Librarian Day in the Life 7 – Thursday #libday7

Another pie chart. It would be better as an actual pie.

By far the largest part of my day today was filming with Sam for the induction video. After being somewhat surprised to discover the place we got the camera from last time had turned into a building site we tracked one down and set about recording more footage for our video. We accosted politely asked some students to talk to us about the library and had a surprisingly high number of positive responses to being filmed. Looking at the footage some of it hasn’t the best sound or has a bit too much ambient sound but I think we can use a lot. I think it is good to use students talking Vox pop style in videos so that it’s not just us saying how good the library is. I love the University of Warwick’s video clips (1 min 46 is the best quote!).

We also had a site meeting where we were updated on the library strategy and various other plans but there’s not much to report from it.

I finished my appraisal form and sent it to my Line Manager. I also did a bit more on my application for the MA in Academic Practice  which I hope to start in the new academic year.

Pretty much today was a  catching up with things and videoing day.

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Librarian day in the life 7 – Wednesday

Sorry no graph today as I won’t have time. Instead here’s a picture of a book recently donated to Cass:

Today the first thing I did was grab the last Library Campticket and then I spent the morning in meetings. The first was induction group where we are planning the induction especially materials and content. Jessica and Antonella are working on an excellent but top secret idea which Sam and I are doing videos for. Sam and I are also going to try and produce a short film from these video clips. We hope. We’ll then produce a more polished one for next year.

We’ve collected together questions for an induction quiz and I spent a while this afternoon creating a google form so students can fill it in online. Most of the questions were straight forward but there were a couple which suited multiple choice options but thinking of the options was tricky as we don’t want to plant erroneous ideas in the students heads. We also have to be mindful of the multiple-site nature of our library service and make sure things are universal.

After the induction meeting I had a meeting with Peter and Paul about website things including statistics. I have access to all the library website statistics through google analytics and we talked about how we could use the information. There’s a lot. There are also a lot of terms used which need explaining so this afternoon I started a glossary of them.

Following my 23things preparation on my late night I recorded a how to video today and drafted the post.

Sam organised a 23things tea using Doodle as per Thing 14. This was good as several people from all over the office got together to discuss 23things. Everybody had positive experiences and we agreed that it’s been a good experience even though I revealed an aversion to something which Ollie is now using against me. I also enthused about Evernote which is this week’s cool extra thing.

Finally Sam has reported back on her Great Toast Survey which was also a 23things thing from last week. It was filled in by librarians across the country so probably tells you more about librarians than #libday7 ever will.

Librarian Day in the life 7 Tuesday (#libday7)

I was doing a late night at Cass tonight so didn’t start work until 11 and started the day at the main site before walking to Cass mid-afternoon. Today was another bitty day. Unlike yesterday I didn’t feel I got as much done today but that happens, I started a few things like a help sheet and my post for next week’s 23things (I can’t reveal what on but it was fun researching!) and I ordered some books. Tonight I issued some books, answered a couple of queries and topped up a lot print credit. I also got slightly confused about what to do when closing the library (that phrase always makes me think of It’s a Wonderful Life when in the “how things would be if George Bailey had never lived” scenes to illustrate Mary’s singleness they show her closing the library).

Here’s my day as a pie chart –

Today Tamise and I continued to help the student from yesterday with Bloomberg. We looked into it before she got there so once she arrived we were able to show her exactly how to find the daily spot prices for natural gas in Europe over the last three years. She went away happy. Tamise and I then had a long chat about how we could turn all our FAQs etc into a searchable resource for students.

At lunch we had a very bizarre conversation about ukuleles and recorders which led to a few emails going around all afternoon (hence about 15 minutes of my afternoon taken up with ukuleles and recorders. The thing about librarians is they can find a you tube clip in seconds to illustrate almost any point so these discussions just refine our skills!)

Because I can’t tell you about next week’s 23things there’s not much else to say about today.

Librarian Day in the Life project 7 – Monday #libday7

This is supposed to be about what I do all day as a librarian – it’s not all books you know! Today has been a bit of a catching up day as you might see from my lovely pie chart of my day:

It’s a bit odd seeing it like that as several if those tasks were spread out through the day. For example I’m constantly reading emails and responding to them in between other tasks. I’m very much a multitasker with several things going on so most of those things will have been done mixed up rather than in blocks of time.

I had one student query, there are more in term time, from a student asking how to login to science direct. They were having problems because they were trying to get into science direct off campus and not from one of our links. I quickly recorded a screen grab of how to log on and sent them a link as well as written instructions. This took 5 mins at most and if anyone else asks how to log on I have the clip for them.

I also talked to Tamise the Senior Information Assistant at Cass to try and sort out a Bloomberg query she had from a Phd student. Thanks to Tamis calling Bloomberg’s helpdesk the student was helped and I found out they can send you a transcript of your phone query!

I’ve been filling out my first appraisal in this role and it’s taking longer than I’d like because you have to link it to various strategic goals which means reading a strategy which may be out of date but I’ve been given some help from the cass library operations manager which has speeded it up.

I also have been wrestling with the university’s cms to get my subject pages up, again a process which takes much longer than it should but not for much longer …

I had a couple of meetings today too. The first was with my colleague Mandy who is the subject librarian for Arts and Isabelle from the Centre for Language Studies . We were talking about Mandy and my plans for pages for International Students on the library website. Isabelle was really enthusiastic and is going to help us out with a few links to language resources, in return she’ll use some of our content.

My second meeting was quick and with Neil our digital repository manager. He told me a bit about what he was doing and I talked about Cass and my role.

I’m one of the members of the 23things City team which is a week by week course we’re running for our colleagues to show them various social media tools. Today I looked at a few of the 23things participants’ blogs. A few have taken an extended break after week 5’s reflection but I’m sure they’ll catch up, hopefully they haven’t been put off by the amount of things in week 6! Two of the prezis from last week were absolutely laugh out loud funny: Prezi on City University library and Prezi on 23thingsCity

So that was my day. Tomorrow I am working late so will have a different type of day …