DayintheLife#7: Wednesday-Friday
Wednesday:
Celebrate the end of my summer contract hours by only working 2 hours on my citation video project. All work and no play, don’t you know. Too tired even to run today.
Thursday:
Work another 2 hours on citation videos – now have 2 complete. Drop son off at home after XC practice and drive into the office for a meeting on the migration of NetLibrary content to EBSCOhost. Spend the next three hours getting updates on projects from staff. Budget projections are looking pretty dire – we may need to make some unpopular decisions this fall. Added staff member to this blog in hopes that she will write about all the cool things happening in periodicals – especially highlighting some of our hidden treasures. End the day as usual at the YMCA with a 5K run.
Friday:
Another several hours on citation videos. Finally discovered an easy way to play the content in PowerPoint while recording in Jing. I quickly re-record my first 2 videos (now half the file size as the originals and much easier to view) and move on to the third.
I still need to call two vendors today about new databases; I wish there was a 24-hour rule in responding to customer requests.
July 29, 2011. Tags: librarydayinthelife. Uncategorized. Leave a comment.
DayintheLife#7: Tuesday
6:30 a.m. Wake up, begin consuming large amounts of coffee. Catch up the latest disaster news from Washington. Trying to contain my excitement that the whole country is counting down to my birthday this year: August 2nd.
7:00 a.m. Wake son for XC practice.
7:30 a.m. Wake son again for XC practice.
8:15 a.m. Drop son at XC practice; drive into work.
9:00 a.m. Budget meeting; the upcoming year looks a little dicey in terms of actually having funding to retain all the resources that faculty and students need. I’m sure this is hugely surprising for anyone reading this!
9:05 a.m. Have officially burned through all the hours in my summer contract. For the next month, working pro bono.
10:00 a.m. Meeting over. Run over to periodicals office to alert staff member that our ERM is being worked on and that we shouldn’t be entering new data. Come up with new student project to check a bibliography to make sure all the books are still in print. Upon accessing Books in Print, realize that we no longer have access to BIP via FirstSearch. Pay one invoice. Sign, scan, and email 3 renewals, asking for invoices.
11:00 a.m. Hear back from FirstSearch that the database changes were announced over a year ago. Cool. We’ve lost access to 9 other databases besides Books in Print. Update some budget numbers.
12:00 p.m. Alert my staff member that we can actually keep adding data to our ERM, no worries.
12:10 p.m. Rush out of library for a 20-minute drive home to pick up my daughter and get her to band practice. Actual time allotted for 20-minute drive: 10 minutes.
12:33 p.m. Drop daughter off at practice (only 3 minutes late!), then over to Blue Cup for lunch. Send out email to director and collection development librarian about FirstSearch changes. Feel slight headache coming on.
1:15 p.m. Grab daughter and drive home. Write this post. Update a-z list to reflect access changes to those 10 FirstSearch databases.
2:30 p.m. Add a note to our FirstSearch databases about them being down.
3:15 p.m. Create new fund/ledger structure for our reference titles so that it will be easier for our reference librarian to track expenses. Previously, funding had been split between monographs, standing orders, and electronic resources with no coding flagging the materials as “reference.” With expenses continuing to rise, this new system is expected to help us better track expenses for this area.
4:00 p.m. Hitting the YMCA for an amazing stress-relieving run.
July 26, 2011. Tags: librarydayinthelife. Uncategorized. Leave a comment.
DayintheLife#7: Monday
I can’t say that the following musings will reflect a typical week as it’s July (very few classes going on), I’m on a part-time summer contract, and I only have 6 hours left on my contract. In May my position was re-structured to include managing electronic resources. I am excited about my new responsibilities, but it has made for a much more work-intensive summer than I was anticipating.
5:50 a.m. ignore alarm, sleep until 6:30.
6:30 a.m. coffee, news, check of the interwebs.
8:15 a.m. drop son off at XC practice, hit my favorite local coffee shop (Blue Cup) to work until son shows up after practice.
8:30 a.m. Begin work on a series of quick videos about citing sources – not only how to cite (examples will be specifically geared towards actual resources used in an assignment for our CST110 classes), but why we cite. In the background, trying for the umpteenth time to download the final section of data for my CST110 assessment project. Hoping that the bandwidth at the Blue Cup is better than what I have at home.
8:45 a.m. Blue Cup internet rocks! Files downloaded. Background files for videos gathered. Reviewing goals for the videos.
10:00 a.m. Leave to transport my son back home. Make homemade waffles, clean kitchen.
11:00 a.m. From several emails, determine that I need to update our EZproxy config for Web of Science. After updating the files and re-starting the server, add an alert to all our Web of Knowledge databases on the a-z list about the new interface going live. Sent an email to my staff member about updating our ERM, e-resource blog, staff, and LibGuides with this information. Contemplate just doing the updates myself, as staff member is out until Thursday, but realize that I am going to have to delegate to survive the rest of the summer.
11:30 a.m. See email about yet another library web form being broken. Realize that I need to focus on getting my videos done. Close email, close blog – focus on videos.
2:45 p.m. First draft of Why we Cite video completed! Feeling like I’m finally accomplishing some summer goals. Heading to the YMCA to run.
July 25, 2011. Tags: librarydayinthelife. Uncategorized. Leave a comment.
