I figured that since I’ve changed jobs from the last time I did Library Day in the Life, I’d participate this time around to give people a sense of what a Head of Instructional Services does at a large urban university. After writing this up, I realize that this day was no more typical for me than any other. Each week, each day, is so different from the next. I may be immersed in a project, immersed in meetings, immersed in teaching and training, etc. I’m not sure that I will (or want to) cover my entire week, but if I think it would be useful to people wondering about this kind of work, I will.

6:20-7:20: Woke up, ate breakfast, woke up my son, took a shower, packed my lunch and I and the munchkin headed to Portland.

7:40: took Reed to his school, had a quick bit of cuddle time and then drove in to work.

8am-noon

I didn’t have any meetings until noon, so I was in major GTD mode:

• Checked and responded to email
• Wrote a letter of recommendation for a former employee who is applying for ALA Emerging Leaders cohort. I can’t think of too many people better suited for a program like that.
• Worked on creating a position description for an instructional design/learning technologies/instructional technologies librarian. This is a position that I hope will be created, but it will require sacrificing a currently unfilled 1/2 time position from another unit and a big shift in plans, which I’m not sure will be possible. Still, my supervisor was open to the idea and suggested I create a description and he’d run it by the UL. Given the demand from the liaisons for the creation of online learning objects, this would be a huge boon for my unit. Fingers crossed!
• Worked on the draft of our library instruction program learning outcomes for the Outcomes Task Force meeting this afternoon.
• Spoke to Head of Public Services, Gen Ed Coordinator and Distance Learning Librarian about the position I want to create to see what thoughts they might have. Got some good talking points from the Gen Ed coordinator for why this position would be so valuable.
• Talked with Head of Public Services about the impact a possible AAUP strike would have on instructional services. Hopefully we’ll never need our strike plan, but it’s good to have one.
• Talked with the distance learning librarian about creating a prioritization process for learning object creation. Each librarian seems to want us to create learning objects, but our focus needs to be on those that are general (i.e. can be used by a larger pool of people) or will be embedded in a specific class or classes.
• Got an email from Megan Oakleaf about RAILS and looked into our institution participating. I’ve been wanting to do rubric assessment of information literacy using Freshman and Sophomore Inquiry portfolios, so this would be an ideal way to make that happen with the support of a noted expert in this area.
• Tried to figure out why sharing a Google Doc with a Google Group did not put the document into each group member’s Google Docs. Gave up and just shared it with each individual in the group.
• Talked with a colleague on the outcomes task force about the structure and format of outcomes
• Did a quick scan of my RSS feeds and marked as unread things I want to read when I actually have time.
• Ate a burrito and set up a meeting for next week with the new director of the Center for Online Learning and our distance learning librarian to discuss possible collaboration in the instructional design process. I couldn’t be more thrilled with who they hired for that position as he really has a strong desire to partner with the library at many different levels.

Noon – tenure track librarians meeting – we have a group of tenure track librarians who meet monthly to discuss issues related to tenure and support each other. I’ve only gone to four meetings so far, but I wish that there were tenured librarians who also attended. It’s hard to get advice when everyone is in the same boat; some might be further along, but none of us have received tenure yet.

1pm – Outcomes task force meeting – I’m leading a task force that is creating learning outcomes for the library’s instruction program. These outcomes will inform our instruction and assessment work and will give the entire instruction team something specific to work toward. We’re at that annoying place where we’ve done the brainstorming and now are just critiquing each other’s ideas and wordsmithing things. We all have very different viewpoints on outcomes, so there were a lot of disagreements, but we’re also a pretty reasonable group, so we resolved most of them.

2pm – Drop-in instruction task force meeting – the library has had a small and under-marketed program of voluntary general library instruction workshops (called drop-ins) for years that has been run by one librarian. Attendance has been poor and the program was so unsupported that the powers that be took his workshop calendar off the website last year! In my first week when I first heard about this program, I knew I wanted to revitalize it. We have a large population of distance learners, students taking hybrid classes, and students who simply don’t want to take a bus or pay for parking in order to attend a non-required library instruction session. I’m leading a team with 3 other librarians to bring the bulk of our classes online (through Elluminate), target the times that we offer sessions to the weeks when students receive their research assignments (weeks 3-5) and when they’re almost due (week 9), offer more classes on evenings and weekends, and market to faculty and support staff who work with at-risk students (advisers, the tutoring center, international student programs, etc.). We’re all really excited about the project and I think it’s going to be great for our outreach efforts.

3pm – Reference desk shift – The first half of the shift was slow so I looked at my colleague’s draft survey for prioritizing learning object creation and worked on this post. Then all of a sudden it was crazy busy with chats, phone calls and people at the desk.

4pm – Talked to my supervisor about when “the crush” tended to be in Fall at the reference desk so that we could schedule our library research workshops for those times. Answered a few emails and packed up at 4:30 to go pick up Reed. Noticed that I had a pretty ucky headache as I was walking to the parking garage that I fervently hoped was not a migraine.

