Library Day in the Life - Round 6. Monday

Monday


8.15-8.55
Get in to work at about 8.15 and it's like walking into an icebox. The heating failed last Friday and for some reason I thought that it might be fixed by now...but no. The campus librarian is working late tonight so I grab the thermometer, pop it on the enquiry desk while I check my emails to see if there's any update on the situation. There's an email: it should be fixed by lunchtime apparently, so no need to keep my line manager's line manager in the loop.

At 9am I have a group of first year English students so before setting up the room I do a quick read through of the session plan which has been put together by the faculty librarian and ensure I'm clear with what I'm showing the students. It's only a 40 minute session so no time for hands on, unfortunately.

9.45
The small group (9 students) were quiet but seemed to be engaged with what I was showing them. A little hard work but I put that down to it being Monday morning and freezing cold. I'm on the desk from 11-1pm so I'm going to use the next block of time to list my to-do tasks for the week and get started on them.

Tomorrow afternoon is the Staff Development Hour (SDH) Question Time event. The Library Senior Management Team are coming to my campus to answer questions in a Question Time-style event. I've asked those people attending to submit questions to me (the Chair) if they wish and have had some interesting ones come through. I've rephrased some of them and printed them off so I know what I'm asking tomorrow. I've also got evalutation forms ready for attendees to fill in.

One of my responsibilities is to co-ordinate the SDH at this campus, which involves thinking of sessions to run, organising them and evaluating them afterwards. One of the questions someone asked was along the lines of 'how do we find time to attend SDH sessions when our teams are getting smaller and smaller?' I wonder what the answer to that one will be...

11am-1pm
A 2 hour stint on the Enquiry Desk ended up being fairly busy. There were straight-forward queries relating to missing items, sorting out a claims returned problem where a group of students switched all their library books around and now two are overdue etc, filling up printer paper and clearing misfeeds - you know, all the things I trained for in library school.

I spent the lulls writing up our team planning document. The library staff based at my campus met last week to review the year just gone and set objectives for the coming one. Some of the points were typed up in the meeting, then I went through the flipchart sheets we'd created that day to see if I'd missed anything. Today I've continued to rephrase and summarise the points in anticipation of a meeting with the Senior Management Team in a couple of weeks time where we will go through the document together.

I flicked through the BUFVC Viewfinder magazine to look at the articles and order new DVDs to replace VHS copies in our library (cue disproportionate joy at discovering that the VHS copy of A Zed and Two Noughts can now be withdrawn!) and filled out a travel form for a train ticket to Exeter next week for a CILIP South West UC+R meeting.

Lunch now and then the visit from a local school has been postponed so I have ended up with a clear afternoon - very unusual and much appreciated.

2pm-5pm
I'm quite bad about taking a full lunch break - my new year's resolution to leave the building at lunchtime has not been kept yet - but after some soup (the library is still frrrrreezing) I'm back at my desk to check new emails and continue my tasks.

I've finished writing up the notes from our team planning meeting and have sent an invite to my manager to meet up on Friday to review it and look at objectives for the coming year.

Other tasks:

• One of the people I line manage came in to ask about the Return to Work forms we fill in when there is staff sickness.
• I spoke to a colleague on another campus about organising some manual handling training for our staff now that we have RFID self-service machines installed
• I did a little bit of filing, mostly because I was looking for something in that tray and so ended up doing the rest of it
• I prepared some paperwork for a meeting with a library rep tomorrow. In preparation for the closure of our campus in 2012 and also because of the Library Service's push to 'go digital' with journals, we have asked our library reps (each course has a nominated rep that liaises with the library) to look through the list of active subs and deadruns and consider whether they need to keep them indefinitely. The combination of the 'go digital' drive plus fitting our library into another one with not much extra space has meant some challenging conversations have been taking place.The meeting tomorrow will involve me going through lists of journals titles with the rep and querying what needs to be kept in print. 

This was not a typical day in the sense that it was pretty calm and controlled. Usually, crises occur here and there, requiring immediate attention. There are also more meetings. But I'm not complaining. It was a good day.