Library day in the Life January 2011 – Wednesday

Tuesday was more or less like Monday.

Today I started at the desk, which was surprisingly busy, with grad students and academics coming down to collect books they'd requested and renew books they had out. Someone else did the first lot of retrievals, but I went hunting for a disputed return (a book we'd send an overdue notice about, but the borrower said they'd returned it) – I found it, checked it in, and e-mailed the borrower.

Among the other little morning tasks was posting a blog entry about some e-book titles we have access to for the next week. And there was filling out an ACC form – when you get RSI apparently the first, second, and third things they make you do are fill out forms.

Just before 11 AM, I left with a colleague to go and do an Endnote tutorial: he taught while I hung in the background and helped the students keep up, as it's a fast paced introductory class. At the end of the class, one of the students asked me a question about interloans too.

On the way, my colleague and I talked about an issue that had come up in a meeting last week. So then I sat down and wrote an e-mail to our wider colleagues proposing a solution by a third colleague; I wanted to run it by her before sending, and we ended up not running into each other until after 4 PM.

In the meantime I had an e-mail exchange with a colleague in another branch about a meeting tomorrow, then lunch. At two o'clock I ran the retrievals report then was reminded about some RFID training, so I went to that and then did the retrievals.

The last couple of hours were quieter – more e-mails and reading, and a grad student asking if he could put his paper in our institutional repository if he published with a certain journal, and checking hours we can cover another branch which is shortstaffed next week, and discussions about workspace after my colleague reported back from a meeting she'd attended, and tidying up in time to go home.

There's some collections work I really want to do, but it's going to involve a lot of cutting and pasting, and I can tell my hands aren't up to that yet. Another day…