Library Day in the Life

final post!: Thunderous Thursday

I’m finally back at work after a few days off for my birthday, and I thought I should wrap up the Day in the Life project since I didn’t post on the last day. Today is “Thunderous Thursday” – although it’s only cold outside, not rainy at all.

Sunday, Feb 5^th, I worked at the main library. When we have our rotation to that library we work in varied departments, I work in Reference. There were five of us in the Reference department that day. We started by dividing up the pull list (books requested for customers either at that library or at other branches in our system). Then I worked on some pathfinders in the work room. The children’s department was under staffed that day so I went down there for about an hour to help customers find books and check out headphones for the gaming computers. Then, I went back up to Reference, continued to work on the pathfinders and helped customers. The bonus about working on Sundays is that we only have to work for 5 hours, but we still get paid as if we worked 8!

Towards the end of the day I shelved a cart of Large Print Books and helped some customers find books, but beyond that it was a pretty easy day.

I had Monday & Tuesday off and we were closed yesterday so today is my first day back since Sunday. So far it’s been fairly steady.

Tonight is our teen event. We had a total of 37 teens enter guesses for the candy bowl so far. I’m not holding onto too much hope that we’re going to have a big turn-out, but we’ll find out at 6pm tonight!

If nobody comes, we’ll all have a sugar high from eating the 448 pieces of candy in the jar.

Day 6: Almost Superbowl Saturday

I didn’t post yesterday! I don’t really have an excuse, besides I worked in circulation most of the day and then on a story time based on fables and fairy tales for a kids explore program later this month.

Yesterday we also had picture day! Someone from the main library is working on a database of employees pictures. His plan is to make it so everyone can look at the pictures and learn the names of co-workers we rarely see. Then, when you hover the mouse over the picture another picture will appear – one of whoever that person admires or strives to be like. It should be a fun way to get to know other employees in the library system.

Also, on the first Friday of the month, a “gym for kids” organization in town hosts a program here at our library. For some reason yesterday, they didn’t show up. So Kim, our Children’s Associate, had to throw a program together in about two minutes. From the sounds we could hear emanating from the conference room it sounded like a complete success!!

Today is title Almost Superbowl Saturday.

On Saturdays half the staff works, this way everyone gets every other weekend off. This Saturdays shift consists of myself, Bob, Juanita, Tracey, and Tiffany. Currently, the system we use for everything – to check  in and out books, to update accounts, I mean EVERYTHING, is down. So, I found the forms we use to hand write everything going out and Bob is looking for procedures to run the system as “stand alone.” While this system isn’t working, the internet is. So we’re holding hope that sometime in the next 20 minutes, our system will come back on-line.

Ironically, (or maybe not…) yesterday the internet went down system wide, but the system for checking books in and out was still up. Maybe all that knocking on wood yesterday backfired on us today.

Days 3 & 4: Touchdown Thursday!

Today, I think, it going to be two-post Thursday. In honor of two things: first, I didn’t post yesterday because we were closed; and, its Groundhog’s Day! So in honor of the movie, everything happens at least twice.

On Tuesday we had to come up with the word for Thursday and I really wanted something positive, but we’ve had thrilling Thursday a lot, as well as Tremendous Thursday so, in honor of the up-coming Super Bowl (that I could not possibly care less about) we went for Touchdown Thursday.

Our branch location is closed on Wednesdays and Sundays. The way our library system works is this: The main library is open seven days a week, each of the branch locations is closed on Sundays as well as one other day during the week. In order for everyone to get an occasional weekend off, the employees of the branch locations work on a rotation at the main library. It’s not everyone’s favorite thing to do, but I guess it’s fair.

Thursdays are our late day. They are also one of our busiest. Our Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday hours are 10-6 but Thursdays we are open 12-8. Since we are closed on Wednesday we usually have a back-up in the circulation work room for most of the morning with books from the Pony as well as the Book Drop from the past two nights.

Today I started our pre-event teen activity. We have a Candy Jar set up at our “help desk” (a desk that faces the entrance that has pamphlets and Bookpages on it) with a ballot box, ballots, and pencils. The teens have to guess how much candy is in the jar and then come back next week Thursday (Feb. 9^th) to find out who guessed the closest. The winner, of course, gets the candy. We’ve been open 55 minutes and a teen just came to the circulation desk to get his card re-newed and I told him about it. He was reluctant to guess, but his mom made him… atleast the ballot box isn’t empty!

Day Two: Tireless Tuesday

Tuesdays always seem to be a busy day at the library. In the mornings we have our children’s programming. 10am is the Baby Story time Program for ages 0-2 and 11am is the Preschool Adventures program for ages 3-5. Today we had a fieldtrip from a Preschool for the 11am program, so there were a total of 35 kids. Normally we have just under 10 for the baby program and 10-15 in the preschool program. With so many kids our first story seemed to take an eternity, so we only did about half of what was planned. (Better than the alternative, which happened last week during the Chinese New Year Storytime).

