Library Day in the Life, Round 7

Last week I participated in the 7th round of Library Day in the Life. I participated by tweeting my daily activities and blogging the reference questions I received during my reference shifts. Here is a summary of a week in my life as a librarian.

I am a reference/instruction librarian at a small, public university in southwest Virginia. We are 4 weeks away from the start of the Fall semester. Instruction classes and reference questions have been in short supply this summer, and this is completely to be expected. This is my first summer as a professional librarian, but I know from speaking to more seasoned librarians that summers for academic librarians are for catch up and for planning for the coming academic year. That is what I have spent most of my summer doing. Here is my week.

Monday, July 25, 2011
Today I work the 1:00 - 10:00 p.m. shift. I start everyday off by checking and responding to any necessary email. After that I spent most of my time from 1:00 - 4:45 p.m. working on my annual report. This is the first annual report I have had to write, and I am a little nervous about it. The annual report is just a summary of everything that I have done in the past year, with an emphasis on the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the fiscal year. I set 5 goals for myself. This was a rookie librarian  mistake. This report is going to take me forever to write! This is a lesson to heed. Set no more than 3 goals for yourself. Apart from working on my annual report, our new instruction librarian started today, and we are sharing an office. I took many breaks during my report writing to answer some of the different questions she had about the library and how we do things here. At 4:45 p.m., I took supper and then reported to the reference desk at 6:00 p.m. for my 4 hour shift. It was a very slow night. I only received 7 questions and they all rated below a 3 on the READ scale. I spent my downtime at the desk working on blogs and reading.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011
I am again working the 1:00 - 10:00 p.. shift. (It is very unusual to be working multiple nights during a week at our library. However, we have several people out on vacation this week, and I volunteered to do this. Do not think it is going unrewarded. I am receiving 2 comp days next month for my pains.) After checking email first thing, I again spent most of the time between 1:00 - 4:45 p.m. working on my annual report. I also took a break during that time to give our new instruction librarian (and my new office mate) a tour of the supply closets in the library, and again I fielded many of her questions about librarian life here at our library. I also took a break to go on a walk over to the Starbucks on campus. Librarians cannot run on books alone. ;) At 4:45 p.m., I took supper and then reported to the reference desk at 6:00 p.m. for my 4 hour shift. It was another slow night at the reference desk. This night only yielded 4 questions. At least one of them was a "real" reference question. I spent my downtime at the desk reading and checking my Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Today I worked from 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. I started my day off at a planning meeting for the library's staff picnic. The library is holding the picnic on August 19, at a local park. This meeting lasted about 30 minutes. After the meeting I spent the 30 minutes before my 10:00 a.m. reference desk shift checking email. At 10:00 a.m., I was at the reference desk desk for the first of my 3 hours on the desk. There were no questions during that shift. I spent the downtime during this shift on Facebook. After my reference desk shift, I returned to my office to continue working on my annual report. At 1:00 p.m. I took lunch, and at 2:00 p.m. I returned to my office to finish up the annual report. I finished my annual report right before my 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. reference desk shift. At 4:00 p.m. I reported to the reference desk for my shift. While I was on the desk, the instruction coordinator came out to speak with me about the online modules we had been working on. She wanted me to evaluate one of our colleagues online APA modules (on in-text citations) that she felt was a little too confusing. I told her that I would report to her on Thursday about it after I finished proofreading my annual report. I spent my downtime at the desk going over this module and taking notes on it. I did receive 6 questions while at the desk, with 5 of the questions being from the same patron who was trying to locate various books in the collection.

Thursday, July 28, 2011
Today was my final 1:00 - 10:00 p.m. shift until the Fall semester begins. When I arrived at 1:00 p.m., I began by checking my email and then I proofread my annual report. After making the necessary changes to my annual report, I emailed it (along with all 24 appendices) to the coordinator of reference services. Around 2:45 p.m., I finished reviewing the online module that the instruction coordinator had asked me to go over and I had a meeting with her about my thoughts on it. During that meeting she asked me to redo the APA in-text citation module and make the changes we had discussed. I need to make 3 Jing videos for this module so I returned to my office to start working on the scripts for these videos. At 4:45 p.m., I took supper and then reported to the reference desk at 6:00 p.m. for my 4 hour shift. I spent the downtime at the desk working on the scripts for my Jing videos along with a Prezi that I would be using in one of the videos. I received 6 questions on the desk, and all of them were from the same person. She was attending a conference at the university and needed help finding articles for a research topic she was pursuing. I spent about an hour and a half helping her locate articles and using the microfilm machines.

