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.)

My colleague, Dean Giustini, wrote an interesting blog post yesterday, asking the question “why aren’t more Canadian librarians on Twitter?” I wonder this myself. I find Twitter to be a useful tool to share some of what I’m reading and a bit about what I’m thinking, to connect with current colleagues and friends and to meet new ones, and in general to keep abreast of new things and thoughts about technology and social networking. I follow tweeple from the library/information science world, online education world, and other worlds of interest (art, dogs, creativity, news).

Like Dean, I talk about Twitter with friends, and usually get the response that it seems like a waste of time and effort. I’m surprised, too, that Dean’s health information and librarianship students were so unenthusiastic about it. The students I’ve met are young and I would have thought they’d adopt this web 2.0 application with gusto.

To Dean’s list of Canadian library/librarian tweeple, I would add several who work in non-traditional settings, but with a focus on health. Tamara Durec is an independent information professional with a pharmacy background and Shelley Hourston is a program director in a disability advocacy organization, as well as a creativity coach. Other Canadian librarians/information professionals include Stephen Abram and Tim Tripp. I know of numerous others who have Twitter accounts, but don’t post. Perhaps Dean and I can convince them to rev up in this new year. (And thanks, Dean, for the heads up about the Vancouver Public Library Twitter feed; it’s new to me.)