A day in the life of a Systems Librarian

Hello! Here I am at the library helpdesk

In recent years I enjoyed taking part in the Library day in the life project. This ran from 2008-2012 and saw library staff from all disciplines across the world record and upload their daily diaries for a week. I found it invaluable and really interesting, and was quite sad when the person who organised it announced there would be no more. You can read my participating blog posts here.

The library in which I work has a very active blog and this year I decided to introduce a series of posts based on the idea of a daily diary. There are 11 of us in the team and we each blogged about our day at work; these posts were uploaded once a week over a period of 11 weeks.  We publicised it within college as the chance to see what goes on behind-the-scenes in a library. Whenever a new post was published we would highlight it on the staff intranet and the library's social media profiles. They were by far the most viewed posts on our blog! It was mentioned at regional JISC events and we even had another FE library say they enjoyed reading the series so much they were planning a similar one for their blog. A huge compliment!

As a rule, I tend not to link this blog to my workplace blog, but on this occasion I'll make an exception. If anyone fancies reading about a day in the life of an FE systems librarian, here's the link to my post. Enjoy!

Day in the life (R8) part 4

Friday 3 February 2012
Today I am based at the Hinckley library all day. As I explained in yesterday’s blog post, it’s much quieter at this campus so I have more time to work on projects. Or at least, that was my plan...

Arrive at work 8.15am and discover the Heritage server is down. It means nobody can perform circulation duties or search the catalogue. Judging from the particular error messages, I know the server needs a reboot but I don’t have full access so I call upon the IT Technicians. Except it’s their team meeting, so we are without our LMS for almost 2 hours. Good start to the day. Surely it can only be onwards and upwards from here...?

While the system is down I take the chance to design new spine labels for our careers library, changing over to the Careers Resource Classification Index. I’m familiar with it having used it in my previous employment and introducing it here is something that should have happened years ago. Better late than never. 

When Heritage is back up I start work on two global changes. Although I’ve tackled global changes before it was with the help of an IT Technician and whenever I attempt them on my own I have less success. I spend far too long on this, and get absolutely nowhere. For the life of me I just cannot work out where I am going wrong. I want to add DVD as a keyword to the 1116 DVDs we house, and change the loan period on 1335 books. It’s time to hold my hands up and admit I’m stumped. I email Heritage Support for guidance and receive an email almost immediately. I’ll look at it again on Monday – for the third time. I get frustrated with myself when I fail to do something like this and I have to actively remind myself that I’m still learning.

Do a bit more work on tidying up the media files on the catalogue and have much better success with this – something actually goes right!

Whenever I have days like this, where things keeps going wrong, I look at my collection of Lego mini-figures; I wanted something fun on my desk that would make me smile, and these do just the job.
 

Day in the life (R8) part 3

Thursday 2 February 2012
Came in to work this morning to be greeted by a friendly note left on my desk by one of the assistants. It makes me smile and is definitely a good start to the day. Thank you Laura!

The college in which I work is multi-site and on Thursdays I work across the two larger of our libraries. I spend the morning at the Nuneaton site helping one of the library assistants prepare for the college volunteer fair. The library has a stall and we are hoping to snare a few hours each week from willing students but the uptake is slow. This is followed by a mini-stint on the enquiry counter where I show our graduate trainee the admin side of the library’s OPAC. We’re having a few problems at the moment and the automated transferring of indexes is the bane of my life!

Spend an hour classifying counselling books before heading out for a walk round the block during my lunch break. I’m hoping to introduce a new system for organising the careers books so I ponder this whilst pounding the streets.

