Wednesday 1 February 2012

Day in the life - Part 8, Day 1

Monday.

Before work
Bedside glass of water untouched: Must have been a rare peaceful night – don’t know as didn’t wake up to find out! Unfortunately, news from the scales was not good.

Registered for Day in the life, round 8. Frustrated by not being able to use IE; had to resort to Chrome. Used tiny.url to create url for blog, but not entirely sure that’s what I was supposed to do, and perplexed as the link has come out in bold. Sighhhhhh.

Spent the journey to work listening to Radio 4, planning my work day and thinking about jobs I need to do after work (despite being a #latenightlibrarian).

Must check on the state of the cataloguing throughput. Must catch up with a member of the team. Have put all my revalidation documents onto my USB; they were scattered on my work computer, my home computer and my laptop! Now, didn’t I read about something in #cpd23 that helped with file organisation????!!!! Wondering if the boss has managed to catch up with the person we selected for a promotion last week.

Humph, no space in the work car park: I don’t usually bother trying, but ... Very cold walk to work has resulted in sciatica resurfacing on one side and hip pain returned on the other. You’d think I was 71 not 51. Sometimes resent paying for work car park when I rarely manage to get into it. Often arrive at work stressed and on the verge of tears – over car parking?? Golly, I’ve lost the plot a bit, haven’t I? Oh well, at least it’s been interesting to see the old Allied Carpets/MFI buildings knocked down and the land flattened, but not sure how I’m going to react to yet another supermarket going up in their place. Also interesting to follow the building progress of the university’s sports centre, after the demolition of the Bow String Bridge. Plans to pedestrianise the “main” road that runs through the centre of the “campus”, while a nice idea, will see me (and probably lots of other folk who come from north of the city) having to take a huge detour.


9.35am
Tea made. Long chat with team member who was unexpectedly off last week. Chat with boss about one or two things. Cataloguing shelves checked. 18 ¼ shelves. Possibly partly due to one cataloguer being off on extended leave, one taking annual leave to work on personal course, and one being a bit ill. If I get a chance I’ll do some, but do bear in mind that I shall break all my rules and go for the multiple copies, not the interesting, more difficult stuff!

Going through emails. Amazing how many come through, but I get confused because I look at it at home and answer any that are either urgent, won’t take long to answer, or are quick to answer, which means that I sometimes don’t go back over them properly and so miss some of the others.

Ah, an e-book invoice; good, been waiting for some! Oh, hang on, the balance doesn’t look right. Must go and check. Oh, both the people I need to discuss this with are in [different] meetings.

A member of team can’t attend a mandatory course because it’s not being held during hours that match her working pattern: I need to check the availability and suitability of the online version.

Meeting now set up for tomorrow to discuss inter-library loans??? That’s interesting as I work in a cataloguing and acquisitions team!

10.30am

Headache requires more tea. Arghhhh, now I remember why I never go in the staffroom at this time – too many people, not enough kettles, slow running cold tap, bumping into folk you’d rather avoid ... Bother, left last week’s [soya] milk in the fridge and just used that instead of this week’s. Luckily it looks and smells ok, but wonder what it will taste like? Have now eaten the filling from my sandwich, so it’s bread for lunch.

1.00pm

Oh, it’s now 1pm and I have spent the last 2 hours with one of our spreadsheet experts to see if we can find why I seem to have an extra couple of thousand pounds to spend! Now I have something to work with I’ll finish this off first, before going for lunch.

3.00pm

Now back at my desk doing a couple of odd jobs before I go up to the enquiry desk for a couple of hours of answering queries!

3.30-5.30pm

Steady stream of enquiries at the desk this afternoon. The usual problems with the photocopiers and other equipment. People having problems tracking down journal articles (or rather, more fundamentally, not realising it was journal articles they needed, not books). The usual confusion over which floor to go to for which books, misinterpretation of the information available on OPAC, and people not being able to find books on the shelves. Sighhhhhhh...

6.00pm

After a short tea break, I am now going to do some cataloguing! It’s a treat: I don’t get to do it very often, but I’ve had enough of spreadsheets for one day, and we do have a small backlog! Despite telling everyone to take their books for cataloguing in chronological order of receipt, I am going to take as many multiple copies as I think I can do, but shhhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone!

8.00pm

Have managed to get through a grand total of 14 books in 2 hours. 14 books in 2 hours????? That’s a rubbish amount of cataloguing, but I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t do it very often and have to keep checking the MARC manual, the LCSH file and webDewey!! Long gone are the days when I could get through 143 in 7 hours!!

So, hometime ...

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