Library Day in the Life: January 24

I started my day off very early by responding to an email from the chair of an ALA New Members Round Table committee I serve as the supervising board member. A significant part of my work as a librarian is my involvement in the American Library Association. I strive to be timely in my responses to all email, so even at 1:01am I'm likely to write back. Why yes, one of my goals for 2011 is to improve my work-life balance. We'll blame my early email response on an eagerness to start off Library Day in the Life.

That is my library (taken about 3pm today). I've been here since September 20, 2010. I'm having a lot of fun in my current position. I get to deal with a lot of different things. In the morning I assisted our LIS intern, Sarah, with a student's reference question. It's always fun to collaborate with her and provide reference service mentoring. Sarah interns ten hours per week in our library and is here on Mondays and Thursdays this semester. She's going to be a great librarian.

This afternoon I spoke with a patron about an overdue lost item and associated fines. I had to gather information about the item from our circulation system and learn from my full-time library assistant how lost and replaced items have been tracked and dealt with in the past. I even found a little bit of time to unpack more boxes in my office. My new file cabinet and bookcase finally arrived last week, so I'm working on getting settled. I ate lunch at my desk but despite my intentions I did not really multitask. It did give me an opportunity to catch up on the #libday6 tweets.

This afternoon a candidate gave a presentation for an open position for an assistant professor of communications position. As a member of the faculty, I attended that job talk. Throughout the day I waded through lots of email. I even responded to some messages, including a request to be a reference for a scholarship applicant. I also spent some time talking on the phone with a colleague at another campus about some committee work and the upcoming ACRL conference in Philadelphia.