#libday8 - days four and five

Nothing to do with Librarian DITL... except this was
an amazing savoury danish I ate with gusto in the
Town Mill Bakery in Lyme Regis the Saturday before
Librarian DITL. It was my way of preparing. (And Sean
Hughes was in there! I know!) @tixylix

The end of my week for Library Day in the Life project, Thursday and Friday were spent doing the following things:

• doing a return to work discussion with one of the people I line manage. He had been off sick the day before and dragged himself in on thursday, worrying that work would pile up. After reassuring him that his health was more important than work that could easily be covered, he went home. I organised cover for his desk slots that day and for the following day, in case he didn't come in. 
• I finished going through one section of a load of spreadsheets, which gave me a rough estimate of the additional stock which will need to be moved to the large campus this summer. An extra 25% will either have to be duplicated or moved. 
• I presented my summary of the stock and workload situation in relation to the planned 2012 moves at the relocation meeting (the one I had been preparing for all week) and was thanked for its comprehensiveness - phew! I was pleased that I was able to highlight some of the concerns about the move and useful information was shared too.
• I received some book requests from one of our library reps (academic colleagues who act as a liaison between their programme team and the library), which I then passed on to our acquisition staff 
• I corresponded by email with a colleague about circulating my report on peer-assisted learning (PAL)
• Regrettably cancelled my place on a staff development hour session on the University's masterplan due to a rescheduled department committee meeting
• I checked out some random boxes of DVDs and videos in the main office to work out what on earth they were
• I spent a total of 3 and a half hours on the Enquiry Desk (in addition to the hour on the Service Desk) dealing with enquiries about joining SCONUL, searching for specific reading list material and other bits and pieces.

Oh yeah and I noted that the hour I did on the Service Desk (the desk staffed by Library Assistants, dealing with the self-service queries and handing over reservations or interlibrary loans) to cover my colleague who was off sick, was actually much more interesting and busy than a typical Enquiry Desk slot, at which I normally sit. Students often come to the Service desk first and on my shift they asked a range of questions. It was quite refreshing to be busy and actually feel helpful. Not that working on the Enquiry Desk makes me feel unhelpful, it's just that you get far fewer requests for help. 

In our recent annual planning review, some staff felt that they had lost that informal contact with students now that we have self-service machines and that they missed this interaction. I did empathise with this at the time but somehow working on the Service Desk for that one hour highlighted that those of us working on the Enquiry Desk are actually further down that path than our Library Assistant colleagues because students seem more and more reluctant to ask Enquiry Desk staff for help without Service Desk staff directing them to us. It's sad, but true. Before I get into the realm of surmising why this is, I'll stop and pick this up another time. 

And so ended another library day (or week, really) in the life. It's never 'typical' because there never is a typical week in my work or in many other librarians'. But that's probably why lots of us like it so much.