4:30-8:30pm – Picked up Reed from school and found my child so covered in dirt that he looked like he had a deep brown tan. Thanks for hugging me when I was wearing a nice white shirt, buddy! Cleaned him off at home and took my migraine medicine since by that time, the pain in my skull and visual disturbances made it abundantly clear that this was a migraine. Collapsed on the couch with Reed while he watched Curious George as Adam had to go out to run an errand. Then read to Reed in his room for 45 minutes and put him to bed.

8:30-10:00pm – Got ready for bed, then fired up the laptop and commented on student blog posts written this weekend in my Web 2.0 class for SJSU Felt really crappy from the migraine and the medicine for the migraine, so I turned off the light and closed my eyes.

Good night!

This will be my last Day in the Life, as Reed and I got sick with RSV (and him with bronchiolitis as well) so I’m feverish, wiped out, and confined to bed. I wrote this Thursday evening before the worst of the illness had hit (and man, it hit like a ton of bricks during the night!)

Soooooooo tired this morning. Since we’d had such a bad night’s sleep last night, I let Reed sleep until he woke up on his own (Adam too). Reed woke up very stuffy, kind of crabby, and not really into eating much in the way of solid foods. I dropped him off at daycare and he seemed pretty happy there playing with his favorite toys. Ended up getting to work around 8:20. This is one of those days that I wish I actually liked coffee.

Fortunately, it’s a teaching day, so I know that’ll wake me up. I really love teaching, because it gets me working with students and faculty, it gets my energy levels up, and, well, it’s just fun most of the time. I used to be terrified of teaching, but over time I’ve not only become comfortable with it, but I really enjoy doing it.

Met with the Distance Learning Librarian (who I supervise) to catch up on what she’s been working on and the progress of some of the committees she’s a member of. She is a very self-directed and highly competent employee, so sometimes it’s easy to forget that she’s only been here since August and still needs plenty of support and advice. I talked to her about presenting on a committee we’re co-chairing at the Library Council meeting tomorrow morning since she could use more experience taking the reins in committee work.

Prepped for the International Studies senior seminar I’m teaching this afternoon. I’ve been trying to find the happy medium between over-preparing (which leads to boring) and under-preparing (which leads to screw-ups) for my instruction sessions and I think I’m getting closer to a happy medium. I’m trying a new instructional technique with this class to get the students more involved, so we’ll see if it’s a success or a major flop.

Did some collection development work as I’m woefully behind in the spending of my liaison funds.

Discussed the website redesign with the Systems Librarian and saw some graphical elements that the university webmaster had made for us. They look completely awesome and I’m so glad he was willing to work with the library on this since graphical design skills are something seriously lacking amongst the library staff.

At 1:45, the International Studies seminar showed up (15 minutes early — damn I’m glad I always start setting up early!). It’s a small class of 11 students, so an ideal one to try out new ideas with. Their assignment for the semester is to write a major research paper on some political, economic or historical topic relating to the country in which they’d studied abroad the year before, so there is a huge range of library resources that could be helpful depending on the topic. Fortunately, I had two hours with the students, so we covered a lot of ground. I’d gone in assuming that since they were seniors who’d taken plenty of history and political science classes (International Studies is an interdisciplinary major), they would already have lots of experience using resources like JSTOR, CIAO, WorldCat, etc. After asking the students a few questions at the beginning of the session, I realized how wrong I was. Only half had used JSTOR and none had used CIAO or WorldCat. Wow! So, that required a bit of readjustment in how I’d planned to teach the class. The one thing I really wanted to try with this class is to have students come up to my computer and do searches on their research topic. I guessed that students would pay more attention if it was their classmate up there, and I thought I could offer suggestions and search tips that they might be more likely to remember if they were the ones doing the searching. It also just makes more sense to do searches on their topics than on canned ones I came up with.

The class ended up being the best one I’ve ever taught. The students actually clapped for me at the end, which was a hoot. The students and the professor were even taking notes during the session, which is not something I often see. I had to do a little more demo-ing of the databases than I’d planned originally, but I still had them doing the searching most of the time. They really responded well to coming up to the computer to do their searching. I chose people to come up to do different searches based on the nature of their topic (economic, current political, historical, historical political, etc.). And it worked out nicely, because some students had the problem of having very few result and needing to broaden their search and others had the problem of too many and needing to narrow their topic. There were lots of nice examples to use as teaching moments. Not only was I giving them suggestions as they were searching, but the other students were as well. They were asking all sorts of questions about the databases. I fed off the students’ energy and definitely was more energetic and animated than I am with a class where the students don’t seem engaged. I came out of class feeling completely excited, awake and happy.

