What do you do?

Occasionally I’ve had people ask me ‘what do you do?’ They seem to think I didn’t do anything, especially now that school is out. I have JM who orders books and starts the processing of ordered and donated books. I have AJ who catalogs the books. I have LL who takes care of the front desk and the periodicals and the ILL materials. So what do you do?

I started to explain what some of the things are (reports, meetings, scheduling, uh…um…well…). I started thinking. What do I do? So, I decided I’m going to record what I do for a couple of days and just see what I come up with. Well it turned out that the days I did this ended up being a couple of days when I was the only person here (besides the patrons, oh yes, and a volunteer for a half day). So I had a mix of a little bit of everything. It made me appreciate the rest who were absent that day:

Opening procedures
…..unlock doors
.....change sign to 'open'
…..turn on lights
…..turn on equipment
…..boot up our automated system
…..check for overnight books
…..count the cash drawer
…..change the dates on the stamps
…..put out the new newspaper, dispose of old
…..print the ILL request list
…..pull the books requested
Checked email, voice mail and planner (more than once in some cases)
Readied books for courier pickup
‘Routed in’ books left by courier
Got SS (volunteer) started on a project
Called consortium office for a report template
Trained SS on covering books
Showed SS how to accession
Checked library’s on-campus mail box in administration building
Checked cataloging on books done by our (relatively new) cataloger
=lunch=
Went over Over-due list
Sorted mail
Checked email
Scheduled an appt.
Left message on voice mail for LL
Printed out email responses to questions in cataloging
Wrote out procedure for deleting graduating patrons
Worked on an in-house cuttering table, based on another’s
Answered the desk 4 times (it’s summer)
Answered the phone – unknown times – more than once.
Closing procedures
.....check in books
.....count cash drawer
.....turn off equipment
.....turn off table and bathroom lights
.....take up trash
.....reboot computers
.....shut down software
.....turn off scanner
.....check for patrons
.....turn off ceiling lights
.....change sign to close
.....lock front door

Of all the things I did, only three were really “library director” tasks. – No wonder I sometimes think I don’t get anything accomplished. Although I will have to admit, this was an unusual day with staff members absent. But it seems like there are other days that I don’t get much more of my “own” tasks done, either. Ever feel like that?

There’s always tomorrow. JM is back, LL is here every day now (she's new), AJ will be back in the office tomorrow. Maybe I should keep a new log and see what that reveals!