Friday, July 29, 2011
Today I worked from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. I started my day as I do most days, checking and responding to emails. My first reference desk shift of the day was at 10:00 a.m. It was a shift that saw no questions. I spent the shift tweaking my scripts and Prezi for the Jing videos that I would be creating later in the day. At 11:00 a.m. I began working on the first Jing video. This was the video that I would be utilizing a Prezi in. I had never used Prezi with Jing before and I had a little trouble getting it to work. Honestly I spent an entire hour just trying to get the screen size right and figuring out how to advance the presentation like I wanted to. It was a very frustrating start. So without a single second of usable video, I went to lunch at noon. At 1:00 p.m. I was back at the reference desk. This shift again saw no questions, and I spent it browsing Facebook, trying to relaxing before tackling my Jing videos once again. When my shift was over at 2:00 p.m., I returned to my office determined to conquer these videos. And conquer I did. I was able to create video #1 on the first try (after working on it for an hour before). The other 2 videos on took me 2 attempts each to complete. I loaded the videos into our CMS Desire2Learn, and reported to the instruction coordinator that I had completed and uploaded the videos. I returned to my office to begin working on the activities for the module. At 4:00 p.m., I was once again at the reference desk. I received 2 questions during that shift, one being a very complicated scanner question that had to do with putting a PDF through OCR. During the downtime of that shift I worked on the activities for the APA in-text citation module.

I did not work on Saturday and the library was closed on Sunday, so that is a week in my library life. I really enjoy working on this project. I always amazes me how much I actually do in a week. And to think that I get to do it all over again on Monday. Joy, joy. ;)

Reference Questions. week of 7/25/2011

I'm working 3 nights this week. It should be crazy fun.

7/25/2011 (4 hours at the ref desk)

1. Wanted to know how to get to the 4th and 5th floors
2. Wanted to know where to check out books
3. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
4. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
5. Looking for the DSM-IV-TR
6. (Email) Professor wanted to know if we were going to have access to the database PsycTESTS in the Fall. I emailed the collection management librarian and head of tech services to find out.
7. Wanted to know how to turn off double sided printing 

7/26/2011 (4 hours at the ref desk)

1. Wanted to borrow a glue stick
2. Student wanted to know why it was costing her so much to print per page. She was trying to print to the color printer and that was why. She said she was logged in as herself but come to find out she was logged in as lib-public. That's why the pay for print printer/color printer was her only option. Odd.
3. Student had a question about MLA in-text citations. She wanted to know if she needed to include line numbers in her in-text citations. I told her no, just the author's name and page numbers.
4. Student was having trouble printing from D2L. He was using Chrome and trying to print PDFs and it just wasn't printing. I had him switch to Firefox.

7/27/2011 (3 hours at the ref desk)

1. Patron was looking for a book called Chipmunk Loves Squirrel. We did not have it.
2. Patron was looking for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
3. Patron was looking for Through the Looking Glass
4. Patron was looking for Gravity's Rainbow
5. Helped a patron find a book in the stacks
6. Wanted to borrow a pen

7/28/2011 (4 hours at the desk)

1. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
2. Needed help using the scanner
3. Needed help turning off double sided printing
4. Needed help finding articles on integrating computer literacy into classroom instruction. We searched the education databases for about 40 minutes and were only able to find a very limited number of articles. We tried several different combinations of search terms. She did find some ERIC docs that were helpful. They had to be viewed on microfiche so after we finished searching the databases I took her up to the 4th floor, helped her find the microfiche, showed her how to use the microfiche machines and showed her how to scan the microfiche into pdfs. (This was my first advanced reference question of the summer!)
5. Needed help with the microfiche machine
6. Needed help with the microfiche machine

7/29/2011 (3 hours at the desk)

1. Wanted to know how to print in color
2. Student needed to convert a pdf into a Word doc. I helped her put the pdf through OCR and then save it as a Word doc.
3. Needed to put money on his RU Express account