It’s experiences like this that remind me of why I love my job so much. Some days I’m mired in meetings, paperwork, creating tutorials and other activities that pretty much have me sitting in a chair all day. I like some of those activities (especially creating tutorials), but if that was all there was in my job, it wouldn’t be for me. But then there are those days when I get a lot of reference questions at the desk or I teach, where I really get to help students and faculty. That’s the stuff I love most about my job. Fortunately, as the semester gets going (it’s only week 2), I’ll have more and more interactions like these that will leave me energized and grateful to have the job I do.

This morning I felt really sick to my stomach and dizzy, so after helping to get Reed dressed, Adam ended up taking him to daycare. I spent 20 minutes lying in bed after they’d left before I headed to work (arrived at 7:40).

I was tied to my desk this morning since I was on-call for reference until noon (which means checking email, being available on IM, and being available for anyone who needs research help). Spent most of the morning working on course guides for upcoming Asian Politics, American Politics and Intro to Political Science classes. When working on the Asian politics guide, I realized that, while we had a ton of books on China and on Islam in Asia, we didn’t have so many on Japan, India, South Korea, etc. We’ve been doing a lot of purchasing on China because of a new Chinese language major and a new concentration on Chinese history, but I don’t want to see the other areas suffer. This took me off on a tangent to find the best recent books on politics and economic policy in other areas of Asia.

My director asked me if she should count research consultations she’s doing with Sports Medicine students as reference or instruction. Good question! I asked folks on Twitter how they record statistics on individual consultations and libraries seem to be pretty divided on how they handle it. I like the idea of counting it as reference, but in a separate category of reference. Emailed Head of Reference to ask her to add that to the agenda for our next meeting.

Helped a faculty member request a journal through ILL.

Our distance learning librarian asked me if I knew how to change certain content in Drupal for our website and after digging for a while, I realized that I had no idea. I asked her to contact the librarian who built the site for us to find out how we can change this block content since we can’t actually find where it’s being generated from. Talked with her about that new online program we’re concerned about being able to support as well as library instruction, and I ended up giving her another one of my History 108 classes since she’s interested in getting more teaching experience.

Adam called to see how I was doing (so-so, still haven’t tried eating) and let me know that Reed was happily crawling around at daycare when he left. That’s good, because he was in one heck of a bad mood this morning between the gum pain of teething and the runny nose. Poor little guy!

Taught a student, via IM, how to find a specific journal article online from a citation.

Eating lunch (Nilla Wafers since I’m feeling so poorly) and catching up on feeds. Just got an email that I was accepted for the Program Track of ACRL Immersion this summer, which is conveniently located in Burlington, VT. this summer. AWESOME! It’s going to eat up my entire professional development budget for the next fiscal year, so it’ll be a bummer that that’s the only thing I’ll be able to attend from June 2010-May 2011.

Met with librarian whose class I observed last week to discuss my evaluation of her teaching. We discussed possible ways she could improve her delivery and make the class more engaging.

Posted to my SJSU class site about the Library Day in the Life project so students could get a sense of what it’s like to work in a library type or job they might be interested in.

Recorded statistics from instruction sessions I’ve taught and tutorials I’ve created over the last two months. Bad head of instruction!!!

Lots of little things. Took a walk around the library since I’ve been sitting at my desk WAY too long and caught up with several colleagues along the way. Emailed my slides from yesterday’s talk on Drupal in education to a faculty member who’d requested it. Sent the woman coordinating my travel for the conference I’m presenting at in Buffalo in May information on the flights I’d like to take. I hate flying US Air, but the flight times were the most convenient for being away from the family as little as possible.

Did a little more work on the course guides before leaving to pick up Reed from daycare. The women at daycare told me that he’d needed Tylenol during the day, so clearly he was not having the best of days. He vacillated between happy and hysterical all evening and fell asleep around 7:30, though by 9pm, it was obvious that he was not going to sleep well since he was rolling around in his crib and banging into the bars. We ended up taking him to bed with us, which was better for him, but not so good for us. No one in our house ended up getting a great night’s sleep.

My day started at 6:00 am when my husband and I got Reed fed, dressed, and ready for daycare. Adam drove him to daycare today since I was nearly out of gas and didn’t want to stop with him in the car. I’ll pick him up in the afternoon. I took a quick shower myself, skipped breakfast since I’ve been feeling nauseous the past few days, filled my water bottle, and headed to work.

Arrived at work by 7:45 and checked my email. Always amazing how much comes in after/before business hours.

Called Adam to make sure Reed got off to daycare ok (he did).

Met with our new Systems Librarian to talk about his evaluation of my teaching in the Popular Culture of Modern Europe (a senior seminar) class I taught last week. (We just started doing a peer evaluation of instruction project this semester for the first time and I’m really excited to see how it goes.) I had tried some new activities and was really happy with how it went for the most part. He really liked the primary source activity I did and though that most of the students really got into it (I chose some pretty fun primary sources for them to analyze). The weak points he noticed were the same ones I had noted that I wanted to improve upon. I also talked to him about instruction in general. He’s new to instruction and not yet confident in what he’s doing, so I talked to him about my own experiences early on with instruction (and how much I sucked) and told him that he just needs to keep doing it and find his own style of teaching.

