lauren’s library blog

Today was moving day!

• I came in and chatted a bit with Elizabeth at the reference desk one last morning, finished up packing, and checked it a little bit online. No tea. Did vacuum and wipe down all surfaces and drawers.
• Then, some coworkers helped me cart and carry my things down to the new office. I helped move things around for the others. This was mostly running around for a while.
• We then met with the LibGuides group. We now have a phase one roll-out plan.
• Lunch with John at Panera.
• Back to unpack the office. This took longer than packing did, but I was able to get rid of more stuff, too. The office is a little wider and about as long as my old one, so it’s a bigger place. There are less hiding spaces, so I feel a little messier than before. I’m trying to figure out what to do with the windows, too. When blinds up, people can see in & look at my monitors, which is a little weird. When closed, it’s very claustrophobic. If the actual window is open I can hear what’s going on in the library and get more air, when closed I can listen to low level radio. I have some stuff to figure out in here.
• I did my regular Friday reading of listservs. I save up all email discussion list email, filtering it through the week, and spend a short amount of time on Fridays skimming the subject lines for things I might have missed through the blogs and twitter streams. This used to take a while, but now most of the good stuff comes in other channels, too, so it’s really fast.
• I took out some old chairs that we can get rid of, and found a few chairs for my new office table.
• Headed home at 5, will answer email for the first time today as soon as I get home.

The work-related plans for the weekend include:

• Work on the book
• Work on Elon presentations
• Create presentation for Salem consulting next week

It’s a little funny to me that Library Day in the Life took place in such an unusual week for me (with all the moving), but it just goes to show how all kinds of things happen in library work! I hope to do this at some point in the academic year, too, to show what life is like when teaching, reference hours, and more meetings enter the picture. Probably after the book, though.

If you’re interested in another side of my library, one of my colleagues participated, too!

Update:
Here are the new digs:


And, thanks to Susan, it was blogged on the work blog here.

Share This

2 Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / Uncategorized

Today was another meeting filled day. The evening got away from me, so you’re getting the short and sweet version here:

• Got in, checked email and calendar, off to the first meeting.
• Went on a walk through of microtext with all the stakeholders in the microtext weeding project. Took longer than expected, but we did a thorough first pass.
• Quickly met with our webmaster about LibGuides. We now have accounts, but haven’t had a chance to play with them yet.
• Another quick pass through the email.
• Went to lunch with a new friend who works in the vendor side of things. Great conversation. We talked a little bit about professional identity, networks of people doing similar work, the academic perspective of being part of a larger field.
• Got back and talked about LibGuides with another person on the planning group. We set up accounts and made a demo one. We’re going to play separately with them; we figured that since I come from a hack-around mindset, it would be useful to see how easy it is for a non-hacker-around type of person to learn how to use them.
• We had a staff meeting: our associate director talked about her experience in the Leadership Winston-Salem program and we got general updates.
• I helped move a larger bookcase up to my office for when Susan gets here.
• I spent the rest of the afternoon skimming email, looking up positions that sound like what we were talking about yesterday, going through files, and packing up my office. I think at this point I could be totally out of this office in 30 minutes, tops.

Here’s my stuff:

Tomorrow will be strange. I’m moving, I have a lot of email catching up to do, and I have a task list that has grown each day as I’ve not gotten through an entire todo list any day this week. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow!

Share This

No Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / librar*

Whew. Today was a meeting-filled day, with little time to get actual tasks done… It was a good one, though!

Morning:

• Morning routine.
• Replied to email, volunteered to be on a library committee.
• Packed a little bit more.
• Took a very early, slightly longer than average lunch break to get coffee with one of my educational technologist friends. We talked about emerging technologies, the changing information environment, and possible areas of collaboration.

