Library Day in the Life 8

Last week was Library Day in the Life, which I participated in through the Twitter hashtag #libday8. I thought a good round-up post was in order also, as I wanted to touch upon some of the range of work I typically do as a librarian for a network.

Much of my week was spent working on our upcoming online catalog. My network is in the process of migrating to the open-source system Evergreen, and has been working with a couple other networks in a consortial cooperative called MassLNC. With the upcoming release, it is going to give us a nicer version of the Evergreen catalog, based on Template Toolkit. So, I have been working on not only branding, but making sure that the functionality is there, including third-party integration of our Content Cafe covers and reviews. We will actually be having multiple servers doing the work, so this past week was spent getting the file changes uploaded to all the servers. There is still a lot of work to do on those, and some clean up as not all the images have been uploaded.

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to go to one of our member libraries to do OverDrive training. We have had an OverDrive Digital Catalog since 2005, and just this past season had a major redesign on the website. Between that and all the different devices and formats, libraries are looking for us to come show them how everything works. Our Digital Catalog support is me and half my department (which is two other people). So, while she is usually the one out doing training, I decided to get out of the office and do it to give her a break and give myself some more experience at it. I brought my bag of devices (Nook, iPad, Kindle, iPhone) and gave two training sessions at the library. It was a really great time, lots of thoughtful questions and passing around devices. It is pretty amazing the range of experience, both at the staff and patron level, and I am glad to help our libraries support the patrons.

On Thursday Shift The Digital released a post about Random House ensuring libraries that they will continue to support library lending of ebooks, but that wholesale prices were going up in March. Of course, if the wholesale prices are rising, I will expect the library retail prices to rise also. I discussed this with my manager and colleague so they were prepared for the coming months. The last year has been harder in digital acquisitions, we have lost access to a lot of new materials with publishers deciding not to sell to libraries or restricting access through checkout limits. Also, with only two staff working on the collection, we are buying at a fast clip, but holds and new items analysis takes a large amount of time. With demand continuing to increase, I am looking at ways to streamline the process but expand the collection: we have added a Patron Request for Purchase form to the website so that we can get more title suggestions, and I will be looking at other selection tools and hopefully developing a collection development policy this year.

Friday was a meeting day. I was selected from our staff to be part of the group developing the new strategic plan for the network. Working with a group of library directors and other Central Site staff, we laid out the timeline for developing the new plan, along with a lot of the other meetings that will be happening the next several months. Then I had a phone call meeting about a writing project, then back into an in-person meeting about Evergreen. That didn't leave much time to work on the catalog, but made for a very full day nonetheless.

In fact, this past week was a very full week in terms of work. The range of projects and the timeframe to fit them in is keeping me more committed to making sure I have a weekly to-do list handy. Time management is becoming more essential, and I plan to fit more outreach and professional enrichment tasks in this year. Library Day in the Life was definitely a worthwhile experience for me and I am looking forward to participating next time.

Library Day in the Life

It is that time again! Bobbi Newman's Library Day in the Life Project is running for its eighth round this week. Feel free to sign up at any time, or just follow the antics of librarians across the world as we share what we do this week. I find it to be pretty enlightening and a great way to discover new connections.

While I was not sure if I was going to participate, I think I have lot of variety going on this week to share on Twitter. I will probably do a final post at the end of the week here, but until then follow along with me (@booksnyarn) or the hashtag #libday8!

Thursday (Library Day in the Life, #4)

I always believe that Thursday is the day without end. There is just something about Thursday afternoons that makes it seem eleventy-hundred hours long and you wonder if you could just jump in the TARDIS and get out of the day.

7:45 - Arrive at work. Login. Go drop daughter at camp (she's sleeping over tonight, no afternoon or morning stop tomorrow!) then back to the desk. I start by reviewing emails and compiling my to-do list, mostly on more follow-up work for the Digital Commonwealth.

9:00 - Deal with ecommerce questions about whether a payment went through for a patron or not. We are down a couple staff today so I actually get to pick up the phone and handle calls today. Also tentatively schedule an OverDrive library training for staff and patrons in September. I also finish a catch up post for CPD23.

12:00 - Lunch time! While still at my desk, I do decide to get off the work stuff and continue reading Ghost Story by Jim Butcher. Was glad to grab it from our Digital Catalog!

1:00 - Realizing that my staff person who usually does Digital Catalog support is out on vacation, I open the webmail account and answer questions.

2:30 - Email server goes down. Rebooted. Fifteen minutes later - still not working. The Apocalypse approaches.

3:30 - Apocalypse averted, email is restored! Time to sort through what I missed, which wasn't a lot.

4:00 - Time to log out and head home.

This was a quieter day for sure.

Waiting on Wednesday (Library Day in the Life, #3)

Not that there is much to wait for. It's just another day in the office, right?

7:45 - Arrive at the office. Quiet since no one is actually in my department yet. Login to applications and go drop my daughter off at camp.

8:30 - Check in with coworker about migration training coming up in August. We are getting ready to train our public libraries in Evergreen.

9:00 - Pull information off the printer about forming non-profits in the Commonwealth. Time to do some research on preparing articles of incorporation! This also reminds me that I have a to-do list from Monday's Digital Commonwealth meeting that I need to enter into my calendar(s). Three of them, this time.

11:15 - My staff person that usually submits the OverDrive orders is heading to Digipalooza this weekend so she wants to finish an order today. Updated my selector lists and created a new fiscal spreadsheet to track invoices between my staff's purchases and the billing manager's invoices. I also needed to update purchases for the consortial account with titles that were purchased by our OverDrive Advantage libraries.