Got a request for information literacy instruction from a faculty member in political science I’ve never worked with before. She asked me to teach in all four of her classes. AWESOME! I’ve been on a mission over the past two years to convince the faculty in the social sciences that I have something useful to offer, and finally, over the past few months, I feel like I’m at a tipping point. I’ve been offering faculty workshops on different topics and have been creating more online tutorials in areas they find valuable. Most importantly, I’ve made sure to tell them about everything I’ve been doing, and one faculty member who has become a “fan” has also been singing my praises. I’ve been getting emails from people who for years have never responded to any emails I’ve sent and I’m getting asked to do instruction for faculty I’ve never taught classes for before. It’s nice to know that the slow-and-steady strategy does sometimes work!

Got into a friendly debate on FriendFeed about Clay Shirky’s “Rant about women.” I love when you can discuss something with a group of people where you might disagree, but you’re still respectful and like each other at the end of it all. I didn’t stop work to go be on FriendFeed, but I’d peek at it every once in a while when I was working on other stuff and put my 2 cents in.

Wrote to the faculty member teaching the political science research methods course this semester to see if he’d be interested in my teaching an information literacy session for his students. He never responds to my emails that I send out to all faculty in his department, so I thought I’d try the personal route. Not sure he’ll see a need for it, but it’s worth a try.

Talked to the Head of Reference about scheduling a reference/instruction meeting for next week. I want to review with everyone how the first few peer reviews have gone and answer any questions I can for people who haven’t done it yet. Lots more to discuss in reference though.

Talked to our new Systems Librarian about teaching one of the classes I have coming up. He chose History 108, where students need to do research for a recreation of the Paris Peace Conference (where each group of students will represent one of the countries or interests there – it’s a cool assignment!). I’ve got six sections of this class coming in, so he’ll be able to observe me before doing it himself. Made a mental note to email the faculty member and let him know – he’s a really nice guy, so I’m sure he’ll welcome the opportunity to give my colleague more experience teaching.

Started to work on course guides for the upcoming political science classes. Will have to create three in a hurry plus one on Modern Russian History, so my workload just increased!

Shoved some food in my mouth before running to give a brown bag lunch presentation for the School of Graduate Studies on using Drupal in education and talked about my experiences using it at San Jose State. One faculty member is interested in using it as a community platform for students in his online program where they could communicate across classes and share resources. It sounds like an ideal use of Drupal.

Attended a library all-staff meeting where our new Systems Librarian unveiled his idea for the new front page of our website. I like the concept and with some polishing on the graphical design end, it’ll be a great improvement to our site. Must say that I’m glad it’s not me having to do that anymore – I was the webmaster for several years and, while it was nice to have that sort of control, it was a pain to try and make everyone happy. I’m not sure our Systems Librarian really knows what he’s in for!

Checked feeds, took a look at recent issues of C&RL and C&RL News. Checked out some flights for two conferences I’ll be attending in April and May. I want to minimize my time away from Reed since I’ve never actually been away from him for even a 24-hour period yet! Just thinking about being away from him for a few days makes me teary.

My class for San Jose State started today and I commented on some of the posts students have been making. Looks like a really great group of students!

Worked more on course guides for those upcoming classes. I’m particularly excited about teaching the one on Asian Politics!

At 4:30, I headed over the mountain to Reed’s daycare to pick him up. He was playing happily with toys and didn’t even notice me when I came in until I called his name. Then we headed home for play and bath-time. He’s got a little cold and is SO CLOSE to getting his first tooth, so he’s been in a not-so-great mood on-and-off. Still, we had a pretty nice evening and he got to bed at his usual time (though he woke up 5 or 6 times that night, sigh). After he went to bed (around 7pm), I answered some emails, made some comments in my Drupal classroom, and folded and put away some laundry while watching “Chuck” on our TiVo.

This week’s “days in the life” are very different from the ones I did back in July. In July, I was still in the midst of maternity leave and was working only half-time. I was taking care of a three-month-old child and often felt so overwhelmed by that responsibility that I was having trouble finding a work/life balance that preserved my sanity. Now, I really feel like I’ve found the right balance for my life and feel much more comfortable in my role as working mom.

On Mondays, I work from 1pm until 9:30pm as I have the evening reference shift. This was the first Monday that we’ve ever put Reed in daycare; until now, I’ve watched him until 12:30 and Adam had him the rest of the day. Losing a day of work-time just wasn’t working anymore for Adam, and with my Web 2.0 class starting tomorrow, I’m going to be a lot busier too. Reed is a very high-energy, social boy, so daycare really suits him and he’s always happy to be there. I went to visit Reed on my way to work and absolutely did not want to leave his daycare. I go through phases where I appreciate having productive adult time away from him and phases where I can’t stand not hugging him all day long. Lately I’ve been in the latter phase of mommyhood.

