Friday, July 18, 2008

A Day in the Life of a Children's Librarian

8:30a - Arrive at work, put lunch away, check email

8:40a - Make to-do list for the day, create budget sheet for my audio orders for this fiscal year

8:55a - Work on audiobooks order. I order all our children's audiobooks and audio book-and-CD kits. I recently finished weeding the audio cassettes and kits, so in addition to our regular standing orders I have a wish list I'm working on. It's quite fun and I've discovered a love for audiobooks since starting this job!

10:15a - Turn in my audio order for the month, get together with J in the story room to practice the storytelling program we're doing

11:00a - Finished going through our program, I head back to the office to plan our upcoming preschool educator night. Update my monthly report, chat with my boss about our new Flickr account

11:45a - Head outside to do our oral storytelling program (Garden Tales). J tells Beware the Bears and The Most Wonderful Egg in the World and I tell Epossumondas. We do rhymes and songs in between the stories. Families are invited to bring picnic lunches and eat while we entertain. We do this two or three times a summer and it's always well attended.

12:45p - Clean up Garden Tales and head inside (ahhh air-conditioning!)

1p-2p - Lunch time!

2:00p - Back in the office, go through PUBYAC emails, draft and send various communications about upcoming outreach programs

3:00-4:00p - On desk. In between signing up and checking in kids for the Summer Reading Club, here's what I am asked:

Do you have Twilight? (Yes, but there is a long holds list.)

Can I get the "real people" 101 Dalmatians? (By "real people" she meant the live-action version and we do not own it. I ILL it for her.)

Where are Judy Moody audiobooks? (I walk her over to the audiobooks and we find the one she wants.)

4:00p - Off desk, I head back to the office and work on my list for our storytime planning books. We do storytime sessions in the fall and spring and we plan them out ahead of time. It took some getting used to, but now I find it really convenient to have books and alternate formats already pulled. We're trying something a little different this fall, having drop-in programs instead of registered storytimes, so we'll see how it goes!

5:00p - Time to go home!