear are from peer-reviewed sources (which is what she requires), but they don't have authors. She wanted to know if I had heard of this phenomenon outside of .gov sources. I replied that really I had not, and I was puzzled. I asked her to let me know whether these articles truly had NO authors, or whether they had an organization or committee listed as author. If the former was true, then I asked her if she could tell me what database they came from, whether the student used the "peer-reviewed" checkbox in the limiters before starting the search, and what search terms they used. If we have a database giving students references to non-peer-reviewed sources when they use that checkbox, then I need to know about it and report it to the database vendor. I also told her about Ulrichsweb, which is a database that gives publication info about periodicals; in particular, it will tell you whether a given title is peer-reviewed. I gave her detailed instructions about how to use the database and included a screen shot of a sample search I did so she could see what I was talking about. It took me a while to write, and I always make sure to carefully proofread any email that's going to a faculty member; I really don't want to look unprofessional by having typos in faculty correspondence. That done, I got through the last few messages and achieved Inbox Zero. Well, actually it's Inbox 101 read, 0 unread. Wow, I need to clean that up.

1:00-1:30 Lunchtime: Triscuits with Swiss cheese, a hard-boiled egg, carrots, cucumber, Baked Ruffles. Like everyone else in the U.S., I'm trying to lose a few pounds. While eating my lunch, I started working on this post.

1:30-2:00 Looked at a few emails that arrived while I was working on this post.

2:00-3:00 Ref desk shift. Started out with problems with a printer jam and guest passes, but had an interesting and more challenging ref transaction with a student looking for information "from encyclopedias" about the earned income tax credit. Questions like that make me a bit nervous because, frankly, I don't know what that is :). I showed the student how to access the Gale Virtual Reference Database. And then through more chatting with him, I found out that he wasn't wed to the idea of encyclopedias. So we also looked for books and articles; it turned into a 20-minute how to find stuff using the library's website class. Nice kid, I hope he lets us know if he has trouble. Also had a Modern Languages Department faculty member stop by to let me know that they are going to start teaching Arabic in the fall. I'll need to see what we may already have that will support that class and work with my content librarian, Ava Nell (who does the buying for all my departments) to see what needs to be bought.

3:00-4:00 TED Talk Tuesday, yay! One of my colleagues started this series; we watch a talk from the website every Tuesday. Today was one I suggested: "Stuart Brown Says Play Is More Than Fun". It's really fascinating, and I'm hoping it gets people starting to think about maybe doing some more fun activities here, like having a gaming night.

4:00-4:30 Met with my supervisor to let her know that MODL will be offering Arabic so that she can start thinking about what we may need for the reference collection (which she buys). Also wanted her advice about the next step to take, which is to talk to Ava Nell.

4:30-5:30 Called Ava Nell and found out what the next step is (basically to ask MODL people to provide us with the titles they want). Caught up with email. Also had to sign my appointment letter, which is a yearly formality that ensures we all still have jobs. Got that from my mailbox, signed it, and put it directly into the hand of the associate director of the library (it has my salary listed).

5:30-6:30 Wrote two important emails to faculty members. The first was to respond to the professor to whom I wrote the long email earlier; she has asked me to do a library session for all three sections of the interdisciplinary capstone courses she is teaching in the fall. So I picked out dates on my calendar that worked for me and let her know what I had chosen. The second was to the MODL professor, just to follow up on our conversation today and to let him know what Ava Nell said. He mentioned he's making a book database for his personal use with Zoho Creator; I looked it up and it seems cool. I responded and told him that, but I also told him about Library Thing. I think he'll flip when he sees that he can import catalog records using that service :).

Heading home after I publish this post. It's been a really busy day!