Since I took Friday off last week to spend my husband’s birthday with him, I came back to a mountain of emails. I first answered emails that I could get through quickly and flagged those that required more thoughtful attention. I’ve been bugging faculty in my liaison areas to request books for purchase and it’s finally paying off, so I passed a big bunch of paper and electronic acquisitions requests on to our Acquisitions Associate who orders books. There are certain programs still that aren’t purchasing much, and the way it’s set up in the School of Social Sciences, if psychology (or another department) doesn’t spend their money, the rest of the faculty in the other social science areas can spend it (as opposed to me spending it on psychology books). This worries me because I feel like we’re doing a poor job developing the collection in certain areas, but I can’t just take the reins on this when faculty have always controlled the book funds.

I then went next door and talked to the Distance Learning Librarian about a new online program being proposed by the school of graduate studies since we just received the proposal for it in our Inbox this weekend. We both question whether we can adequately support the program. I feel strongly that some programs should still be taught face-to-face because of the dearth of online resources in those areas. This is definitely one of them. We’ve been asked to create an estimate of how much it will cost for the library to support this program, and we know our figure will be far more than they will be willing to support. I wrote an email to the faculty member proposing the new online program asking for some clarifications on his proposal so that we can get a better idea about the program’s potential resource needs.

Went downstairs to talk to the Head of Digital Initiatives about some feedback I got from a faculty member on our WorldCat Local pilot project. We just started a pilot project using WorldCat Local as our default catalog search interface. I’m pretty curious to see how people respond to it.

I also talked to him about getting some quotes on the databases we think we’d need in order to be able to support the proposed online program. I then worked on a list of online databases to get quotes on for this new program (looked at Universities that have respected programs in this area for ideas). The list quickly became ridiculously large, so I will ask the professor proposing the program to narrow it down to what he thinks would be useful.

I took a look at new University Customer Service draft policy and saw how it compared to the reference guidelines we’re working on. Fortunately, they seem to complement each other quite well, and the University-wide policy gives me a few ideas for additions to our policy. Realized that we don’t have a signature file for our reference email account, which might be nice for providing info on the additional ways that students can get in contact with us and/or at what times we staff each. I email our Head of Reference about the idea.

Ate a quick dinner and checked my RSS feeds in Google Reader. Chatted with Adam on the phone for a few minutes and got sad when I heard Reed giggling in the background. I hate Mondays because by the time I come home, he’s already asleep.

Worked on slides for a brown-bag lunch presentation I’m giving tomorrow on using Drupal in education for the School of Graduate Studies. I’m not 100% sure if I’ll even use the slides or if I’ll just talk and show them my Drupal classroom live online – it really depends on the audience.

Got on the reference desk and signed into the reference email accounts and Meebo. Had a question at the desk from a student looking for historical map resources. Had trouble finding exactly what he was looking for, but gave him some suggestions that might prove fruitful. Realize that we don’t have many really good historic atlases and make a note to see what I might purchase in that area.

Answered a few basic questions during the next three hours, but it was really slow, which I hate since reference questions energize me. I spent most of the time finishing a blog post I’d started at home and going through a large pile of CHOICE Cards. I have a small liaison fund that I can spend and I try to focus my purchasing on areas that are underrepresented by faculty purchasing and/or are areas where I know students are doing a lot of research. As a result, I tend to wait until the last minute to spend a lot of my money since I don’t know which areas faculty are going to do purchasing in. I’m sure our Acquisitions Associate just loves me.

At 9:15, it’s nearly time to leave. Always sad to come home and not be able to give my little guy a hug, but I’ll probably end up hanging out with him at 1am when he decides he’s hungry. Ah, the life of a working mother!

Sarah Cohen wonders what motivated people to participate in Library Day in the Life and who we are writing these for. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I wanted to share my own reasons for doing it (and since this is a bit long, I thought it better to post it here than to Sarah’s blog).

I wasn’t one of those people who first worked in a library before going to library school. I started library school about a month after I started my first job in a library, so obviously I’d made the decision to pursue this career before I had the inside scoop on what library work was like. I’d read a number of articles about digital preservation and digitization of special collections materials and thought that librarianship seemed to be an exciting profession that allowed people to pursue all sorts of interesting and diverse work and would have a tremendous impact on the preservation of born digital materials. Also, coming from a helping profession (social work), I was looking to do work where I felt like I could make a difference in people’s lives. But did I have any idea what I’d be doing as a librarian on a day-to-day basis? Not a clue! I took a huge leap of faith and luckily it paid off. I would have loved to have had a better idea of what librarians do in their jobs, but, at the time, there weren’t really many resources that offered that sort of information.