After lunch (or to be more precise, during lunch) I drive over to our Hinckley site for the start of my evening cover. Things are much quieter at this site. It’s a dedicated arts library (opposed to the Nuneaton library which is cross-curricular) and it interests me the different ways in which the two libraries are used. Nuneaton serves a lot of Access students who have specific enquiries or require one-to-one sessions on referencing techniques. Hinckley is used more as a workroom, with students taking photos, building models on the tables, creating music on the computers etc. I find time for some classification until 5pm when things quieten down and the other library staff leave. I then use this time to log on to both computers on the enquiry desk; the one I use to perform the LMS housekeeping tasks and on the other I create a new media type (e-magazine). As Systems Librarian, I often do tasks which mean having to ask the rest of the team to log out of Heritage but I try to do these during my evening cover as much as possible. It’s a bit of a hassle doing a 12 hour shift, but I get much more done than I would during the standard working day. Plus I get an afternoon off in lieu for it too! Hurrah!

Day in the life (R8) part 2

Tuesday 31 January 2012

Today has been another non-typical day for me at work. After arriving at 8.15am, I amend the enquiry counter timetable as we are still a team member down due to illness. This, when coupled with various meetings, leaves us only a skeletal staff, so I’m out on the counter for 5 hours today.

In the morning I have a meeting with the college’s data integration manager, about the possibility of importing students on Heritage rather than the team having to manually input them. Despite failed attempts in the past, and his super-busy workload, he’s prepared to give it a go. Once he’s worked his magic and generated a spreadsheet, I’ll use the relevant instructions from Heritage and attempt to work mine. Yesterday, I calculated that the team spent 208 hours manually inputting new users last term alone. Fingers crossed it works, it would help remove waiting times and staff stress.

My lunch hour is quite relaxing today. Braving the wintery showers, I take a walk to the local post office, and then chill-out reading a magazine. Sometimes I like conversation during lunch, but depending on how my day has been sometimes I’ll prefer my own company. Today is definitely the latter.

Whilst on counter in the afternoon I finished off updating the subject headers for the shelves, a job which had been hanging round my neck since August last year. In the afternoon I had a confidential discussion with a team member, and helped another plan and create a display about the library for use at the college’s volunteer roadshow this Thursday.

Finish work at 5pm and have an hour to myself before my evening course. Nip to the petrol station to fill-up and eat my tea (home-made soup) in the workroom. I am studying a level 3 ILM qualification in first line management. The course is 6pm-9pm and I find Tuesdays very hard-going. I left the house at 7.15am and return home at 10pm. Almost immediately, I collapse into bed. Lights out. Goodnight.

Day in the life (R8) part 1

Monday 30 January 2012
Today is the beginning the Library day in the life round 8.This sees library staff from near and far record how they spend their working week. It’s a fun way of nosing into the lives of others and seeing what really goes on in libraries.

So, to start off with, a little about my job... I am Systems Librarian in a Further Education College in Warwickshire, UK. My main responsibilities are maintaining Heritage, the library’s management system, and the classification of stock. There are 11 of us in the team, we work across three different sites, and I have been in post 8 months - learning lots and enjoying it.  

It's good to mix things up occasionally...
Image by Annie Mole

At 7.30am this morning, I jump on the M6 and arrive a little after 8.30am. I’m a tad late but didn’t really notice until I pulled up on the carpark, I was too busy singing away to my favourite song on the radio*.

One of the assistants walks into the office with me to say someone has phoned in ill. We are already a little short staffed as an assistant is on annual leave, so I take a look at the enquiry counter timetable and alter it slightly. The easiest way of keeping the service flowing freely is if I take up the slack, so I spend the entire day on the counter, with the exception of 90 minutes. I had various tasks planned for today but being on the counter pushes them back to tomorrow.

The enquiry counter is frequently busy and those staffing it are often rushed off their feet with stationery sales, printing/copying queries, research enquiries, circulation duties, referencing help – the list goes on. During quiet moments at the counter, I printed out new subject signs for the shelves, and during my non-counter 90 minutes, I put them up. I managed a little preparation for a meeting tomorrow by creating an estimate of how much it costs (in terms of time/wages/resources) to manually add new users to Heritage and create the necessary reader records. Also found time to discuss with the head librarian the possibility of purchasing e-readers and their compatibility with our downloadable e-books.