Today marks the two-day Handheld Librarian Conference. I was going to attend this year, at the MA Library System offices, however the schedule did not work. I am going to follow what I can through the Twitter hashtag #hhlib.

1:15 - Selection lists are finally finished. Rush titles were given to coworker for order (we need Jim Butcher and Julia Quinn, dammit!). Back to adding code to the online catalog to get ready for the changes next week.

3:30 - Get reminders about Evergreen circulation training next week, which I will be assisting in. When I was working in the libraries, I did circulation on occasion, but spent most of my time in the backroom cataloging. I have to admit the nice thing about migrating to a new system is that we are all on the same learning curve.

4:00 - Logout and head for home!

Tuesday's Gone (aka Library Day in the Life, #2)

Today was a bit calmer than yesterday. I don't feel so frantic about email and my projects actually started to cooperate.

7:45 - Arrive at work with daughter in tow to be dropped off at camp bus stop down the street. Check to see that email backup was completed (success!) and login to applications. For me this includes two instances of III Millennium (one for each region), Outlook, Dreamweaver and my Chrome work browser.

8:10 - Pop out of the office to drop daughter off. Bus is on time!

8:20 - Back at my desk and realized that I have not logged into the helpdesk ticketing program. Login. It fails. Try again. No connection to database. The only way for me to connect is to reboot my laptop, which means logging out of everything I signed into and restarting. I really should remember to open this application first.

8:30 - Continue reading through emails, filing in folders and catching up on Google Reader.

9:15 - Discuss Drupal training session with my manager. We use Drupal for both our public and staff intranet websites, and I am always looking for more experience with it.

9:30 - Send off email to another library that has some catalog code I would like to use.

10:00 - Received email that our Open EPUB titles were available on our OverDrive Digital Catalog. I usually like to test the process so that I am prepared when helpdesk calls come in. Process was simple, although less-familiar computer users may struggle with where to download the file. Discussed with colleague about differences in process and began writing up a website post to announce and explain Open EPUB downloads. This will be cross-posted to the Facebook page.

I have been having issues with placing images in our Drupal nodes (pages) on our website for several weeks. First I discovered the HTML setting was wrong (Filtered versus Full), then I saw that images were not enabled for my content type (Drupal breaks down posts: blog, story, page, etc.) and then I had to play with the links to embed the image on the page. Success!

11:30 - My Open EPUB post is finished, along with the updates for the public about the changes to the placing holds in our catalogs next week.

11:40 - Talk with the project coordinator about the Evergreen Template Toolkit catalog. This is currently under development so we discussed what functionality we think is still missing. Troubleshoot some web page changes with my church's administrative assistant. (Yes, I work on that website too).

12:00 - Lunch time boosted by catching up on Google Reader and Google+. Also more email support for libraries with Nooks not connecting to wireless and staff site logins.

1:15 - Continue exploring edits for our public catalog as we change some of the functionality next week. Also research the procedure for becoming a 501c3 for the Digital Commonwealth.

2:10 - Head to the digital lab to create a new OPAC button and test functionality on our staging setup. More success! We should be good to go on Monday.

3:00 - Log into Content Reserve, the acquisition interface for OverDrive. I select romance, science fiction, fantasy and young adult titles for the collection.

4:00 - Head home!

Just Another Manic Monday (aka Library Day in the Life, #1)

I decided to take the plunge and participate in Library Day in the Life . This semi-annual event allows librarians and library workers to share their workday in the form of pictures, video, blog entries and tweets. Check out the wiki or follow along with the hashtag #libday7.

I work for a library consortium in Massachusetts. As the head of Access Services, a department of three people, I work on the public catalogs, OverDrive digital catalog, reference databases, digital repository, and our websites (public and staff intranet) and Facebook page.

I had been off last week on vacation, which in central MA with temperatures in the 90s meant trying to hide in the coolest spot of my house (it was the basement, and laundry got done!). I am also one of those people who tends to check work email if I am gone from the office for a period of time, so I was already prepared for the news that our academic libraries migration had been delayed from our projected July launch. My consortia is moving over to Evergreen, and with 150+ libraries to move, our split of academics from public libraries during migration is just not as advantageous as we believed.

So, arriving at work at 8AM I spoke quickly with my manager about the revised plan, but my morning was taken up by a meeting of the Digital Commonwealth. Being the first meeting of the new fiscal year, we had new Board members to introduce and review our mission and goals with along with project statuses to update. This year I am also serving as President. It is the first time I am leading a committee, much less one that has an impact in such a large way on digitization and access in the Commonwealth. While there is a lot of work to be done, I am really excited for the projects we have for the next fiscal year.

It was after 12:30 by the time the meeting was over. I spent the next hour cleaning up the emails that had gathered in my inbox over the previous week. There was a lot of hitting the delete button. I am signed up for mailing lists throughout the state and many of the emails do not need my personal attention. I did have reviews to approve through our LibraryThing for Libraries installation on the catalog, plus some requests for staff accounts on our intranet site. I checked in with both of my staff to follow up on projects: we had one new library add a digital collection to our repository, Digital Treasures. We are also getting ready to add Open EPUB to our OverDrive digital catalog.

The rest of my afternoon was spent doing webpage edits in the catalog, updating migration news and tips, along with working on our testing server for workarounds to link to the Massachusetts Virtual Catalog. Our system currently has three catalogs: one for each region and one to let people request from the opposite region. We are shutting down the Union Catalog next week so that cross-region transactions can clear before migrating the data. Once we come up on Evergreen, it will be one system - one catalog. Huzzah!

With kids in camp, my day ends at 4PM during the summer. I made a quick to-do list for Tuesday (more web edits, meeting follow ups, collection development for OverDrive) and was out the door. Not a bad day's work after a week's vacation!