Because of my blog, I get a lot of people emailing me for advice on whether or not they should become a librarian or asking me what librarians do (or what I do as if my experience is somehow representative). I never tell someone if they should or shouldn’t go to library school, but try to dispel some of the myths about librarianship (it’s not stressful, you read books all day, etc.) and point them to resources that give them a sense of the breadth of experiences in our profession. That, I think, is what Library Day in the Life offers. It paints a picture of the diverse work we do as librarians in a very real and unromanticized sense. If you’re interested in working in public services, you can visit the blogs of librarians who work in public services and see what their days are like. If you’re interested in working with library systems, you can see what sorts of projects those librarians are working on. It doesn’t romanticize, doesn’t cheer our work — it just lays out what we do in a way that people who are interested in our profession can learn from.

So, I guess I’d say that I was writing this for the “me” of seven years ago, or for people who, like me, have not worked in the profession but think librarianship sounds like a good match for their interests and might want to participate. And while it’s valuable for future librarians, I also found it interesting myself to see what people at other libraries do during their work days. It’s fascinating to me how different the work of instruction/information literacy librarians can be at different institutions. But, again, I think it’s less for us than for those people who are searching the web in an effort to get a sense of what this profession they’re thinking of joining is really like.

When someone emails me and tells me they’re considering becoming a librarian, I will tell them that before they make any sort of decision, they should look at librarians’ library day in the life posts and see what the work of a librarian is really like. It’s an awesome resource and I applaud Bobbi Newman for starting it all.

8:00 am – Checked my email. Checked reference email accounts. Answered a few reference questions, forwarded a database error on to our Head of Digital Initiatives and a Norwich history question to our Archives.

8:30 am – Director called me into her office to let me know that she’d heard back from the office that created the orientation schedule for the cadets. Apparently, we now have 35 minutes and 40 students to split between the library and the museum (last year we had 1 hour and 15 minutes and 20-25 students) since they are giving the Academic Achievement Center a period and a half. Given space constraints, there is no way that 40 students will fit, and given the time constraints, there’s almost nothing we can do. My Director and I agreed that under these circumstances, we’d rather just not do it and would rather just get the students when they come to the library for EN101. Ironically, the civilian tours, which were a disaster last year (every civilian student coming to the library over the course of an hour and a half on no set schedule), are now going to be great, with 8 groups of 20 coming for 40 minutes each. Nice!

8:50 am – Work on clues for the scavenger hunt for the civilians. Walk around the library thinking of tasks for them to do and wrote up new clues.

9:30 am – Worked on instructional goals for FY10. I met with most of the librarians who take part in instruction a few weeks ago and we decided that the two things we’d like to focus most on this year are increasing faculty awareness of library resources and services and improving our own instructional effectiveness through assessment/analysis and peer review. Last year I did so many instruction sessions that I didn’t have time to really focus on instructional program administration, so I am promising myself that I will delegate more to our other instruction librarians.

10:15 am – finally took some psychology books that I’d weeded a few weeks ago down to the cataloger to delete and ordered a new version of a neuropsychology book for which we had the 1976 edition (ouch!).

10:35 am – Looked over new employee orientation since my new employee will be starting in a couple of weeks.

10:50 am – filled out reimbursement paperwork for ALA Annual, which I keep forgetting to do.

11:10 am – pumped and caught up on feeds

11:35 am – started cleaning off my desk. Since I’ve been working so few hours this summer, I’ve been just letting things pile up on my desk and now it looks like a disaster area. Made some headway, but got distracted by pile of LIS journals.

12:30 pm – ate lunch and put many, many journals into my colleagues’ boxes.

1:00 pm – received an email asking for the key to the office I’ve been using to pump breastmilk in (since my office is actually the most fishbowl-iest in the building). Someone in the Academic Achievement Center is taking over that office on Monday and wants to move in tomorrow. That was the final straw for me. Yesterday, my boss had told me that someone was taking over that office on Monday (!) and asked if I’d be ok with going to his office and pumping while he went somewhere else during that time. She also said that they put in an order with facilities to have blinds put on the windows of my office. I said yes, because I didn’t really see another option, but honestly, I wasn’t really ok with it. How uncomfortable to have to ask a stranger to leave his office so that I can pump breastmilk in it. Yuck! The email asking for my key was the final straw that made me realize that no, I can’t do this. It’s been one thing after another since I came back to work. First, no one had a key for the office where I’d be pumping and the glass door had not been covered (though our Office Manager had asked Facilities to do it 2 or 3 months before). Then, I got a guilt trip from someone (not library staff) that I was taking up an office to do this and was asked “well how long are you planning on doing this for?” I can see why so many working women stop breastfeeding when they go to work, because even in a pretty supportive environment like mine, there can be so many barriers, inconveniences, and uncomfortable situations. I had a few moments where I actually felt guilty for inconveniencing people… but then I got over it.

