My job title is Government Documents/Reference Librarian, so my day is a mixed bag of managing the government documents collection, promoting government resources, supporting researchers who want to use these resources, and standing ready to answer any question that someone asks me. Additionally, I'm classified as tenure-track faculty, with all of the research and professional rights and responsibility that entails. 

 

So, for all of the curious:

 

9:15 EDT - I arrive at work. Give or take twenty minutes, this is my usual time. What's unusual is that I have already had some coffee. Yay!

 

9:30 EDT - Check and respond to email. I do look at my email throughout the day, but any complicated or annoying message gets shuffled off to the end of the day or first thing the next morning. I also had a voicemail that was not a fax, which is unusual.

 

9:50 EDT - I don't volunteer to blog at Free Government Information (FGI) because I am particularly good at blogging. I volunteer because I need to get better (and I'm genuinely interested in the topic). What better way to improve than to slam into the panicky feeling that it's the end of the month and I haven't posted enough? Fortunately, I didn't have to fight writer's block because today was the official launch of FR 2.0. I really couldn't find much to complain about, and ended up generating a quick overview for FGI readers. It's not the kind of post that I think is terribly useful because most FGI readers are likely to go play with it themselves. I'm happy, though, that the product is really good and there's nothing serious to complain about.

 

10:35 EDT - If it weren't for iced coffee, I don't think I'd get anything done all summer. 

 

10:50 EDT - Stopped to chat with several of my colleagues about the forthcoming collection move. Right now, it looks like the movers (and yes, I'm extremely grateful that we have movers!) could start moving government documents downstairs to the ground floor as soon as Wednesday. 

 

11:10 EDT - Took a moment to add a notice to the government documents website. I also discovered that I hadn't put my chat widget on the government documents services page, so I did that. I'm considering moving it to be front and center on each page, but I'm not always available to answer questions and sometimes I forget to sign off when I'm stepping away from my computer. Hm...

 

11:30 EDT - Reference desk shift. During the summer, we're allowed to stay in our office unless the student workers at the desk need assistance, but I prefer coming out to the desk for a change of scenery and a chance to grab a few questions. I answered a total of ten questions (including one on using library databases) and continued to plow through the DSpace course in preparation for an Ohio GODORT project.

 

13:00 EDT - The part-time reference librarian who is now super-part-time since she found another job came in for her weekly stint of listing documents for discard. For those of you who aren't familiar with the FDLP, we are required to offer documents we want to discard to other libraries in our state, primarily the State Library of Ohio (the state's regional depository). In order to do so, we need spreadsheets listing sudoc call numbers, titles, years, volumes, and the location codes we use to track discarded items while we wait six weeks to see if anyone wants them. In order to get these lists, we need willing fingers to type them up. We're short on student workers, so I'll finish creating the month's lists later this week. 

 

13:20 EDT - LUNCH. Bulgur pilaf and roasted cauliflower. I usually split my lunch between working and going through my Google Reader. Recently it's been more work than RSS, but I got a good session in today. Some of the reading was work-related, some not so much. But hey, that's what lunch is for, right?

 

14:10 EDT - I tried to capture this project in 140 characters and totally failed. Our upcoming move isn't a one-to-one shelf move. We're moving the documents into ranges that are only 6 shelves high, instead of the rather terrifying 7 shelf-high ranges they live in now. There are some large open spaces, and some shelves so overcrowded that...I don't want you to know how overcrowded they are. So the movers will move things onto the new shelves, leaving space on each shelf plus room for growth. To show where space needs to be left for growth, I placed bright pieces of paper with a number written on both sides throughout the stacks. The movers will be instructed to stop when they reach one of these papers, move to the next shelf, skip the number of shelves indicated, then continue loading documents. We'll see how this works. Anyway, I went through and paperclipped or binder-clipped each paper to the nearest document so that they stood less of a chance of sliding away.

 

15:10 EDT - I took a break from clipping to bring some Ohio legal documents to the Acquisitions department. We're no longer obliged to keep these in print because the electronic version is an official substitute, so they need to be discarded. Government documents processing handles federal documents discards, but because we integrate Ohio documents into the full collection, Acquisitions has to handle discards. I also printed out the State of Ohio government information newsletter to post on my door.

 

16:00 EDT - Back to clipping.

 

17:05 EDT - Done!

 

17:40 EDT - Looks like the time I'll actually get myself out the door...not too bad.

 

The fact that I wound up with no meetings today was just crazy happenstance. Usually I'm doing all of these between committee meetings, project meetings, lunch "meetings," and so on.

 

If you're a librarian, do you get to do any of the fun things I've done today? If you're not, what else do you want to know about my job?