I finish early on Mondays, so head out at 1.30pm to do a spot of shopping. Hurrah!

And that, in a nutshell, was the beginning of my week. Not at all typical of my standard day, but being part of a team environment means being flexible and I don’t mind doing whatever is needed of me to help the service run smoothly. It’s good to mix things up occasionally, but hopefully the rest of this week’s posts will portray more accurately the role of Systems Librarian.

*Just in case you’re wondering, it’s Take On Me by A-Ha. Classic.

Library Day in the Life (R8)

Logged in to my Hotmail account last night and the inbox was home to several emails informing me of updates to the PBWorks wiki. This could mean only one thing….

The next round of Library Day in the Life has been announced! First thing I did this morning when I got to work – logged on and signed up! WooHoo! Yeah, baby! (Can you tell I’m excited?! Maybe if I use a few more exclamation marks? !!!!!) My details are number 13 in the participant list.

I'm a big fan of this initiative – it’s so interesting being able to nosy into what people do every day at work, and it’s lovely when people take the time to comment on your own working week. Some of the comments BtB received during the previous round were from people employed in different library sectors, and it helped me to think about my job from different perspectives.

So, yup, I will be blogging about work from 30th Jan – 3rd Feb. May even post the occasional tweet too. Can’t wait to start reading about aspects of library work I’ve yet to experience, as well as those I can already relate to…

Bring it on!!!!!!

CPD23 Thing 20

Image by Images_Of_Money

Thing 20: Career Projects
I find the library world really interesting and love to chat to people about why they have formed a career around it. I must be nosey! A few years ago I heard about the Library Roots/Routes project where folks outline their reasons for working in the profession and the path they took to get there. I added my contribution to the wiki and blogged about it here. I’ve read lots of entries on and have noticed a common theme in many – there are more facets to the professional than we realised when we joined it. Everything we do is hidden behind the scenes in order to create a seamless service for our users. It perhaps does us (as library staff) a disservice, but that’s the way it should be – library users don’t need to be aware of all the backstage action, they just need a good service they can rely on. And as long as that’s what they get then I’m happy.

Library Day in the Life is a similar project, where library staff record their daily activities at work for a specific week. I took part in it this year after several years of missing the date. Being newly hooked up on Twitter (a previous Thing) made following the project far more interesting as I was able to read people’s updates in real time, rather than waiting until blog posts had been compiled. I loved reading what others had written about their roles – it’s a great way of learning what life is like in different library sectors.

CPD23 Thing 13

Thing 13: Google Docs, Dropbox & Wikis  

Image taken by Chrissinjo 

I’ve never used Dropbox or Google Docs before. Always meant to, just never got round to it. I don’t know much about it, but I find cloud technology very intriguing. So, with CPD23 in mind, I’ve used Google to creat a document and shared it with our Graduate Trainee based at another location. It worked quite well actually and I was impressed. It simple and user-friendly. Likewise, she also shared a doc with me and receiving it was very straight forward. Both of us viewing the doc at the same time was quite amusing, although it turned a little messy when I 'comandered' the cursor and inserted text into the very sentance she was already working on. A little problematic, but perhaps there are ways around this when you know how to utilise Goofle Docs properly. Definitely a useful tool and one I'd like to explore further.

Dropbox looks like it may take a little longer to master. Don’t really have time at work so I’ll grab a look at it sometime at home. I am the queen of memory sticks and always have one on my person at almost any given time. In my last employment post, my memory stick was stolen by a pupil and I lost several documents. I can see Dropbox providing a convenient alternative to the perils of memory sticks.