Still morning, but after my lunch break:

• When I got back I tracked down my current job description for an afternoon meeting and I skimmed the BABOK for potential things that might help us in our library work.
• Then I had a phone meeting with two people interested in getting involved with LITA’s Distance Learning Interest Group. We talked about possible positions and the direction the group could take. I have a list of questions to answer for my “next actions.”
• Then, a fun surprise, I got copies of my first scholarly article (well, really annotated bibliography) in the mail! I read through it to make sure it was as I remembered, and took a picture for Flickr & Brightkite:



• My main afternoon meeting was with my new supervisors about my new position within the organization. I was on the reference/instruction side of things, and I’m moving to the technology side. (Hence the actual move on Friday.) It was a good meeting, and we will be doing some research this week and meeting again next week.
• After this meeting I swung by Craig’s office. (He’s also participating in Library Day In the Life!) We were going to do some video editing for a project he’s working on, but ran into some issues in the file conversions. We found someone with another recommendation and he’s going to give it another try later on. It was good to catch up, we don’t get to talk too much!
• When I got back to my office I had an instant message from my publisher. We chatted for a few minutes about my progress on the book and ALA. You’ll note that I’m not talking about the book this week. I had been working at a steady pace, but once I completed the draft I took a break in order to finish last night’s chapter and we are scheduled for things every night this week. I think I’m going to get back into it this weekend.
• I checked a few emails, and then it was after when I should have left, so I packed up and went to get John.

Tonight I have a yoga class, but I also have several things in my email inbox that need to be dealt with. I’ll spend whatever time I have getting as close to zero as I can.

Tomorrow looks to be another (good) meeting-filled day… I’ll keep you posted!

Share This

No Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / librar*

It’s late. It’s Wednesday. So this isn’t going to be as textish as it normally would be.

Morning:

• Got up early to work on my chapter a bit more.
• Caught a co-worker up with some of the transitions in the department, and there are a bunch! (All good, but a lot of change.)
• In continuing the prep for the office move on Friday, I went through my paper files, deciding what could be scanned into the computer, what could be recycled, what needed to be shredded, and what should stay. I have less than a foot of paper files left. Yay! (Lots of scanning to do, though.)
• Went through the very last of the microtext information I had left over from my days in the microtext department. They were largely student files and documentation. Student files were shredded and documentation went back to microtext.
• We’re doing big moves in the building, too, so I helped move old furniture from our govdocs room to the staging area for removal, and moved nice furniture into govdocs.



• I helped out in microtext again, showing a patron, two grad student workers, and a colleague how to make digital scans of microfiche.
• I had a few minutes to go though my inboxes and the email that had piled up all morning.
• I finally followed up on my ALA poster, sending everyone who signed up the image of the poster, the handout, and the citation for my CiL article.
• Then I had a dentist appointment, so I did that instead of lunch today.

Afternoon:

• I sat in on my first official (heavy) technology meeting. I’m new to this group at work, so I mostly listened and tried to learn what I could about what they’re doing and how they interact. I thought about how it’s a little weird I’m in this group and John works in university technology.
• I helped a colleague learn about how to transition their paper manual to the library wiki. We talked pros and cons of passwords, how to embed multimedia, and some basic editing syntax.
• Giz and I moved the yucky chairs out of my office so that Susan won’t have to deal with them when she moves in.
• I unpacked my bookcase and made weeding decisions about what was there. I decided there isn’t much reason to keep my old American Libraries et al since we have a subscription, so I’m recycling them. I had a few things bookmarked, so I found them online and added them to my Zotero system.
• Giz and I moved the bookcase to the reference office. We might both be small, but we’re strong!
• I picked up an ILL book I’ve been looking forward to: Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good.
• And then I stayed till 7:00, off the clock, working on my chapter. I was so certain I’d finish by 7:00, but I didn’t. I packed it in and came home.

I’ve been really busy lately between fun family visits and work related things, so I had promised John that we’d get dinner and see a movie tonight. For the 4 hours of not working we had great fun at an local Indian restaurant and seeing Wall E. So cute!

And afterwards I got back down to work. I finished the chapter, mailed it in, and I’m typing this up now. In less than 5 hours I’ll be up and it all starts again… but it’ll be nice that the chapter is behind me!

Share This

No Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / librar*

Right now there are at least 24 of us playing along… if you’re interested in seeing what others do in their library life, see the wiki!

Last week I talked about my morning routine, so I’m not going to talk about it this week.

Morning:

• I spent more time than normal this morning on email, largely because my parents visited this weekend! We had a good time, but I didn’t stay as on top of things as I tend to do on weekends. I also had a list of tasks that showed up today in my list that required initiating contact, follow up on a conference registration issue, and a few more ALA emails.
• This is a funny week to be doing this, because I’m moving! I stole a few minutes to empty out all my drawers and take my pictures off the wall. The beginning of the move is evident by the three paper bags by my door.
• WFU just adopted a new visual identity, so I updated my signature file to reflect the new requirements.
• I troubleshot some video uploading issues, which required file conversion and uploading to a number of different sites.
• I ordered a video on Fatherhood that was requested for the Women and Gender Studies department.
• I then took a very fast lunch to get to see my husband, John, for a few minutes so that I could get back for a reference department meeting.

