I am working as Acting Branch Manager again at my library – a branch of a regional public library service, so taking care of the running of our biggest branch, on top of my usual Info Services tasks, were what made up my work day in this 8th round of Library Day in the Life. I worked a late shift today, so it didn’t start until 1pm, so the morning was spent in domestic duties etc.
So here goes my work day.
12.00pm – Start work at 1pm so of course I arrived at work at 12.00pm, where I completed the staff timesheets for yesterday, whilst also catching up on what had been happening during the morning. Business as usual, except that it has been much busier than we had experienced of late. And of course, checked email.
12.30pm – Followed up on the resignation of a shelver – she had resigned on the weekend, so I followed up with the staff member who took the details and chased up with the personnel manager about what was required as follow-up. Signed off on a pile of leave applications and travel allowance forms. Followed up on completed and in process maintenance issues.
1.00 – 3.00pm – Frantically busy on desk. We were down a person due to staff training on our new discovery layer being launched next week and spent the first hour just trying to clear the backlog of returns etc, whilst serving the library users still pouring into the library. Once the backlog was cleared, spent the next hour just trying to catch up with clearing all the returns from the desk and back out into the library where users could gain access to them.
3.00pm – Uploaded helpsheets for our new discovery layer and created new links on our website, in preparation for next week’s hard launch and for our soft launch, which went live today. Also dealt with assorted staff needs and queries. And phone calls to various staff following up on assorted items.
3.45pm – Created some new book covers and information for our new books slideshow on our website. And more staff queries.
4.00pm – Added our recent library news blog post and the Gorilla Librarian (Monty Python) video to our Facebook page.
4.15pm – Did a tidy up of our website RSS feeds and deleted expired events slides.
4.20pm – Made some calls related to maintenance issues.
4.35pm – Emailed our library bloggers about changes to the new catalogue and the need to begin adding links to the new catalogue in their posts.
4.45pm – Catch up and clean up of email.
4.50pm – Started a blog post on our adult blog about Oscar Best Picture nominees which came from books. Saved it in draft form for completion another day.
5.00pm – Home for dinner.
6.00pm – 9.00pm – Back on desk for the evening – filled with loans, returns, memberships, internet assistance, copier/printer assistance, holds, console games bookings – setup – pack-up, tidy up around the library (amazing how messy some people are), as well as other numerous administrative tasks.
9.05pm – Home for another day.
Pretty normal day really. Nothing exciting in a way, but I love my job and I work in a wonderful library service with great people, so I wouldn’t change a thing.
