Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A Day in the Life of a Children's Librarian

9:00am - Leave apartment, books in tow, and head to local Montessori preschool for an outreach storytime.

9:25a - Arrive at preschool and get situated.

9:30a - Start first storytime for a group of 2-4-year-olds. We start with the song Hello Everybody and I read The Train Goes Clickety Clack, Dino-Pets, and Can You Guess?. I also do the song Five Green and Speckled Frogs with some frog finger puppets, and I do a felt of Bark George. We have a slight speckled frog eye casualty. Oops!

10:00a - Say goodbye to the first group and head to the next classroom for another storytime (for 3-5s). I read Duck on a Bike and Dino-Pets, sing Five Green and Speckled Frogs and do the felt of Bark George.

10:30a - Wrap up storytime and say hi to the elementary groups at the school before I head back to the library.

11:00a - Arrive at the library, enter storytime books into the database and put them away.

11:25a - Googly eye casualty fixed with a little bit of glue. :)

11:30a - Talk with coworker about upcoming constellation program, print out some pictures of Pleiades and constellations.

11:47a - Check voicemail (I do not do this often enough - email is a much faster way to contact me). I have a message from my Recorded Books rep making sure that I got his email with the answers to a couple of questions I had. Email him back.

11:53a - Make out a program sheet for upcoming preschool visit that colleagues are going on, print out map & directions for them.

12:13p - (I have "Hello Everybody (Glad to See You)" stuck in my head...)

12:14p - Check email.

12:20p - Update our teen Twitter. We've had a Twitter account for several months and at first I struggled to remember to update it. Now, I've created a Google document with books that I'd like to promote (for March it was Women's History, for April it's novels in verse, poetry, etc. I also try to keep track of special days and holidays like Holocaust Remembrance Day or Encourage a Young Writer Day) and upcoming programs. Every day I go through my list and pick out two or three books or programs or services to Tweet about. It's been helping me keep Twitter updated! We don't have a large number of followers yet, but the Tweets also appear on our website's teen page.

12:28p - Work on prep for upcoming constellation program. Need to learn stories about Ursa Major and Cassopeia. (Stay tuned for post about that program, it should be a good one!) I make a sample of the craft we're going to make and hope that it turns out. (It did!)

1:20p - Lunch time!

2:24p - Back from lunch and I work on a few preschool loan bags. I pull books on bugs, ponds, doctors, and dentists.

3:08p - I'm trying to finish weeding my portion of the 600s (600-629s). I take a cart and my pull list and head into the stacks to pull books that aren't being checked out or that are outdated or that are in poor condition.

3:50p - Done pulling, back in office to evaluate & fill out weeding slips.

3:52p - (Too hot in here, going to get some ice for my water)

3:54p - (Ahhhh)

5:13p - Done with the 600s! The weeded books go on a cart for my department head to look over before they're taken to technical services. I enter stats for the preschool loans I filled earlier.

5:24p - The weeding never stops. I run a report on audiobook CDs for weeding and head out to the audiobook section to pull CDs (and help N on the desk).

6:00p - Time to go home!