The other element of Thing 13 is wikis. Finally – something I do have a little experience of! I’ve never had cause to establish a wiki myself, but I have added to various ones in the past:

The library routes project

Library day in the life

UK library blogs

If anyone knows of any others please drop me a comment to let me know. I enjoy adding to library-related wikis, it’s nice to participate and make a small contribution to a library initiative. These wikis have brought to my attention several blogs which I now regularly follow and a large proportion of BtB’s traffic is directed from these three sites. It’s an easy way of sharing experiences and I really do recommend joining in. Wikis = FTW!

Day in the Life (R7) part 4

From completely full to roughly hall full :(

Friday 29 July
Today is the final day of Library Day in the Life and my plan is to complete my self-imposed challenge of emptying the classification shelf. I took a photo of the shelf at the start of the week and another at the end of the week. Did I succeed in my challenge? A quick comparision of the photos will tell you that... I did not. Curses.

I kick off my classification marathon, except there’s a problem with the OPAC and enquiry menu. The IT dept have to reboot the server to get it working again *losing valuable classification time damnit*

Meanwhile, I finish the annual report, finally! I should have emailed it to my boss before heading off on a week’s annual leave at the end of today, but I forgot all about it until I got home and don’t have access to my storage area from here – ooops! Not quite sure what to do about this pickle at the moment. Hmmmm.

Exchange resources (AKA ‘idea stealing’) with a fellow FE librarian (hello Andrea!) who left a comment on BtB. I never know who – if anyone – reads my blog so it was nice to make contact. Hopefully we’ve both gained something useful.

Not long before the end of the day, the boss tells me we have a date for the external company coming in to move the books from the old library to the new one, and he’s on annual leave at the time so I’ll be the one who ‘masterminds moving day’. It isn’t for 2 weeks but already I’m panicing in case I mess up and discard some vitally important piece of kit instead of transferring it over. And as for telling the removals men where to position the bookshelves in the new library... I don't know! *Trying hard not to panic*

Day in the Life (R7) part 3

Library entrance-come-storage area

Thursday 28 July



The day kicks off with checking my emails and a few minutes browsing a handful of library-related blogs. One of the assistants goes through the daily overdues procedure with me to make sure I’m fully up to speed with how to run them for both campus locations. It seems pretty straight forward, but will I remember???

Do some more work on the second draft of the annual report but I can’t really settle into it today. I’m expecting an important email and despite checking my account every two minutes, it doesn’t arrive. It’s also difficult to concentrate today – the place is like a building site. There are glaziers installing new windows throughout the building and there is constant stream of debris hitting our windows. I think the library's new windows are due to be fitted next week while I'm on annual leave. There is also carpet being laid next door and the library entrance now resembles an assault course with so much furniture stored in the gangway. There is even a new library enquiry desk in the middle of the study area waiting to be fitted. The place looks like a warehouse at the moment - I have to laugh!

In the afternoon I leave the Nuneaton campus and drive over to the Hinckley site. Have a pow-wow with a senior assistant about the new date labels and use of SMS-linked QR Codes. While we’re both there, the head librarian and I put our heads together to tidy up the classification of several areas of stock. We produce one number with 7 post-decimal point digits. We ditch it as it’s far too complicated, but the boss made me laugh when he described it as ‘hardcore classification’!

Day in the Life (R7) part 2

Tuesday 26 July
Began the day with my usual practice of reading emails and catching up with the latest CPD23 Thing(s). The rest of the morning was spent re-designing the date labels with the head librarian and generating SMS-linked QR Codes to feature on them, offering another option for renewals and enquiries.

I’d like to post the codes to our OPAC too, but I’m new to the software and can’t see an immediately obvious way of doing it. I post my first-ever forum message to Marvin, asking other Heritage users if they know of a way to do it. I eagerly check my emails throughout the day but nobody replies. I guess it isn’t possible.

I’m at the Nuneaton campus today and our other campus (Hinckley) is in the middle of a move to a new-build library. With the help of another member of staff, I learn how to run the overdues for one location from a different location. Will tackle this again Thursday morning to make sure I’ve got the hang of it properly.

