A day in the life of a librarian Or You got a masters for that? (day1)

All joking aside, the “week in the life” came from Librarian By Day via Lauren’s Library Blog. A bunch of us had decided this (past week) would be the week- for conformity and whatnot- that we’d blog about our library lives. Like Lauren, i know a lot of folks virtually, but probably have no idea what it is you all do in your awesomeness. :-)

Even though i suggested the week of the 15th for us all to do this, I dropped the ball majorly and am just getting to it today. I will, however, finish 5 business days. I’m just not sure i can guarantee them to be consecutive days. I’d say “i’ll try” but i’m told, there is no try.

Ready? Go!

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Unless you’re doing quality control for a widget factory, I’d imagine your days/weeks, like mine, are never the same. But this will give a taste as to what i do and what it’s like to be at the helm of a cooperative virtual reference service.

The title: Operations Supervisor (soon to be Project Coordinator)
The organization: Maryland AskUsNow!, Maryland’s statewide virtual reference service

Today I:

• checked email #1 for any customer emails that need to be put into QuestionPoint or redirected
• checked email #2 and (oddly) only found 2 new ones. The fact that it was only 8:15am probably helped.
• checked personal email, which pointed me to facebook
• facebooked for a bit, checking out new activity to the AskUsNow! facebook page, then moving my 4 cars to new spots in the Parking Wars (i was already there, right?)
• emailed my mini-VR group back and forth on what swag to bring to a tv spot
• figured out how many bags of AskUsNow! highlighters go to each partner library using a percentage based on previous shipments of swag
• 10am-12pm conference call with fellow panel presenters to suss out our presentation at the Reference Renaissance conference in Denver next week (oh crap, it’s next week)
• listened to a vm that’s come in, quickly microwave my sandwich (30secs, i can’t stand cold sandwich bread)
• called someone who emailed me during my conference call about troubleshooting questionpoint
• email mini-vr group about what to do when a partner library doesn’t show up in the “refer to” list in QuestionPoint
• returned a phone call and suss out details of our new ruler order
• played phone tag with promotions company folks to figure out how quickly we can get rulers and the size and format information for the imprint they need. schedule brief meeting for 1pm to finalize order (i prefer phone, but they insist the order will go thru faster if i meet with the guy… it’s a homegrown company)
• got a missed shift covered and email the coop scheduler know about the make up time. am reminded of trapeze school and i email the bf about it. he emails back saying, “so let me get this straight…you’re not willing to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, but you are willing to jump off of a perfectly good 23 ft platform?.” uh, yeah!
• sent an email to the AskUsNow! liaison listserv about upcoming trainings
• looked into archiving our list with google groups
• troubleshot a log in problem. caller mentioned someone else having trouble so i called them. was turned on to mp3 tasers… leopard print even! Oh, and happy sysadmin day!
• 1pm-3pm(ish) find boxes, unpack highlighters, box and reship highlighters to partner libraries. got all but 4 libraries all done before i ran out of tape *and* boxes.
• break for water refill and mini milkyway midnight.
• get another mini milkyway midnight (who are they kidding being so small, anyway)
• check personal email, get pointed to FriendFeed- which still confuses me. too much overload.
• remember the day in the life thing and log into my blog…

fascinating, i know. :-) You should look forward to monday! :-)