#LibDay7

This time around I decided to officially participate in the Library Day in the Life project. I signed up and everything. ;) For those of you who don't know. the Library Day in the Life project is a semi-annual even coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day fame. Twice a year, librarians, library staff and library students from all over the world share a day (or a week) in their life through blogs posts, videos, pictures and Twitter posts. I participated during the last round (in January) through my blog and Twitter accounts, but I did not sign up for it. This time I decided to sign up and make it official. During this round (#7) I will be again participating through my Twitter and blog accounts. I will tweet my activities daily and at the end of the week I will post a summary blog recounting my week. ¡Viva la bibliotecaria!

cpd23: Google Calendar

In my opinion, Google Calendar is one of the best things that Google does. I started using Google Calendar in grad school, and I really do not know what I did without. I love the fact the that you can share calendars with friends and colleagues, but my favorite thing that you can do with it is sync my Google Calendar with my iPod Touch and iPad. That way I have my work Outlook Calendar and my personal Google Calendar all together in one place. It is pure genius. Also lots of places are using Google Calendars. For example, the library I work at uses Google Calendar to post the libraries hours, etc. on the library's home page. It's also easy to post Google Calendars in blogs or on websites.

cpd23: Real-life Networks

It dawned on me over the weekend that I did not post a blog about the real-life or in-person networks I am apart of for Thing 7. You will have to excuse me, I spent most of last week working on my annual report. This is the first one I have had to write, and well it is consuming a lot more time than I anticipated.

I am a member of the America Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the New Members Round Table (NMRT), and the Virginia Library Association. Unfortunately, I have yet to attend one of their conferences. This is something I hope to rectify in the near future. (I'm planning on attending the VLA conference this October.) I am a former member of the North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) and I did have the opportunity to attend one of their bi-annual conferences. In my opinion, in-person networking is more rewarding than online networking. I also had the opportunity of attending the 2009 conference of the American Association of School Library (AASL). I was there volunteering, helping out the professor that I was a graduate assistant for. Even though I was not going into school libraries, I found the conference experience to be most helpful. I was able to meet a lot of wonderful people and I felt I learned a great deal about librarianship during the week of the conference. I would love the opportunity to volunteer at a national conference again. It is very informative to see what goes on behind the scenes.

I am also involved in the Library Exchange Observation (LEO) program. LEO is a group of instruction librarians from the New River Valley and Roanoke Valley area of Virginia. We meet twice a year for mini conferences, where we exchange ideas about instruction, offer feedback and discuss what works and what doesn't in our instruction classes. We also have the opportunity to observe other instruction librarians who are members of LEO. I had two librarians observe me during the Spring 2011 semester and I found their feedback on my classes to be invaluable. I hope to do some observing of my own during the Fall 2011 semester.

Reference Questions, week of 7/18/2011

7/19/2011 (2 hours at the desk)

1. Needed to check his email; I gave him a public login
2. Wanted to know how to print from a public account
3. Student was having trouble logging into a computer with her username and password. I suggested she try another computer and if that didn't work to use the public login. I also told her to contact IT to see if they can fix whatever is wrong with her login.
4. Looking for the bathroom
5. Needed a public login
6. (Phone) Wanted to know if we had a database that could be used to look up legal cases. YES! Lexis Nexis!
7. Patron was being very impatient with the fact that the computers were taking a long time to boot up. I had him move to another computer.
8. Student was looking for some books on level 4 and 5 and wanted me to point her in the right direction. I got her a map and showed her approximately where her books would be.
9. Wanted to know if you can print from the computers with scanners

7/20/2011 (4 hours at the desk)

1. Wanted to know where to go to put money on her printing account. Black box beside the vending machines.
2.  Wanted to know how to print a file that is on his laptop. I suggested he email it to himself and then login to one of the PCs in here and print it that way.
3. Was looking for the cafe he was told is in the library. It's not open in the Summer.
4. Faculty member wanted me to make copies for her, she had no money she just wanted copies. I told her I couldn't do that.
5. Needed help with the copier
6. Patron needed to print something. I told him to get a public login and he could print to the front desk using that.
7. Wanted to borrow a pen
8. Needed help printing her schedule

7/21/2011 (2 hours at the desk)

1. Conference goer needed help scanning a document and printing out 30 copies of it
2. Conference goer needed a public login
3. Student was having trouble printing; he didn't have enough money on his printing account

7/22/2011 (2 hours at the desk)

1. GSS wanted to know how to print in color
2. GSS needed to print, but her login wasn't working. I gave her a public login and explained to her how she could print and pay for it at the front desk
3. Printer was out of paper. Turns out the student was trying to print something bigger than 8-1/2x11 so the printer was giving her an out of paper error message. Had her change the size of the document and it printed no problem
4. Looking for the book Get Shorty

cpd23: Online Networks

I participate in several online networks. I use these to connect with other librarians in my field and in other fields and I also use them to stay up on current event and trends in librarianship. I have already written about many of the networks that I participate in, but I'll recount them yet again for the sake of this week's topic.

