Saturday, August 16, 2008

Day in the Life of a Children's Librarian

8:30a - Arrive at work, put stuff away, check email, greet coworkers.

8:45a - Go through board books, pulling ABC books for a preschool loan bag.

9:10a - Back in the office, look up additional books and other items to add to bag.

10a-12p - On desk. We have a few more Summer Reading Club finishers and in between those I peruse a couple of audiobook catalogs and finish reading Helping Homeschoolers in the Library by Adrienne Furness (which was excellent, by the way).

12:15p - Time for lunch and reading The Hunger Games (I can't put it down!).

1:15 - Back from lunch, I straighten up my desk, check email, and get some stuff together to work on while I cover the Adult Services desk.

2p-4p - Cover one of the Adult Service's desks while they have their monthly meeting. When we have meetings, one of them covers our desk and when they have meetings we take turns covering their desk. Here's a sampling of questions I was asked:

Can you help me with the copier?
I'm looking for CDs by certain artists. Can you help me find them? How are your CDs arranged?
Where are these non-fiction DVDs?
Can you find a phone number for me?
Where are books by this author?
Do you have this book on tape or CD? Can I put it on hold?


In between questions, I work on organizing some preschool loan requests I've received and get a little reading done in my next professional development book (The Teen-Centered Book Club). a

4:00p - Adult Services librarians come back from their meeting and relieve me from the desk. I talk with our graphic artist about the bulletin board in our Teen Zone. I order a couple of posters and fill out the graphic request.

4:45p - Make copies of our school loan order forms in preparation for the start of school and influx of orders we can expect, file received requests in my preschool loan folder.

5:00p - Time to go home!