DAY 2 – January 25, 2011

Getting Started

The first hour of the day was spent setting up a quick PBWiki site so I could post my Library Day in the Life.  I don’t have a personal public blog for library things.  And, rather than post to my organization’s blog, I decided to just set up a quick wiki site. 

This is also time to run through email that came in since yesterday afternoon, answer a few quick questions, and double check my meeting schedule for the day. It’s not bad. Best part is realizing I have a hair appointment mid-day!

9:00 am           LiLI Meeting Prep

Later this week is a meeting of the LiLI Steering Committee.  The Steering Committee is made up of 14 official members. Also participating are our field consultants, CE consultant, and other key staff that need to keep informed about LiLI, have contact with the library community that uses LiLI, and share feedback that drives the program.  It’s usually about 22-26 people attending. We meet 3-4 times per year.  At 9am I meet with my colleague, Shirley, who will facilitate the meeting for me.

Sidebar: Meeting Styles. My agency is committed to having productive meetings. Our meetings have a Meeting Leader (the content person), a Facilitator (the person who keeps the meeting on time), a Recorder (takes notes), and participants.  Sometimes, a person may wear more than one hat at a meeting.  Meetings have a purpose and desired results.  For an all-day meeting of an advisory group like the LiLI Steering Committee, different parts of the meeting may have different desired results.  Depending on the topic at hand, we may spend some time planning how to hold a discussion to make sure that all points are heard and recorded in the short time we have together.  Yes, that means having a meeting to plan a meeting.  On the surface, the practice might seem contrary to the idea of efficiency, but, in fact, it helps the meeting go smoothly and makes sure that the time spent in the LiLI meeting is time well spent for those that have traveled long and far to attend. 

The Commission recently hired an outside firm to do a study of the LiLI Database program.  The final report from the study, with its 15 recommendations, is the primary point for discussion among the LiLI Steering Committee.  As an advisory group, they will provide for us their initial reaction to the report and feedback on how they’d like to see recommendations implemented for the benefit of the entire library community.

The time with Shirley also gave us an opportunity to catch up on some other things and generally talk about some ideas we have for training and promotion of the LiLI Database program.

10:00 am         Post LiLI-D Study

The LiLI Database program study is not yet online.  This seems like the perfect opportunity to start using the LiLI social network to get it out there in the hands of the library community. 

• Posted PDF to our website.
• Added link to the study on the Facebook Page and Twitter
• Blogged about it and added a promo for our social networking tools on ICFL site.

In between all that: phone calls, helped the reception desk figure out who needed to proof the item the printer dropped off, and checked any new message in email.

11:00 am         More LiLI Meeting Prep and Other Bits of Tasks

• Finish the agenda & send to meeting attendees.
• Make sure staff have a copy of the agenda so they can attend if they are interested. All ICfL meetings are open.
• Lunch/Get Hair Cut
• Respond to emails
• Check on setup of meeting room for Thursday
• Conversation with coworkers about a couple presentations coming up and video of one available online.
• Work on handouts for Thursday’s meeting
• Help a new library director get ILL statistics from OCLC

(Get hair cut, respond to a few emails, check on setup of meeting room for Thursday, conversation in the hallway w/ a couple coworkers about a presentation I did & scheduling a different presentation, and eat while doing the next task.)

• Work on handouts for meeting.
• Provide instructions and masters of any handouts for Thursday’s meeting to the support staff member who will make sure everything is in place in time for the meeting.
• Use remaining 45 minutes until next meeting to get some LiLI overview materials printed for orientation of new staff.

2:00 pm           Orientation for New Staff

The Commission has a couple new staff members. After the initial orientation to get one started in their new position, each program coordinator schedules a meeting with them to provide an overview of the program, how it works, and to answer any needed questions.  We’ve found that spreading out this very content-heavy part of orientation to our organization works a little better than overwhelming new staff at the beginning with information they are likely to forget due to the onslaught of it all.  I’m meeting with 2 new staff today. One is almost done with his probationary period, but I’ve had opportunity to work with him a lot, so information about LiLI is not completely new to him.  I was out of the office a lot during is orientation period, so we’re using this as a make-up time.  The other is a new Management Team member who has been with us for just a couple weeks. He’s already asked great questions and provided information that will help the program where contracts and fiscal matters are concerned. 

3:15 pm           Take a Look Around

Took some time to break and look at a few Library Day in the Life posts to see how others’ days are going.  Of course, one paragraph in the State Librarian dropped in to talk about a couple things. We had a short discussion about ebooks, the upcoming LiLI meeting, and some ideas for things for the future.

3:50 pm           Oh no, it’s almost over!

Nearing the end of the day, I’m thinking the Mountain Dew wasn’t a very good idea. Sure, it was good at the time, but now it feels like a sugar crash.  Note to self: stick with water. Time to get it in gear for the rest of the day.

• Reviewed minutes from the ASCLA Board meetings held during ALA MidWinter meeting in San Diego.
• Printed copy of newest OCLC Report with hopes that I can read it – or part of it – during some down time on Friday.
•  Another visit from the State Librarian with follow-up information from earlier and an updates on a meeting I attended in her place during ALA MidWinter.  Sometimes, you just grab the time you have even if it’s while walking together to the printer or copier.

4:30 pm           Holy cow, it’s WHAT time????

The afternoon was good and productive, but not what I had expected.  With some concern about what I’d like to get done tomorrow, I focus on creating an index card with the most important things for Wednesday.  In my most organized times, I spend a few minutes before leaving the office in the evening to create a most-important-things list.  It’s an index card identifying the most important things I need to get done the next day. It gets taped to my desk in a place where I will see it all day – always drawing my focus to the most important tasks at hand for a day. 

• Helping support staff, working on flip charts for Thursday’s meeting, determine if the print is large enough.  It’s a big, long room and if I can just read it 10 feet away; it’s not big enough.  Why flip charts?  We’ll be editing and approving statements as a group – we need to see all of them at once and be able to edit them at one time. A projector isn’t as efficient for our needs; so we use the new-once-upon-a-time-in-land-long-ago technology called paper.

4:50 pm           Throwing in the Towel

I’m taking home some reports in case I get the urge to read them later.  But, I thinking it’s more likely I’ll have the urge to crochet.