There's a string of "day in the life" librarian posts happening, so I thought I'd throw one in. Today wasn't a typical day, I suppose… but I don't really have typical days, especially these days.
6:00-ish am: Wake up, kick the cat off the bed accidentally, get out of bed.
6:20 am: Dressed and etceteraed, sit down with laptop to check out the daily news and a few webcomics. (What? It's my routine. It works for me.)
6:50 am: Feed cats before they kill each other. Or me.
6:55 am: Pick up bag and leave house to walk to work.
7:28-ish am: Arrive at work. Show early-admission pass. Trundle up the stairs and back to the half-an-office.
7:30-8:00 am: Triage email, play voicemail (I was out two days last week, so there was a shocking lot of it), check professional-type blogs and Twitter, make notes on to-do list.
8:00-9:15 am: Answer email as needed. Send out agenda for Thursday meeting, because owing to a local conference tomorrow and Wednesday I'll forget if I don't do it now. Read two documents (one short, one lengthy) on which I will be expected to have an opinion later in the day.
9:15-9:25 am: Make a phone call promised to a faculty member last week while I was out. Arrange for deposit of software source code into the repository. Assure faculty member that updates will be possible (no, the software isn't happy about that, but the software is wrong and the faculty member is right, so I'll cudgel the software into submission). Make mental note to add versioning to the tech wiki's page on new-repository requirements.
9:25-10:00 am: Hack at DSpace's XML configuration for web forms, so that I can roll an update into production later this week without undue disruption. (I thought I had this done, but I had to rethink myself; I want to move everybody to a new thesis form, but on sober reflection it's not a good idea to do that all at once.) Intermittently, plead via Twitter for repository deposits so that I can climb the next hundred milestone, which I'm less than ten items away from.
10:00-11:10 am: Work on the hemi-demi-semi-official e-research blog, embedding the various video bits we have of campus researchers talking about data and writing intentionally minimalist lead-in text.
11:10-11:30 am: Walk over to computer science building for meeting, dodging unbelievable amounts of road and building construction.
11:30-12:30 pm: Discuss first document read earlier, a draft of a proposal for the human element of data curation, destined for the campus IT strategic-planning process.
12:30-12:50 pm: Walk back to half-office.
12:50-1:25 pm: Triage more email. Check blogs and Twitter. Check the repository's item count. 8401, three cheers!
1:25-1:30 pm: Stroll over to School of Library and Information Studies library with colleague for meeting.
1:30-2:40 pm: Hold productive discussion of how SLIS student projects can lead to more library digital collections.
2:40-2:50 pm: Talk with SLIS faculty member on the way back to the library.
2:50-2:57 pm: Hastily triage email, grab fat yellow folder for next meeting.
2:57-2:59 pm: Scoot upstairs as quickly as possible; it's rude to be late!
3:00-3:40 pm: Discuss second document, a subcommittee report.
3:40-4:15ish pm: Walk home.
4:15-4:45 pm: Pull up tomorrow's presentation (for the aforementioned two-day local conference) for last-minute retouches. (8401!)
And thus is a day made.
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Wow - that's busy. Did you miss lunch?
Lunch? Was ist das?
Seriously, I don't bother most days.
I was wondering about lunch, too. I was hoping one of those meetings involved food. Do you snack? I always need something to keep me going - a few almonds, some fruit, something.