Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Library Day in the Life

This is round 7 of the Library Day in the Life project; check out this page to find links to all kinds of library staff and students doing all kinds of work.

Naturally, this particular week, or at least the first few days of it, has been been rather less eventful than usual - no meetings, no presentations, no workshops, no driving out to branches.  It's been great for catching up on email, planning, and meeting with staff - but that kind of stuff is hell o' boring to write (and read) about.

Remember, I don't work directly with the public anymore - so while I like to think of my office as the Nerve Center of Youth Services at LAPL (yeah, baby!), it's not like I have all these fabulous anecdotes to toss around at cocktail parties or in blog posts anymore.  Sigh.  Let's just say my butt and my office chair are very well acquainted, as most of my work happens at my desk.

Here is Monday, July 25. Don't say I didn't warn you:


  • Arrive at work at 8:30.
  • Pick up the Building Manager cell phone (Principle Librarians at Central Library take turns being in charge each day; mostly, this means being the person called when an irate patron demands to speak to "the person in charge!")
  • Talk with Dora (Youth Services Librarian III) about the YA Librarians' Information Meeting (all YA librarians at each of our 72 branches and Central come together one morning every 3 months; my office coordinates the content of the meeting - training, guest speakers, updates, etc)
  • Phone call with Beyond the Bell staffer about how to partner up to serve kids in foster care
  • Building Manager cell phone rings, just after we open at 10 am.  Patron is upset that she isn't allowed to bring in her wheelie cart heaped with loose clothes and food.  Security officer and I let her store it in a locked storage area while she uses library; ask her to put clothing/food in bags/containers for next time.
  • Go over various items with the new Teen'Scape Dept  Senior, one of two new employees who transferred to Youth Services last week.  (these days, we don't hire anyone; we just move 'em around)
  • Phone call (one of many) with TrueFlix rep - they let us offer BookFlix for free, but are giving us the hard sell for TrueFlix.
  • Read and answered numerous emails from our children's and YA librarians, administrative staff, organizations, etc etc.
  • Wrote draft of YA Librarians' Info Meeting agenda
  • Set up a meeting between the new Teen'Scape Senior, our new Youth Services Senior, and the Cataloging Dept (because we all work closely together, plus those Cataloging folks are AWEsome!)
  • Ate lunch at my desk while trying in vain to catch up on issues of Booklist, Kirkus, PW, SLJ, LJ...yeah, see what I mean?
  • Set up a time with a branch children's librarian to guide him through an orientation with his two newest GAB volunteer readers.  We try to really nurture our GAB readers, so that first orientation is so important in setting the mood, answering their questions, and showing how they will be supported in all their volunteer duties.
  • Completed part 1 of a mandatory (and truly deadly dull) City Ethics online workshop.
  • Answered more emails and phone calls.
  • Looked over and submitted 3 batches of holiday book reviews to the School Library Journal review editors (8 or 9 of us LAPL librarians spend every July immersed in Christmas and Hanukkah books so that YOU can read our reviews in the October issue - ho ho ho and all that)
  • Went down to our storage area with 3 other Youth Services staff and packed summer reading giveaway books in boxes to send out to branches that had requested more.
  • Prepared for Tuesday meeting with Target reps who will hopefully give us a big, juicy grant for our early literacy services (note: this meeting was canceled.  Argh!)

And that's where I stopped taking notes!

Planning, coordinating, communicating, training, supervising - that's my job.

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