Afternoon:

• Reference meeting to trade shifts and library news.
• Immediately following the meeting, helped a colleague with a computer issue.
• Following that interaction, I met with another colleague to help think about ways she could use our Toolkit, Portals, and new Libguides for her students in the Fall semester.
• Then, I wrote up an “about” statement for the Toolkit, only to realize the irrelevance of a text “about” statement for a video driven site, so I decided to make a video, too. That’s on the slate for tomorrow.
• I went through the old tutorial and made a list of skills. We’re hoping to make a “toolbox” of these skills so we can take down the tutorial.
• I finally had a minute to go through all my ALA papers and made my last list of post-ALA to-dos.

After not working on the Toolkit for a while, it looks like it’s demanding attention again. I’m glad it’s rising in my task list. I think it’s a really good product, but needs a lot more content before it’s ready for a big marketing push with the students. I also like being involved in a project that excites people, can help students easily at any time of day, and that can help save the time of both the user and librarian.

Tonight we had a family birthday party, which was very nice. Now it’s going to be a very late night as I have to finish my chapter that I was talking about last week. It’s going well, but I realized I didn’t save it before the program closed earlier today, so I’m going to need to retype some of what I had already said. At least that part will be quick going!!

Share This

1 Comment » Posted by lauren pressley / librar*

And I see from the wiki there is now an official time frame for the week-long version of the “day in the life” experiment. It’ll be next Monday-Friday… That’s probably best, I have a lot more meetings next week, which is a lot more typical.

Expect to see posts about ALA for the rest of the week instead, and more day-in-the life posts starting on Monday!

Share This

No Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / librar*

First: there is now a wiki for you to list your site in if you’re playing along. It’ll be fun for us to read, and useful for library school students! Use “library” to log in.

Some general things that will be the same every day of the following week (and don’t need to be repeated):

• I come in between 8:00am and 8:30 and I leave between 5:15 and 6:00pm on most days. Yes, that means I’m working up to 9 hours in the office on some days. It’s by choice.
• The first thing I do when I come in the morning is to make a cup of tea and turn on the space heater. It’s cold here and I love tea. I make tea throughout the day.
• At my desk, I start up the computer, I doc my phone, and open Outlook (my library’s email client and calendar of choice). I also open FireFox and start with a list of “daily tabs” I have saved to open on each specific day. This means some sites I open first thing every day, others I open once a week. The tabs that I open every day of work include igoogle, google calendar (I push this content to my Outlook calendar), remember the milk, facebook, and google reader. Facebook and google reader only stay open for a few minutes. They’re just to check in, while igoogle, RTM, and my calendar stay open all day long.
• Then I use my starred content in Google Reader or in Instapaper or in LaterLoop to open about 10 pages that I know I wanted to look at later. I leave these open all day so that if I’m stuck on hold for a few minutes or get to a meeting a bit early, I can read in the spare time that pops up. These pages tend to be library and technology focused.
• I also open several programs: Evernote, chat, Twhirl (this keep Twitter and FriendFeed open all day), and iTunes.
• I listen to podcasts almost all day. These vary depending on what’s in iTunes, but today included several from EDUCAUSE, IT Conversations, and NPR All Songs Considered.
• I then take about 20 minutes to answer email that popped up overnight or lingered from the day before, skim the titles of things in my reader (and I star them if I want to actually read them later). This keeps me in the loop if something big happened the night before.
• I go through my RTM list of tasks for the day, see what is work related, and create a loosely-based todo list schedule for the day. Sometimes it goes according to plan, others it falls apart, but at least it keeps the Most Important Tasks in the forefront of my mind.
• This gets me caught up with what’s going on in the library technology world since the evening before, and normally is finished by 9:00am, when the real work begins.
• I have two inboxes: one in Evernote and one that’s paper based. I’ll explain it in today’s post
• I normally take an hour lunch. During the summer I get off campus for lunch as much as I can. In the fall, I might get off campus one or two days a week. During the fall I might also work at my desk through lunch a few days a week, too. It depends on what’s going on.
• The last few minutes of my work day are always spent sending trying to clear out my email inbox to as close to 0 as I can get it.
• I normally check email a few times when I’m at home, and try to respond to keep my inbox small for the morning. I try to read what’s in my reader at some point in the evening.

