Library Day in the Life: day 1
Posted on July 27, 2009
Filed Under Consulting, Libraries, Library Day in the Life | Leave a Comment
I’m taking part in the Libary Day in the Life project (the concept is described here), second annual, which runs this week and started today.
I’m a consulting librarian/information specialist, so my library is a virtual one. It’s been some years since I worked in a physical library, and in those days it was several small libraries that I managed as a consultant – one in a non-profit (community mental health services) and one in an academic research centre (health technology assessment/health services and policy). Now, I spend my work day in one of three main areas:
- Research or other work for clients
- Administrative work (the business of being a consultant)
- Professional development (reading, sometimes writing, taking courses, attending conferences and webinars)
My day started with a walk with one of my office assistants – Freckle, one of my dogs – before the heat of the day settled in. I then returned to my office, powered up my laptop, and with coffee in hand, settled in to the work of the day about 9:30 – a late start since I worked over the weekend and decided I could start later today. Roughly, my day looked like this:
- Checked email for anything that needed immediate action.
- Reviewed my upcoming week so I make sure I’m on top of things.
- Spent time on Twitter, reading and posting a few items.
- Fielded a phone call from a client – our 10 am meeting rescheduled for later in the day.
- Quickly scanned through AIIP-L posts – I’m the chair of the Association of Independent Information Professionals discussion group committee and one of my tasks is to monitor this private list.
- Checked out the Fraser Valley Regional Library’s “Stop BC Library Cuts” website and signed the online petition. Background: our provincial government here in British Columbia has announced that it will be clawing back already committed funding in a number of areas, including to public libraries. The website lists programs that would be affected by this looming cut in operating grants. It also provides suggestions for tactics and a toolkit for library workers.
- Wrote a short blog post about the claw backs and installed the petition button graphic on my blog. I’m puzzled that the new tags I used don’t who up in my tags list.
- Brief lunch break at 1:00 (about 20 minutes).
- Started up the portable air conditioner after lunch – it’s meltingly hot, very unusual for Vancouver, and with no end in sight.
- Had the rescheduled phone meeting with a client, discussed research results.
- Spent time working on a redesign of my blog – new plugins, new look coming soon, I hope.
- Answered an email from a university student I’m mentoring on preparing manuscripts for submission (she’s doing the near-to-final changes to a paper we’re coauthoring with her supervisor).
- Added a new member to AIIP-L – another of my tasks as committee chair (some of this process is automated, but I still check our directory to see if the requestor is a member of AIIP and then send a welcome message).
- Filed some business-related financial papers.
- Backed up my website and blog.
- Upgraded Wordpress for my blog from version 2.8 to 2.8.2, hoping it would solve the missing tags problem (nope, it didn’t).
- Spent more time trying to figure out what’s going on with my blog tags (looked at other tag cloud options).
- Spent time in and out of email and Twitter most of the day.
Stopped the main work of my day about 5:30 and walked the same office assistant again before dinner. Work often spills into the evening, and I suspect I’ll continue looking at tag cloud widgets later on. (If anyone can suggest a good tag cloud widget, I’d love to hear about it.)
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