Library Day in the Life

It seems like last time I did library day in the life, my day was much busier than today. In fact, for being two weeks out from the end of summer reading, today was incredibly quiet and uneventful. I got a lot of little things done. I'll post another day in the life later this week, just to give an idea of how wildly different every day is. But for now!

7:45 am: On Mondays, I always get into work early. It gives me time to pull weekly prize winners for summer reading and to swap out the weekly puzzles and coloring sheets. I also spent this time refilling the empty spots in our new books display for picture books and juvenile fiction. I also updated our statistics for programming last week. I made up a box for people to drop toilet and paper towel tubes into for a program I plan on doing in the fall.

8:30 am: I knock out a ton of emails, including an email to a company that offered a donation for summer reading prizes which we haven't received yet. They wanted the names of all our participants, and I said there was no way I'd be typing out 500 names from our paper records. I then wrote up an email with all our stats and notes from last week's youth programming, along with a preview of what's to come this week and sent it to the entire staff and our dedicated volunteers.

8:45 am: I updated our teen blog with this week's events, and I drafted a post for later this week showcasing new books we just got in. I downloaded photos from our teen death by chocolate party and posted them on our facebook page. While these downloaded (I had 30 great photos!), I filled out a form for one of our summer prize donors to let them know how we used the prize.

9:00 am: I finished uploading the photos, organizing the album, and updated our Facebook status. I then scheduled out the drafted blog posts for the rest of the week. Done!

9:30 am: I talked with my boss about how burned out I am on summer reading club and we talked about hiring someone for a staff member who left not too long ago. We're so understaffed that this comes as a huge relief.

9:45 am: I dissembled last week's Lego Club creations that were on display in our children's room.

10:00 am: I finally get a chance to write out a weekly to-do list, which is much shorter than the last few weeks. I tracked down stamps to put on all of the thank you letters to our prize donors upstairs at the reference desk, and I tackle a quick reference question while up there. When my coworker gets off the phone, I pass the question to her then walk to the post office to mail my thank you letters.

10:15 am: De-newing time! I went through all of the new books on the teen shelf and on the picture book display and took off anything that was new before May (or in the case of picture books, I took off a few seasonally-inappropriate titles). I seem to have forgotten to do the juvenile fiction new books, so it's on the agenda for some time else this week. This makes all of our shelves look tidier, and it helps to make people see the real new stuff when it comes in.

10:30 am: I talked to our Friends Group about whether they had a meeting and needed the meeting room this morning, and I found out I could get it set up for Lego Club as soon as I wanted to. I pulled the tables to the side, laid down our table clothes, and dumped out the Legos. I went back to my office and cut some more name tags for displaying the kids' creations, and my regular adult volunteer came in. I chatted to catch up with her and to talk about the goals for this week.

10:45 am: I reviewed the fall programming plans and made sure all the dates submitted to the park district for their brochure matched what I had down, and they did. I made a note to myself to put holds on the books for teen book club and to update the teen blog with the programs. I'll be posting about my fall programming plans here soon!

11:15 am: It's collection development time. I like to buy a month ahead, meaning I like to buy September releases in August. So I began making a cart of September books, and caught up my cart with notes I'd made to myself from the journals I'd read earlier this month. September looks to be a pretty busy pub month! My intern comes in, too, and we talk about the mobile collection (which she's been in charge of).

11:30 am: My boss needs to help someone in the back, so I hop on desk in children's for a minute. I had a prereader bring back her log, and I was able to give her some prize money and her summer reading shirt, since she met that milestone. My intern helped me shelve some books, then she was off to the high school.

11:45 am - 12:45 pm: Lunch! During my lunch, I did some emailing, reading, and a little bit of writing. I so appreciate being able to come home for lunch, since it lets me take care of personal stuff out of the office and in my own element. Plus, it means fresh food for lunch every day.

12:45 pm: When I get back to work, I run into my intern and she gives me the run down on what was checked out at the school from the mobile collection. Then I got the news our internet was down again (this being about day 10 this summer), but for some reason, my wireless was working.

12:50 pm: Fortunately, I was able to access Baker and Taylor again and did a little more work on collection development stuff. I finished putting together teen books and began working on juvenile fiction and non-fiction.

1:30 pm: Lego Club time! I had 15 kids, mostly boys, building with the huge pile of Legos on the floor. While they did that, I read through School Library Journal, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, and Booklist for reviews. I kind of hate them all, to be honest, but it gave me something productive to do during that time.

2:00 pm: It's still Lego Club time, and my adult volunteer comes by to check in and see if I have any other things for her to do (I don't). We talk about cleaning my office storage space this week and make a plan to tackle it after tomorrow, since it's our last big staff intensive event.

2:20 pm: I had gone to the back to drop the journals off in my office, and one of my teens had come by to see me. I gave everyone at Lego Club the 10 minute warning, and I spent the time catching up with one of my most dedicated teens. As the kids bring up their Lego creations, I make up display tags for them.

2:30 pm: All of the kids have left, and my teen helps me clean up all the Legos! It was really kind, and we got to talk some more. We ended up chatting until 3 pm, wherein we touched upon Siobhan Vivian's book Not That Kind of Girl (which she plans on redesigning the cover for), Nova Ren Suma's Imaginary Girls (this week's book club book), our September lock in (which she gave me some great ideas for!), Summer School, Dr. Who, and whether or not there are secret messages embedded in our carpet. It was nice to catch up with her, and it's always fun with her particularly because she's a huge reader -- I send her home with piles and she always reads them.

3:00 pm: Collection development. I knocked out all of it except for media, and tomorrow's plan is to weed through what I've got down to just the things I really want. My method for collection development is to knock everything interesting into a cart, then go back and eliminate things that sound too similar, that don't really sound like they'd be great, etc. It's a long process of doing collection development, but I like how I do it, and I think I do a pretty good job of making a balanced collection this way. I like seeing my options and picking accordingly. I do have to say I'm a little tired of juvenile historical fiction, as it seems everything falls into that category lately, and frankly, it's not a hugely popular genre. Give me more DOAWK* readalikes.

5:00 pm: It took me two hours to get Baker and Taylor under my control, and it's time for me to head home! Like I said, it was a quiet day at work, and I got a ton of little things done. Tomorrow promises to be a little more insane, so if I remember, I'll try to do a day in the life for it, as well.

* You know you're a youth services librarian if you know what that means!