1:45 pm – decided to ask Director if I could just use paper and cover all the windows in my office. She didn’t seem crazy about the idea from an aesthetic sense, but she understands what a difficult situation this has been for me, so she said yes. Good thing too, since apparently, facilities hasn’t even ORDERED the blinds for my office!!! Sigh…

2:00 pm – Cut craft paper and taped up the windows. Finished product is ugly, but it is private.

Friendly, no?

3:00 pm – Answered some emails.

3:30 pm – Pumped in my office for the first time and caught up on RSS feeds.

4:00 pm – Worked some more on clues for scavenger hunt.

4:30 pm – Headed home. Not coming back to work until next Thursday, so this will be it for now!

With many of my colleagues on vacation and no students around, this isn’t the most exciting time to be recording my time at work. I will definitely do something similar during the Fall or Spring semester when I’m knee-deep in instruction.

8:00 am – arrived at work and checked email. Started creating a basic wire frame of what one of the program-specific landing pages might look like on our newly-designed Drupal website.

9:00 Talked to Director about our Freshman orientations. Normally, we have 1 hour and 15 minutes for each group to share between the library and museum and each group is usually 20-25 students. Now schedule is saying we have that amount of time to share between the library, museum and the Academic Achievement Center and we’ll have 40 students at a time. There’s no way we can do the active learning stuff we did last year (which students loved) under those conditions. Director has a call in to the office that created the schedule to discuss. Also showed Director my wire frame and she liked the idea of a landing page for each academic program.

9:15 Talked to Head of Reference about a distance learner who seems to not be understanding the instructions she’s trying to give her. Gave her some advice on handling the situation. Also talked about reference scheduling for Fall. Looks like I’ll just have an evening shift, which is good since I’ll be so heavily involved in instruction. Made the case for our Humanities librarian/Head of Digital Initiatives to have the same since he does at least as much instruction as I do.

9:40 Talked to our Office Manager about the Freshman tours and scheduled the Multipurpose Room for our civilian tours (which usually come in larger groups).

10:00 Emailed our soon-to-be distance learning librarian about the library website redesign to get her 2 cents on it. Even though she doesn’t start until August 17th, I want her to have as much input as possible.

10:30 Emailed the drupal web designer we found with my wire frame and some basic ideas.

11:00 pumped and caught up on feeds.

11:25 Started answering on emails missed since Friday.

11:30 Met with Head of Academic Computing and one of the instructional designers at Norwich who had some useful suggestions for our web portal redesign. While we were planning to make our portal visually consistent with the course management system, student feedback has shown that they want the CMS to be visually consistent with the norwich.edu website (they want to feel a part of the University). So it probably makes more sense to make the portal visually consistent with the norwich.edu site. They also let me know that new students no longer recognize the abbreviations for their academic programs (which are not being used much anymore), which completely screws up my idea for the site nav. Sigh… Still, a useful conversation, because I didn’t know all that.

12:00 Talked to Director and colleague about the meeting and my now total bewilderment regarding what the design of the site should look like. Got some ideas from talking about it out loud.

12:15 Wrote to Administrative Dean of the school of graduate studies to ask what her preference would be in terms of the design, since she’s the one holding the purse strings.

12:25 Ate lunch. Soup is a really bad idea on a hot day when you’re trapped in an un-air conditioned office. Very sticky!

12:50 Got email from Administrative Dean. She said that not only should it look like the regular norwich.edu website, but they are going to be redesigning the CMS to look like it as well. Well ok then.

1:00 Revised wire frame in light of changed look and need to spell out program names.

1:30 sent email with revised wireframe and revised information about the look to our designer.

1:50 Answered emails from faculty about journal cancellations, book purchases, and link problems.

2:00 Heard from head of Academic Achievement Center that the schedule for Freshman orientation is incorrect and we all have the same amount of time as last year. Still haven’t heard back from the office that created the schedule though, so I’m waiting for additional confirmation. Emailed the Museum Director to coordinate the civilian tours between our two facilities.

2:30 Watched Brett Bonfield’s adorable video promoting his library’s 5K race. Nice job!

2:35 Went around to colleagues to ascertain who would be around to help with library orientation week. We have 20 separate groups coming in for our orientation/scavenger hunt, so it’s going to be hectic.

2:45 Answered email from faculty member about instruction session for Fall. Continued email collaboration with Museum Director and Archivist about the Freshman orientations. Received email back from soon-to-be Distance Learning Librarian who had some excellent feedback on the library website redesign (that’s why we hired her!).

3:15 Pumped and caught up on RSS feeds.

3:40 Answered a few more emails.

4:00 Left early since hubby is leaving tomorrow for a business trip and needs to get ready (which means I need to take the munchkin). By this time it is so hot in my office that if I actually wore makeup, it would have melted off my face, so I’m relieved to be leaving early.