First off I have a LinkedIn account. I admit that I have not been as active on this site as I could have been. I do try to keep it updated, but I am not currently looking for a job, so its usefulness is lost on me.

I love the network that my Twitter account let's me participate in. Twitter is a great place to connect with other librarians. We have a very large showing in the Twitterverse. I love it because I can ask a question and in no time I have several replies from librarians in the know. It's a great place to get feedback on projects or ideas you're floating around.

Another great online network I'm apart of is the listservs I follow. I follow the ili-listserv, which is for ACRL's instruction section. This is a great place to share information and connect with other instruction librarians. I also follow the ALA InfoLit listserv and the ALA LITA listserv. All three of these listservs create a great network that can be very useful for professional development and furthering your career.

I also have an account on ALA Connect. This is something that I have rarely used and really need to look at again. I have no one in my network on this account, and I really need to work on it some. As a matter of fact, I found out today that I never updated that account after I got my current job. I really need to do better with that. I wonder if there's an app for it. That would help me keep it up-to-date. :) This is something I will be working on this week.

Reference Questions, week of 7/11/2011

The Summer continues on the reference desk. Here are this week's questions:

7/11/2011(2 hours on the desk)

1. Wanted to know how to print in color
2. Wanted to know where the color print out would print to
3. GSS looking for a bathroom
4. GSS was trying to print, but the printer she was printing to was reporting a paper jam via the computer; checked the printer and it was not having a paper jam so I told her to go ahead and print to that printer, and it worked
5. GSS wanted to borrow some white out
6. GSS student wanted to know how to pay for printing
7. GSS needed to print but didn't know their username or password
8. Looking for the play Stop Kiss

7/12/2011 (4 hours on the desk)

1. GSS looking for his lost book and notebook

7/13/2011 (3 hours on the desk)

1. Had hour long meeting this morning with a grad student about APA; had a followup questions from her when I got on the desk at noon.
2. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
3. Wanted to know if the Walker computer labs were open in the summer; yes!
4. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
5. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
6. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
7. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
8. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping

7/14/2011 (1 hour on the desk)

1. Wanted to know how to add money to her printing account

Reference Weeding Complete!

My portion of the reference weeding is now complete. I evaluated 5 disciplines for a grand total of 981 items. The disciplines I evaluated were accounting, finance and business law (AFBL), dance and theater (DATH), internet technology (ITEC), nursing (NURS) and philosophy and religion (PHRE). Out of the 981 items that I was responsible for, I moved 670 (68.3%) to the main collection. I left 53 (5.4%) in the reference collection. I removed 233 (23.8%) items from the collection entirely. Seventeen (1.7%) items were already withdrawn, 6 (0.6%) were sent to special collections, 1 (0.1%) was in periodicals not reference, and 1 (0.1%) was no where to be found.

This completes my weeding, for now. We've been told that from now on this will be an ongoing process. I guess we'll see.

PHRE Weeding

I have finished evaluating the philosophy and religion (PHRE) section of the reference collection, and with this section complete, I have finished my part of the reference weeding project. Currency is not as vital to this discipline as it was with some of the other disciplines I looked at. However, I did a fair amount of weeding because we had several of these items as e-books. I also moved some of the books to special collections. We were told to be on the lookout for anything that was published before 1909, and anything that was related to Appalachia. These items were to be moved to special collections. The archivist is in the process of creating an Appalachian section in special collections because we have a Appalachian studies program here at the university. He wanted to books published before 1909, just because they are old. The oldest book I found was from 1898.

Here are the stats for the PHRE section. There were 211 books in this section. I sent 156 (73.9%) of those books to the main collection. I kept 6 (2.8%) of the books in the reference collection. Six (2.8%) of these books were sent to special collections. I removed 43 (20.5%) books from the collection.

That completes my portion of the reference weeding project, and I finished it well in advance of the August 1 deadline. Yay me! :)

My First Concurrent Session!

