Library Day in the Life

Round 4 of the Library Day in the Life project is today.  Here is what I spent my time doing:

8:15am – Arrive at work.  Check email, resolve some scheduling issues regarding March CHEM 216 (Organic Chemistry) information literacy classes.  Thank my non-sciencey colleagues profusely for helping me teach seven 2 hour sessions in one week.

9-10am – Head down to a “satellite” library to look at Department of Agriculture documents with the Government Documents librarian.  We discuss what to keep and what to ditch and what to catalog.  Brief discussion of unused library space and the use of USGS documents and the scanning of NYS Museum docs.  Run into a biology faculty member.  Remind myself to stop by and see him when I am next in the Integrated Science Center.

10am – Tea.  Because life is better with tea.

10:10-11:45am – Work on a lesson plan for an upper level math class I will teach later this afternoon.  Teaching students about how to determine the intended audience of a particular article, resources to help spark research topic ideas, and basic search strategies.

11:45am – Tea and lunch and phone calls.  Talk with director of the Teaching and Learning Center about having a brown bag luncheon about open access.  He likes the idea, now I just have to find folks to come and get the thing organized.

12:15pm – Spend 15 minutes shopping online trying to find a dress for a wedding in May.  Give up.

12:30pm – Fix an IM chat widget for our new libguides implementation.  At least, I think it’s fixed. [Discover later tonight that it wasn’t fixed. Hmmm.]

12:45 – 2pm Organize and plan for a series of information literacy sessions in three biology classes with one professor.  Three different sessions are later this week.  Create survey about the primary literature to send to students to see if they can pick out a primary research article when they see one.  See poll

2pm – Discussion with associate director about library support for scholarly activity and why librarians need to stop going to library conferences.  He wishes there was library representation at this conference.

2:15pm – Tea

2:30 – Review lesson plan for this afternoon’s math information literacy session.  I know the less about the math and computer science literature than the natural sciences, so preparing for this session takes longer than normal.

3pm – Work on a blog post for the Milne Library News Blog.

3:15pm – Work on a blog post for this blog.

3:30pm – Download the latest podcasts and update my iPhone so I have something to listen to on my way home.

3:50pm – Head to the classroom for my information literacy class to set up tabs on computer.

4pm – Teach a session on understanding audience, finding a topic and finding literature for an upper level Math seminar class.

5:15pm – Go home.

7:00pm – Receive a thank you email from the Math professor regarding our class earlier in the day.  Do a little happy dance that it went well.