The Morning

• I had heard about Cornell’s video widgets at ALA, and it sounded similar to something we’re doing, so I found them and watched a few. They’re similar, but different. Very interesting work going on with video!
• I followed up with a few people that I made contact with at ALA: scheduled lunch with one, sent feedback on an ALA infrastructure issue to another, etc. I also responded to a blog comment on a post related to ALA. I normally do blog related tasks and writing at home, but since this was on something work sent me to do, I justified the 30 seconds.
• With the new fiscal year, we can order again! I am the liaison for Women’s and Gender Studies. I had several book and movie requests, so I placed those orders (books through our online system, DVDs the old-fashioned, paper way). I also went through the approval slips that had come since the end of our ordering cycle. A lot had come! In this pass I just got rid of things that we definitely would not want to order, and loosely put them into subject groups.
• Following up with the Emerging Leaders program, I wrote up a little article on my group’s work and experiences for the IFRT newsletter. I used Google Docs and added the other group members so that they could add or edit.
• People were talking about Lively in FriendFeed, and it sounded like it might have potential applications in my work, so I spent 10 minutes poking around with it. It’s Google’s answer to Second Life, and looks like it has potential. It says that you can add your room to your site. That could be very interesting and possibly useful for virtual reference and instruction. One of my online friends added a YouTube video, too:
  
  I will have to spend more time with this later.
• Then, I did my most dreaded task of the day: I went through my inboxes. This is normally a pretty quick task, but in the past month I was on vacation for just over a week, at ALA, was out sick for a day, and took a day of vacation to go on a family reunion. A lot of odds and ends pile up over such a long period of time! One inbox is a folder in Evernote. I send email notes and photos there as things come up, and the iPhone has a nice interface for when I’m away from the computer. A TON of things were in there. My other inbox is a tickler file. I don’t deal much with paper, so there isn’t too much in that, but several things were there since I’m just getting back into the swing of things.
  • If something would take 2 minutes or less to do, I just went ahead and did it.
  • If something was still a discrete task, but would take longer, I assigned it to a specific date.
  • If something was more complicated, I made it into a project and entered it into my project system.
• The last thing I did before lunch was to look at the LITA IG Handbook and refreshed myself with that

The Afternoon

• After lunch I conducted a quarterly review. I’m trying to get in the habit of this to keep better tabs on what I’m committed to. I use Evernote as my personal project management system, and went through the project categories and lists; documenting and deleting completed ones, removing projects that don’t make sense to complete any more, and assigning priority levels and dates to the ones in the system. I also added in all the obligations from this ALA conference. My goal is to have all the attainable projects completed by the next quarterly review. This review actually took some time as I have the habit of coming up with all kinds of possible projects and signing up for all kinds of opportunities. I’m learning to be more realistic about what is possible and how much I can actually achieve in a given period of time. Weeding through it all gave me a much better sense of what I’m doing and what I should be doing. I think it’ll also make for a productive quarter. If I can get all that I’ve planned for July done, it’ll be great!
• From there I looked at everything due in July, and mapped it out on the calendar in order to be able to achieve it. Some goals are small such as replying to a specifically challenging email or getting in touch with someone and making a decision. Others are large, like the two chapters I have to write this month.
• I also took about half an hour to help the reference graduate student figure out how to make Google Scholar work off-campus without VPN. Most of our students are traditional and on-campus, so it’s not a common question at the desk, but it was good to find an answer. There was still one thing we had a question about, so he’s going to try to replicate the problem at home and see it he can get it working.
• And then, at the end of the day, I spent about an hour on email. This is unusually long period of time for me, but I only glanced at it a few times today, so I had a bunch to respond to, as well as a few complicated ones that took a page or more to answer. It was good to have the email inbox back at 0.

