Tuesday 2 August 2011

Library Day in the Life Round 7

I came across Library Day in the Life Round 7 when checking Twitter, and really liked the idea. I hadn't heard of it before, but thought it would be great for me to do for two reasons:

1. I don't know about you, but none of my friends and family seem to really know what I do at work. I can explain - and do - over and over again, but by sharing my day via tweets now I can just point them to those tweets. And for those who use Twitter, they'll just see it and know!

2. I keep saying I should tweet more. By sharing my day at work via tweets, I hoped it would give me a bit more confidence in being vocal on Twitter.

I felt that sharing just one day wasn't really enough though. My days are massively varied at work (as are my hours, weeks and months), and even more so in the summer when there's time to concentrate on a range of different things (and not just spend the day answering academics questions, fun as that is). So I decided a weeks worth of tweets would give a better overview. Library Day in the Life is happy for you to blog about a day or a week at work (or tweet, video, animate, take photos, or anything else you can think of), so Round 7 lasted from July 25 to July 31.

For those of you who aren't addicted to Twitter, below is what I tweeted (times are guestimates)...

Sunday 24 July, 7pm  
Just back from a family-filled weekend in Exeter - getting ready to spend a week tweeting about my role as repo manager for

Monday 25 July
7.30am: Off to Leicester Uni to chat to repo manager and team about technical skills you need when working with repositories
5.30pm: Not had much of a chance to tweet today as busy meeting the Leicester Uni repo team. Useful day-learnt lots! More tweets this eve
9.30pm: Spent this morning learning about Leicester's repository - academics add research papers, then viewable by anyone searching Google
9.35pm: Reassured that many repository managers have web developer help - us managers know a bit  about editing web pages, but not a lot!
9.45pm: Had interesting conversation with Leicester staff about challenges of integrating repository with a university-wide research system
9.55pm: Caught up with #CILIP Update on train – reading articles on digital preservation & how researchers discover things with metadata
10pm: Long day today: Leicester is 3 hours train ride from Bristol. Tired, but got lots of useful advice. Back in the office tomorrow  

Tuesday 26 July
8.45am: Planning on catching up with those e-mails I've been avoiding and putting together slides for library teaching sessions
10.15am: Brain working overtime - have never delivered library induction sessions before so learning as I go!
12.30pm: Phew! Finished sample searches for new student inductions. Steep learning curve. Now, what about that repository?...
13.30pm: Transcribing an interview with an academic for Open Access week: 24-28 Oct (being prepared)! Still not dealt with those 75 e-mails
16.50pm: Wow! Fried brain today - thinking hard! Off to Cardiff libraries tomorrow for Assistant Librarians Away Day, but off home now

Wednesday 27 July
8.45am: Stood at bus stop waiting for the minibus to Cardiff to visit libraries there. Nice change from the day job!
Midday: Just had interesting tour of National Assembly of Wales and it's library. It's a different world to HE! Now enjoying the sunshine.
13.30pm: Lunch and a meeting in the park. If only all work days could be this relaxed!
16.00pm: Just visited Cardiff central library. Very colourful, great ideas -makes me want to live there so I can use it! Back 2 Bristol now.

Thursday 28 July
 
9.30am: Just had a quick e-mail catch up and now testing out the LIFE predictive costing tool for digital preservation
11.30am: Just finished showing our work experience student how to check if we can add full text of published PDFs to the repository 
15.45pm: Had a 1-2-1 meeting with repository adminsitrator, now transcribing interviews for Open Access week again - not a quick task!

Friday 29 July
10.30am: Finished transcribing interviews, talked to work experience student about advocacy material. Really need to tackle those emails now
16.15pm: Had a quiet day today. Said bye to a colleague who is going to work at another campus, and finally caught up with some e-mails!

Saturday 30 July
10.30am: No work tweets today. I work in a uni library, but not on any desks, so I get weekends off. Off to visit friends in Birmingham!

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