Back in May, I submitted (along with 2 other NC library friends) a proposal to the third annual VLACRL Conference-Within-a-Conference, "Academic Libraries: Adding Value in a Time of Change." It's being held during the 2011 Virginia Library Association Conference in Portsmouth, VA. The conference is being held on October 27-28. Our session is schedule for 1:15-2:00 p.m., on Friday, October 28, in the Jefferson room of the Renaissance Hotel. They only accepted 12 sessions out of the 34 submission they received. To say I am excited is an understatement!

The proposal we submitted was entitled Free Tech Tools for Better Library Instruction. During this session we will be covering Prezi, Jing, Bubbl.us, Poll Everywhere, Lino It and Google Forms. Here is the abstract we wrote for it: During these times of cutbacks, instruction librarians are looking to provide dynamic instruction with no budget. Several free tools exist that can add value to our instruction classes. This session will look at some of these free tools and show how they can be used to enhance instruction.

Now the real fun begins. We get to plan the session! Wish us luck! :)

cpd23: Reflection Week

This week is for reflection on what we've learned over the past four weeks and how it will help our help us grow in our careers. This venture has been very helpful for me already. It has helped me blog more consistently, and it forced me to reassess the layout and structure of my blog. I am very happy with the changes I have made to it thus far. I feel it is a much better representation of me than it was. Branding yourself is key! That's what we learned in week 2 right? I feel more dedicated to participating in the library community, and I can only imagine that this will grow as each week passes in this course. I am excited about the coming weeks.

Reference Questions for the week of 7/4/2011

I've went to a week of format since the questions have become so few.

7/6/2011

1. Looking for books by Carl Hiaasen
2. Looking for the books Basket Case and Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen

7/7/2011

1. GSS wanted to know where she could print
2. GSS wanted to know where she could print
3. Wanted to know when applications had to be in for admission for the Fall semester; ASAP
4. Wanted to know how to use the scanner to create a PDF of his transcript
5. Public patron didn't have a printer installed on his computer
6. Public patron didn't have a printer installed on his computer
7. GSS wanted to know where to check out books

7/8/2011

1. A grad student I've been helping over the summer with APA had a few more questions, so I spent a little while helping her out
2. Wanted to know where his print out would go
3. Same grad student from #1 had a few more questions about APA

Summertime is slow time here at the reference desk. Things pick up when the GS students come in which is always a welcome change.

cpd23: Staying Connected

There is so much information out there that can be useful for librarians. The magnitude of it can be overwhelming. I, of course, read all of the important publications, American Libraries, Library Journal, C&R News, etc. I also use my RSS feed and Twitter to stay current. This week's cpd assignment is to begin to use (if you are not already) an RSS feed and Twitter. I've been using Twitter for 3 years, as I said in a previous blog, and I've been using an RSS feed for nearly a year.

On Twitter, I am currently following 380 accounts. That is a lot to keep up with. I organize my Twitter feed by using the list feature that they provide. I have lists for:

• Librarians
• UNCG friends
• News
• Job feeds
• Work
• Star Wars
• Brands
• Weather
• Music
• Football
• Literature
• Food
• ASC friends

And the list goes on and on. I believe I have about 20 lists at this point. I use the lists to keep up with what I think is important. If I do not have time to go through all of my tweets, I pick a list and go through it. It saves me time and separates the important tweets (@cpd23) from the unimportant tweets (@ew).

In a previous blog I listed all the "library" blogs that I follow in my RSS feed. In addition to those I also follow some blogs my friends write, and the blogs of my favorite theater company the American Shakespeare Center. The RSS feed is a valuable tool. I use the one that is in my Firefox browser, and every morning when I get to work I check it and see what is going on out in the blogospere.

Another way I stay connected is through the ili-l listserv. This listserv is sponsored by ACRL's instruction section, and is a great way to stay connect to other instruction librarians. People offer ideas, ask questions and look for feedback through the listserv. I've been following this listserv since I started my current job, and I have found many of the posts useful. You can subscribe to it by going to this website. I also added the ALA InfoLit listserv and the ALA LITA listserv to my subscriptions today.

I have never used Pushnote. So I signed up for it, and it searched my Facebook and Twitter accounts to see if any of my friends use it. I was surprised to discover that no one I am connected with uses it. I am not sure how useful this tool will be for me. I have yet to run across a site that has comments. I will continue to experiment with it, but I fail to see how this can be useful for me personally.