Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Day in the Life of the Library (Ninja)

I learned through my pal Oodja's blog that there is something super neat-0 called the Day In the Life of a Library .
I've modified this slightly to fit my Ninja title, but here goes!

8:00 AM ~ Arrive at work, affix Big Red to my head (my hard hat) and begin my construction work obstacle course. My library is under construction, set to open in the fall, so daily entry involves balancing on boards, crossing through moats, hurdling sprinkler systems and back hoes, as well as stepping in mud. Today was no exception, with the added bonus of needing to take a circuitous route to avoid walking under scaffolding and ladder. I'm very superstitious.

8:30 AM ~ the day begins! Check in for our daily "RFID" schedule. We are tagging our entire collection in anticipation of self-check out. I am a "leader" since I am the only person here who has been through the RFID process before at a former library system.
Click through emails.
Make coffee!

9:00 AM ~ settle in to birth the book babies. As the cataloging librarian, I'm responsible for inputting new non-fiction and fiction, and today is a big author day! The Girl Who Played with Fire has been released, and I need to input copies for our MAIN library and six branches. Our reserve list is over 300 for our network, so time is of the essence!

11:00 AM ~ My RFID shift will begin! We're affixing tags to the back of books, and then scanning the tag into the computer to essential duplicate the barcode and information. A physically demanding task, so it's broken up into hour-shifts so we don't exhaust our poor librarian backs.

1:00 PM ~ Website Design Meeting time! To coordinate with the grand opening of our library, we are also rolling out a new website. As the social network guru (go ahead, have a chuckle, those of you that know me well), I'm the vision behind some of the "fun" library features like Twitter, bookmarklets, blogs, Facebooks, and the like. My end goal? To start a virtual book club.

2:00 PM ~ Did my phone just ring? Damn, I thought I turned that thing off!

3:00 PM ~ Blog time! I write the staff blog, and today I'm giving an update about the construction, parking at the library (we currently have to walk from about a mile away, if we choose to get discounted parking at a city garage), and other "fun" library events. Today, I'll probably insert some information from the ALA Conference in Chicago.

4:00 PM ~ Time to wrap up my day by printing spine labels for the book babies. From here, they'll be plasti-cleared, and boxed up to be sent out to branches for our patrons to enjoy.

In here, there will be 1,000 other little questions. Where's the tape? Why does this Dewey look funny? Have you seen the Poetry books? What DVDs did we get in this week? Can you order me a bacon book? I take it all in stride! Because really, being a library Ninja is as sexy as it looks!

Kat