Not a particularly exciting day, but at least I made some headway on some important projects and didn’t die of heatstroke.

This is part of the Library Day in the Life meme going on this week. What an awesome idea!

I cheated on this a little — I wrote this up on Thursday since I’m not working until Wednesday. Until mid-August, I’m only working 2 days per week so that Reed can wait until he’s 4 months old to start daycare. I’ll also write up the days I work this week (Wednesday and Thursday).

So here’s a day in my life as a Head of Instructional Initiatives. I don’t think this is a particularly typical day since the students aren’t here so I’m not teaching, but I also don’t think I even have “typical days” during the school year.

8:00 – arrived at work with husband and Reed in tow since I can’t drive due to a sprained shoulder. Colleagues oohed and ahhed over Reed (who wouldn’t?)

8:10 – Fed Reed while computer booted up and went through several updates

8:30 – Checked email and talked to colleague about redesigning our web portal for distance learners (which we just found out we got funding for – awesome!) . We’re going Drupal, baby!

9:00 – Engineering liaison and I met with Dean of the School of Engineering and Civil Engineering faculty member about information literacy instruction for engineering students. It was a great meeting because we all pretty much wanted the exact same thing (problem-based active learning, teaching students to critically evaluate sources, etc.). We’ll be teaching 6 3-hour classes in the Fall, reaching all of the Freshmen engineering majors. YAY! Also talked to them about getting library instruction in somewhere else in the curriculum, like when they have their big senior project and have to do all sorts of in-depth research. It was something they hadn’t considered, but they seemed open to the idea. I talked about what I’ve done with the senior History seminars.

10:00 – Checked reference email accounts and answered several reference questions that came in overnight.

10:30 – opened up spreadsheet of journals in the social sciences and continued to work on making cuts. Mulling over whether to cancel some journals that we get in EBSCO with a one year embargo, since we could get the articles for students and faculty through ILL. It drives me crazy to be paying $1000-$3000 for essentially one year’s worth of content.

10:45 – Emailed political science faculty member with a list of journals I’m considering cutting and requesting feedback. Put a few on the list that I doubt I’ll cancel, but I wanted his feedback as to whether it was an essential title or not.

11:00 – Pumped some milk for Reed (ah, the joys of being a working mom) – browsed RSS feeds during that time.

11:30 – Worked on a course guide for a senior seminar on the Civil War in which I’ll be providing library instruction in September. There are way too many resources on the Civil War and it can be hard to create a guide that includes only the best/essential resources.

11:45 – Spoke to a Drupal developer about the redesign of our library portal for distance learners. His company seems to be the Cadillac of Drupal web redesigns. Very impressive, but we don’t need all the bells and whistles and those bells and whistles come with a hefty price tag.

12:30 – Ate a quick lunch while going through the journal spreadsheet. Why is it that I love trimming the fat off our budget? It’s like spring cleaning. I’m hoping to cut enough that we can get some collections we really need that will likely get a lot of use. Students use databases much more than single title subscriptions.

1:00 – Worked on getting quotes and hourly rates from Drupal-experienced web designers. Hit up folks on Twitter and Friend Feed for suggestions. Got some crazy expensive quotes and some reasonable ones. Continued to check reference email accounts and answered a couple more email queries.

1:45 – D’oh! Forgot that I was supposed to be on Meebo. Quickly logged in.

2:00 – talked to colleague about cutting journals and making the difficult decisions. We both tend to not be as sentimental about the collection as some of our colleagues, so he’s always a good person to get advice from.

2:30 – Put in more work on the Civil War course guide.

3:30 – Asked colleague if we could get usage stats for political science journals I’m considering canceling as faculty member has requested them. Got click-through stats from Serials Solutions and sent them on. Ugh – only 5 hits in two years for one of the journals (and not a cheap one either).

3:45 – Emailed criminal justice faculty about journals I’m considering canceling. Got a quick response about a one that they consider essential and a few that they’d rather not lose if at all possible. Will really depend on how much the SAGE collection they want us to get costs.

4:00 – More milk making and RSS feed browsing

4:20 – Glanced at email and saw one about Freshman orientations (for which there is a library component). We did a fun activity last year, but it was a heck of a lot of work, so I’m a little nervous about prepping for it on my limited schedule.

4:30 – Shut down computer and ran outside to meet Adam.

6:00 – Checked email from home and emailed Criminal Justice faculty member back to reassure that I would not cut any journals considered essential by his faculty.

6:15 – Emailed Drupal designer that I’m considering hiring for the redesign. He seems to understand the scope and isn’t trying to up-sell us on stuff we don’t need right now. Draft email to the powers-that-be about getting the go-ahead to start working with him.

6:45 – Went through RSS feeds while watching Hell’s Kitchen in bed with Adam and Reed.