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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Day in the Life of a Children's Librarian

11:20am - Arrive at work, inform staff about coworker who's not going to be in today.

11:30am - Sign timesheets and turn them in. Log everyone's work hours in my ESRs.

12:00pm - Eat sandwich at my desk while I'm finalizing and submitting my latest book order.

12:30pm - Run upstairs to grab some books to booktalk at tonight's Teen Scene Initiative meeting. Get some last minute stuff together for today's outreach visit.

1:00pm - Meet with book vendor to look over some of the new books coming out. Together with staff, I decide on some books to buy.

2:30pm - Meet teen librarian and leave for a teacher meeting we've been invited to.

2:40pm - Arrive at local high school and get set up. They're having a meeting of some teachers in the school district and they've invited local groups to set up tables and promote their services. We are *extremely* happy to be invited as we are always looking for ways to connect with teachers!

3:00pm - Our table's set up and we wait for teachers to arrive...

3:30pm - Teachers begin arriving and we start talking up the library. I offer booktalks or storytime and teacher cards to any teacher who meets my eye. I'm hoping to be invited to some classrooms for booktalks, but we'll see...

4:40pm - Teachers have gone into their meeting and we tear down the table, even though we've been invited to stay until 6. We have to get back for our TSI meeting. We leave the handouts and flyers there, so hopefully teachers came by and picked them up!

4:50pm - Back at the library, we finish getting things set up for TSI.

5:00pm - Kids start arriving!

5:15pm - Teen Scene Initiative meeting. The teens are super excited about our upcoming Zombie Prom and I'm going to have them help me make the decorations. We also discuss other upcoming programs and I promote the Teen Scene Facebook Page. (It worked! I got 4 new "likes" after the meeting!)

6:15pm - We wrap up the meeting and clean up. I go out to relieve my staff person on desk.

6:15-8:30 - On desk.

- Where are Gary Paulsen books?
- How do I print in color?
- Chat with teen about Thursday's Anime Club meeting.
- Running child falls and bumps his head. I get an ice pack. (He was fine.)
- How do you spell "tomorrow"?

8:30pm - Time to go home! We start closing up the library, but we had a fantastic adult program on extreme couponing, so it takes us a little longer than usual to close up.

8:45pm - Okay, NOW we're going home!

(And it's not an omission... I didn't have time to take a break at all today. Some days are like that!)