After programs I checked my e-mail and went to lunch.

After lunch I worked in circulation and then had a meeting with the branch manager and Tiffany, the Associate in charge of teen programs for our branch and planned out the next couple months of teen activities. Our branch is located in a more affluent area of town, so events like Wii games nights don’t really draw a crowd. In an attempt to up our attendance in teen events, we have added some new activities. During a recent outreach, the teens requested writing groups and poetry slams. So in March and April we’re going to attempt to develop a writing group where teens can come in and talk about writing and share some of their own work. Fingers Crossed!

 Our plan for February is to have a candy guessing jar for a week prior to our event (guess how many pieces…blah, blah, blah) and then during our event we will award the correct candy guesser and make Valentines for Veterans through the Wounded Warrior project. Our library system/city is near a military base, and since we serve a large military community we thought the best way to incorporate a craft with the Teen programs is to have it be a way of giving back.

In other library news… we’re all getting ready for February. Juanita, who runs the senior programs, made a wonderful Black History Month book display; Bob, our resident IT expert, has been running around answering computer questions, (helping customers load pictures from flash drives onto e-mail attachments); Tracy, who is a master at shelving and shelf checks, has cleared out our back-up of carts waiting to be shelved.

When asking Joan (who worked circulation most of the morning) what to add to the blog she said we love our customers so much they have inspired us to become younger, healthier, thinner and wiser! (maybe her nose grew a little longer, too) J

Day One: Mindless Monday

This is my first time participating in the Library Day in the Life Project…So I guess it would seem appropriate to first post an introduction. I’m Katie, a Public Service Assistant at a Branch library in West Central Georgia as well as a MLIS student through Florida State University. At our library, everyone is cross-trained to do everything so I’m going to try and share the variety of tasks our staff completes throughout the day.

 In this blog, I’ll write about the happenings of our branch and share interesting stories (if there are any) of the exciting events at our library! While all of the staff will (hopefully) be contributing stories and anecdotes, I will be the one posting to this blog.

It’s currently close to closing time, so I am writing this blog in between checking customers out at the circulation desk and answering the phone.

Today was Mindless Monday at our library. When I started working here (about two months ago) I added adjectives to our staff dry erase board (the one where we write who is out that day, who has meetings when, etc.). Everyone seems to like the descriptions of the days and Barb, who is on day 5 of a 6 day stretch, got to pick the word today.

Here’s a run down of my typical day…
We open at 10am, so my work-day starts at 9.
I start by helping with the book drop and the pony. Ours is a branch library, so we have books coming and going through our library system via “the pony” a few times each day. This also includes the book requests – checking them in, wrapping them, and putting them on the hold shelf. Occasionally, I remember to pull the expired holds as well. Those get checked back in and sorted in the workroom.

We then have a daily staff huddle about ten minutes before we open. Here is when Kirsten, our fearless leader, gives us a run down of the day and updates us on any policy changes or news that affects the library system.

Doors open at 10 and I start the day in circulation, helping customers find books, check them in, check them out, etc. I also get to help Kim, our children’s associate, with all of the children’s programming.

Once we opened, I realized that this was the week Library Day in the Life was starting, so I ran down to my manager’s office to remind her and then proceeded to create this blog!

Today, our manager left to go to the main library to work on our strategic plan. Those two words, “strategic plan” have been the buzz-words of our library system as of late.

Our system is run by the school district, so our administrators are currently working with the managers and directors are working together to modify our strategic plan. Our branch has a really diverse community of customers, so we had an “extra long huddle” last week to go over each of the objectives and discuss what we’re already doing and what we can do to make the programs we offer even better for our customers.

Today I had my first experience of writing an incident report. A customer had a problem getting their change out of the printer and cut their hand, I walked over to assist them and saw blood. I almost got sick so I just signed off as a witness and Joan, our part-time employee, took over and helped the customer with his clean-up, bandaging, and copying. He didn’t need stitches, and wasn’t even upset about the incident, but I got to see the incident report in action!

At this point, I went to lunch. It was…time for a break.

When I got back from lunch I worked in circulation again, and worked on a pathfinder for Money Smart Week. Making pathfinders has become my latest favorite thing to do. The last week in April our system is having a Money Smart Week. Each day (I think) we are going to have different speakers come to the library and have them speak about different money-related topics…such as savings, mortgages, insurance, etc.

I also answered the phone a lot this afternoon, renewed books for customers and helped with some kindle troubleshooting.

All in all, it was a Marvelous Monday… although looking back I can’t remember a lot of the details so perhaps it was a little mindless.