Library Day in the Life #libday8 Day 1

6:45 - Alarm goes off. Otto the basset slinks up from against my knees puts his warmback against my chest, and lays his heavy (very heavy) head on my arm at my elbow. I obey the dog. Hit snooze until

8:00am- Groan, knowing this means I will not get my desired early start on the day. Un-groan, as my joints seem willing to move today for the first time in awhile.

9:00-9:15 - Get into the office. Check in with my day circ manager to make sure everything is on the level, sign timesheets and drop them off in the Admin office. Talk shoes with Anna, laugh at the meanface my boss is giving her monitor when she thinks no one can see her, hit up the supply closet for tape.

9:15-10:00 - Email triage. Among the important ones is one from the faculty president; as secretary I need to get the discussion board up for the full faculty to do the second reading of the proposed Bachelor of Integrated Studies degree.

10:00-10:30 - After email, into Blackboard to post the degree proposal and executive summary, set up the discussion board, and set up the voting mechanism according to the timelines detailed in our Faculty Handbook. Another email comes in as I finish setting this up about the ODT degree that has, after much drama, passed Graduate Council and Senate Exec. That program will have to be similarly posted online eventually.

10:45-12:00 - Collection development work. As liaison to the Political Science department, I collect their purchase requests and also have responsibility to develop a purchase list to fill in gaps in our collection. Hooray for getting to go shopping with Library money! I make a mental note to add more colldev time to my calendar on Tuesday and Wednesday to make sure I get done by the deadline, which is Friday. (I'm out of town on Thursday and Friday, so the real deadline for me is Wednesday.)

12:00-1:00 - Realize I forgot to bring lunch to work. Check and organize email while feeling seven shades of grumpypants. Email Wilda at Library Journal back about book reviewing, email photographer/poet friend back about the shots he's taking for the cover of my newest book. Email my staff reminding them I'll be out later this week, giving them my contact information in case there's trouble.

1:00-2:00 - I have to transcribe the minutes from the last Faculty Senate meeting so members can approve them on Thursday. I should have had them up on Friday, but last week was hellishly busy. It was a long, contentious meeting - the minutes are seven pages, single-spaced. I also post the agenda for Thursday's meeting, curriculum proposals that the body has to approve, some other documents. Yay, webmastering.

2:00-4:00 - I'm on the circ desk so my day super can represent Access Services in the tech sub-group of our Internal Library Building Committee. Traffic is steady but not awful, and while I'm out there I celebrate two of my interlibrary loan requests coming in - especially since one s the first book of a series, and books 2 and 3 arrived last week. A few of the students from the freshman seminar

4:00 - 4:10 - Laird comes back from the committee meeting to let me know I need to attend the next one, since they'll be discussing the service models for our new building. I'll have to get folks together for a supers meeting so we can discuss it and brainstorm before that meeting. Things to think about include desk staffing, runners to the floors, tech help, more. It goes on my to-do list, but it's been percolating in all of our heads for awhile.

4:10-4:20 - A quick peek at the local paper websites show that the brouhaha over grading policy stemming from an article published on Saturday about UTC now requiring students to get a B to move onto higher accounting classes is raising the public's hackles; I pass it along to the Senate Executive team, this will probably be discussed at our meeting with the Provost and Chancellor on Wednesday morning. Here's to hoping the paper misunderstood the policy and that it isn't being applied retroactively instead of for new student catalog years. Sigh.

4:20-4:45 - Making the to-do list that I should have done this morning to get myself organized for the short week. List: talk to my ILL librarian about training and our new hire, send faculty President the attendance sheet for the Thursday meeting I will miss, make some notes of things I want to make sure I bring up during my lunch with the Head of Reference & Instruction tomorrow, clean up the list of items for discussion at the Senate Exec meeting with the Provost and Chancellor, find a time when all my supers are around for a meeting to discuss service models, get an invoice together for a faculty member who lost a very expensive set of DVDs, find a restaurant for dinner with my dean on Wednesday, review the ACRL stats before that meeting on Wednesday.

An easy day, in what looks like it might be an easy week for a change. I'll take it.