After lunch there’s an impromptu meeting with the boss to discuss the job specification for a vacant post (should funding be agreed for it) and then I registered for Library Camp UK 11 (which I’d heard about on Twitter over lunch). The majority of the afternoon is spent on the second draft of the annual report and Heritage housekeeping tasks, before I finish the day with 30 minutes of classification.

Wednesday is annual leave so my next Library Day in the Life entry will be posted Thursday.

My desk this afternoon, during my classification challenge

Day in the Life (R7) part 1

Monday 25 July
Have been looking forward to taking part in Library Day In The Life for ages, but it's not the most exciting of weeks to record. I work in a college, it's the summer hols so it's tumbleweed quiet. Have been tweeting sporadically throughout the day (@CaraClarke #libday7), but here’s my main account:

Arrive at work 8.30am after a 60 minute commute on the motorway. Start off by reading and replying to emails. Receive confirmation of a place at a Heritage training day *smiles*.

Finish off my first draft of the library’s first ever annual report, which the head librarian then politely rips apart. Feel a bit miffed so I head into the workroom for a break. After a chat with the assistants I feel a bit better and return to my desk to tackle the backlog of classification. The classification shelf is full to bursting. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to empty the shelf by Friday. A bit ambitious, particularly as the librarian wants the second draft of the annual report by Friday, but hey ho I can but try. (Skip ahead to Friday's blog post to see if I succeed in my mission...)

Spend my 30 minute lunch break in the workroom alone, browsing Facebook and chatting to my boyfriend on the phone. Swapping one library office for another library office is not the best way to spend my lunch break – I must get out for some fresh air during lunch tomorrow. The rest of the day is spent debating the joys of class numbers with Melvin Dewey (mostly politics and law with a bit of porn thrown in for good measure). By the late afternoon I’ve spent so long at my computer I have eye-strain and a headache. Take a break and feel a little more refreshed.

Mini-conflab with the boss about the library’s use of QR codes and business cards. Will sort something out tomorrow, but for now, it’s 4.30pm and my working day is o-v-e-r.

Library Day in the Life (R7)

Today I registered to take part in Round 7 of Library Day in the Life. Finally!!!!

Library Day in the Life is a project where participants share their working days via blog posts, photos and Twitter updates. What a fab way of learning how other libraries operate on a daily basis! Have had my eye on this for the past 2 years or so but never got round to joining in. (I blogged about missing Rounds 4 and 5 here and here.) It runs twice a year, but January I'd be too preoccupied and every July I'd be unable to participate because the school library I worked in would be closed. If any of you regularly dip into BtB, you'll probably know I now work in a college library, which will be open during Round 7, so I can finally take part! Yipeeee!

My details are #38 in the Library Day in the Life participant list.

Library day in the Life (R5)

I've mentioned in earlier posts, I've been looking out to take part in the next round of 'A Day in the Life' wiki. If you haven't come across this yet, it's a fab wiki where library folk blog about their day at work on a given date. It's a great way of sharing good practice and having a nosey into the working lives of others.

The date of round 5 was set for 26th July 2010 but this was after the end of the term so we'd already broken up for the Summer holiday. I don't think it'd be of much value if I blogged about going in to work for 3 hours to put new stickers in books and then pottering about at home (which is what I did on that day). So... I'm going to have to wait for the next round again!

Library Day in the Life (R4)

Grrr! Am well cheesed off!

Have just realised I'd forgotten all about round 4 of Library Day in the Life. I was hoping to take part in it this time round - I guess I'll have to keep my peepers peeled for round 5 instead! I'm thinking it might be July 2010?????

On other matters, it is a sad day today. We lost a fish in the library's tropical tank. Nothing overly unusual about that, except this fish had no eyeballs. Slightly disturbing and a tad gross. RIP Molly Number Two, you will long be remembered.