A Day in the Life Redux: Director Style

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I recently had an interesting conversation with a colleague. The conversation started with me giving her an update about the flood we had in the basement of the library. Yes, you read that correctly: flood in the library's basement. Among other things you'd expect in a library basement, do you want to guess where our archives is located? You got it: the basement.

When I first learned about the flood (thank the deity of your choice that there were some students working in a basement group study area, otherwise we might not have noticed for a while), I ran - a full out sprint - to get down there. You see, the holdings of the archives were mostly dumped in that basement room, with very little organization and lots of cardboard boxes sitting on the floor. I've been slowly making progress since I started working here, trying to figure out what the heck is even in there and to get things up off the floor. So when I heard about the flood, my heart sank. I needed to get things up off the floor, no matter where, immediately. (Before you judge me for having things on the floor of an archives located in the basement, please remember I'm still in my first 6 months of being a library director. I've got a bazillion other hats to wear, so I've only been able to devote about 8-10 hours to working in the archives so far.) To make it all humorously worse, I was wearing a skirt and a cream colored shirt during all this physical and wet labor.

Flash forward and things have turned out for the best. Those students who first noticed the water helped me move the boxes. Our maintenance department came, in force and almost immediately, to help us stem the flood. And when I checked things yesterday, I was pleased to find my suspicions confirmed: the only items we really lost were cardboard boxes. Almost nothing that had been in the boxes even got damp, and there was no permanent damage.

After I was done updating my colleague about the flood and subsequent events, she joked in response: "I'll bet you never thought you'd be doing this as a library director."

I laughed, but not because I didn't expect it. Quite the opposite, really. Okay, no, I might not have expected to be dealing with a flooding basement, but I've always known that being a library director at a small library is all about doing whatever needs to be done. Cleaning up when a toilet overflows, and shoveling snow, and toting and hauling wet boxes are all as much a part of my job as writing grant applications and information literacy instruction and marketing. If something needs doing, and I'm the only one around who can do it, then it qualifies as "the director's job."

To expand this point, anything can be part of a librarian's job. You may or may not have the "and other duties as required" clause in your job description, but it's pretty much always implied. Actually, those "other duties" are a big part of why I love this profession. How about you?


(I know there's not an official Library Day in the Life Project going on this summer, but I still tagged it that way.)

My Day in Pictures, Library Day in the Life Round #8

Here are some highlights from my day yesterday:

As per usual, I started the day feeling jealous of my cat. I love my job, but I'd also love to sleep in more frequently.

Holly Golightly, aka HRH Princess Holly Butt

Once I arrived at work, I found the place empty. This is typical for early mornings at this time in the semester.

First floor, Reference Area (near my office)

I checked my email, did a few random things, and then it was time for a series of student meetings. I'm teaching a First Year Seminar (think freshmen writing on steroids), and I'm meeting with each student individually to go over their first papers.

The Assignment Sheet

Next up was lunch. I typically get out of the library, but I try to eat in the staff room at least once a week and Monday seemed as good a day as any.

Kashi Pita Crisps, Annie's P'sghetti Loops with Soy Meatballs, Clementine Orange, and Water. Yum.

After lunch I checked my social networks, ended up posting and commenting on a couple of things on Google+. It was a combination of professional conversation and pure fun.

Google+ Screen Shot

Once I finished that, I walked around campus, for over an hour, putting up posters to announce my library's new Twitter and Facebook accounts. This was my favorite part of the day, mostly because of the sights I saw along the way.

Roy, One of the Canine Members of the Communication Department

A Feral (?) Cat Near the English House

A Poster "in situ"

After I got back to my office, I spent the rest of the day working on my application materials for Library Leadership Ohio. (I finished them today. Yay!)

Library Leadership Ohio 2012

Not exactly a typical day, but as close to typical as I ever get. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

In case you're unfamiliar with the project, here's some more information about the Library Day in Life Project. Also, here's what I wrote for the last round.