The Evening

• John is training for an athletic event, which gave me a few minutes at home by myself. I still had two websites open from this morning, so I read them first.
• I also typed this up.
• The main work event of the evening is going to be an extracurricular one. I’m writing a chapter on Blended Learning for a book coming out next year, so I’m about to write more of my draft and polish what I had written. I don’t do this type of work at the office since it’s something beyond what’s in my job scope. I just keep my fingers crossed that it won’t take too much time at home!

So, that’s a day in my work life! As I said, I’m going to keep this up for a week. Tomorrow’s post will be shorter, I promise! There can’t possibly be too much to say after listing my morning routine in this one!

Share This

No Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / Uncategorized and librar*

Bobbi L. Newman, over at Librarian by Day, has posted an interesting challenge: for library bloggers to post about what they do in a day of work. As with most of the commenters, I don’t have a typical day; but as a new librarian, I can totally see how this could be a useful thing for folks in the field to do. So, I’m going to give it a go for the next week. Wednesday-Tuesday I’ll post about the work I’m doing at work (and at home as it spills over) in hopes it might be useful or interesting to somebody. However, the summer is totally different from the school year, so as far as academic librarians go, it might be interesting to try this again in the academic year.

I am really looking forward to reading other folk’s posts! I feel like I know a bunch of you from Twitter or Friendfeed, but I don’t know what your jobs are. If you’re playing along, will you let me know in the comments?

Update: Lori Reed has set up a wiki to help project participants find each other! If you’re in library school and want to see the real-world library work, this list will be great. If you’re like me and want to know what your cool library friends are up to, it’ll be a fun way to learn. I’ve signed up for access to edit just now.

Share This

7 Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / librar*

I didn’t get much computer time for the rest of the conference, so I’m just now getting a chance to post. Monday ended really well. I gave my poster for the final time, with great feedback. One person even said they wished it had been a program rather than a poster! I re-met another Twitter friend, and finally had a minute of unscheduled time to relax.

Later, some friends were having a wine reception in their suite, so I was able to catch up with a few folks. I had to leave early, though, to catch up with my Twitter friends. I missed the first meet-up and the Facebook social, so this was my chance to put faces with the people I’ve been talking with for the past year and a half. It was great fun, and nice to meet some strangers that weren’t really strangers. It made for a late last night though!

Tuesday I finished up with my last COSWL meeting. I mostly do tech work for the group, and am now tasked to investigate spam solutions for the blog and a wiki option that will meet our needs on the caregiver issue. The flight home was smooth, and I was lucky to have two friends on the way. It makes the wait in airports go quickly! We got in at midnight, and just five hours of sleep later I was back at my desk.

This was my best ALA so far. Though a few hotels were far out, most of the things I did were pretty close together. The things I had responsibility for went well, and I was still able to go to a few extra things. The thing that really set this conference apart, though, was Twitter. Before showing up, I knew people. Twitter kept me in the loop for programs I wasn’t able to attend. It let us arrange impromptu meet-ups, and meant there was always an option for something to do. Blogging started this trend. From my first ALA, I’ve been keeping tabs on programs by reading others’ reports, and I’ve known a few people because of this. But Twitter expanded on this exponentially. Let’s hope the service gets things under control before everyone jumps ship!

Share This

2 Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / conferences

After the LITA president’s program, I found some coworkers for a while and we chatted. It’s good to catch up with local people at conferences. It’s strange to go across the country and not see them at all! Luckily, the blogger’s salon was in the same building. I was a bit shy last time, but found folks to talk to this time, both new and old. I actually wanted to stay later, but had to rush out to meet with some colleagues for the Ex Libris customer reception at the Jazz Kitchen. It was a really nice event, and good to see folks.

This morning, bright and early, I went with my Emerging Leaders group to tell the IFRT board about our Emerging Leaders project. They had some good questions, and seemed to like the project. I was pleasantly surprised to see a colleague from COSWL in the room, too.

I had to leave early to get to the LexisNexis breakfast to see my boss, Susan Sharpless Smith, win the 2008 ACRL IS Innovation Award. She gave a nice thank you speech, and even had the crowd laughing. Dana Milbank was the main speaker at the breakfast, and was very funny.

Now, for the first time during this entire conference, I have a few unscheduled hours. I’m going to give my poster at 1:00, and then see if I can find some Twitter friends to meet up with for dinner. If you want to get dinner, send me a dm!

Share This

No Comments » Posted by lauren pressley / conferences