A Day in This Librarian’s Life, or "If It’s 10 O’clock, This Must Be an Assessment Meeting"

Here it is: my contribution to Library Day in the Life. From the website: “The Library Day in the Life Project is a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.” 

I took notes as I went through my day since I knew I wouldn’t remember little details. I was also hoping that, at the end of the day, I’d be able to look through my notes and see common themes or threads. I was right. A couple of themes did emerge. First, I work on a lot of different projects during the course of a normal day. Understandable, since I’m an academic librarian and summer is when I get my big projects done. It’s all with the same end goal, though, so I make it work. Second, there was fodder for at least three more blog posts within my notes. Many of these projects are crying out for further explanation, but you’re going to have to wait.

MORNING

This day began the same way almost every day this summer has. I’ve developed a “first thing in the morning” routine that includes mundane but necessary activities like dropping my computer bag off in my office, bringing my lunch up to the refrigerator in the staff room, and chatting with any colleagues that cross my path. Summer mornings are a lot more leisurely because I arrive at 8 am, but the library doors don’t open until 9.

Before going back to my office, I gathered materials for a few ongoing projects. I’m responsible for a monthly-during-the-academic-year newsletter that highlights new acquisitions and book industry news, so I scanned the new books shelf for items that I want to highlight in the August issue. I’m also in the middle of weeding our fiction section – a collection that has needed weeding for years – so I gathered some likely candidates for deacquisitioning and headed back to my office.

Next up on my morning agenda was checking email. This can be such a time vampire if I’m not careful, but I’ve got decent systems in place and was able to work my way through the overnight accumulation pretty easily. I had a lot of typical emails – ongoing listserv conversations, computer network problems that were announced and then resolved, a forwarded joke from a family member – but there was a fun one in the mix. Another member of the GNLIB (Graphic Novels in Libraries) listserv wanted advice about developing a core collection of titles. This was a fun request, so I answered it right away.

After finishing with email, I worked on the newsletter. I added the new books I’d grabbed, then a link to an obituary, and finally links to and information about some recent book award announcements. Then, with a simple switch of programs, I worked my way through the stack of books I brought from the fiction collection. I’ve already discussed my collection development philosophy, but I think the actual process I follow in making decisions about what to add and what to remove is worthy of its own blog post – so stay tuned.

After that, I had to run to back to back meetings. I’m in the midst of gathering information from everyone on staff to help me draft up an assessment plan for the whole library. Wow is this a convoluted piece of work, and it is taking up a lot of my time and energy this summer. (More on this one in a later post as well.)

Finally, it was time for lunch. Yum.

AFTERNOON

After lunch, I worked through more emails. If an email is going to take less than 2 minutes to handle, I try to do it right away – that’s the stuff I do in the morning. Anything that will take longer, I leave for later. I spent the next hour working my way through some of the more complex questions/requests/situations that had arrived via email over the last week or so. Email, email, email. It gets annoying, but it’s how we communicate most things on my campus.

Then I had another meeting about the assessment plan – this time with our archivist. I had anticipated 30 minutes, but we went for an hour. If there’s one thing I wish someone had warned me about while I was in graduate school, it’s the way meetings can take up so much of my time. My job gets in the way of my job. Fortunately, though, the meetings I had today were all productive.

I spent the last couple of hours of my day between reading and responding to blog posts, going through the notes I’d gathered in my meetings, and other assorted activities. I had an impromptu meeting with a newer colleague – he wanted to show me his first official office decoration. I talked to a faculty member who dropped by the library. Lots of little things added up, including a few things getting crossed of my To Do list, and then it was time to head home.

EVENING

However, this wasn’t a typical heading home. It was a “Go out for a drink with colleagues” heading home. One of the nice things about working at this college is that more than 50% of the faculty and professional staff (the weird not-faculty-but-not-regular-staff category into which librarians fall) have started in the last 5 years, and a lot of us have become friends. We try to meet up, for drinks usually, on a regular basis. It was a nice way to end the day.