Library Day in the Life Round 7 - Wednesday and Thursday

So much for doing a post per day - I don't know where the days have gone!

Wednesday got off to a fairly quiet start with a shift on one of service points. Working in the new library is certainly keeping us fit as we're taking clients to the collection and the services they're looking for, rather than just pointing them in the general direction.

After this shift I had a meeting with a PhD student who was wanting some help with their research. They're looking at using bibliometrics to measure the level of interdisciplinarity within the environmental science field. We had a look at the citation map feature on the new Web of Knowledge platform, and thought about ways of collecting and analysing the references from the articles published in a particular journal.

After lunch I had a meeting with an academic staff member to finalise the training arrangements for their unit. The training rooms in the new library are being finished off at the moment, so they might not be available. We came up with a couple of alternative venues that would allow the students to have some hands-on expeience of searching the library resources.

Thursday began with another service point shift at 9am, which was pretty quiet. Straight after this I had a shift in our Virtual Service Centre (VSC), and that was very quiet too. The VSC handles all the non face-to-face enquiries from patrons i.e. phone, email and chat.

 

With the new library came new Multi Function Devices (MFDs) for client printing and photocopying, as well as new software that patrons use to pay for this service. I got some training on these new MFDs this morning, which covered the various types of machines, where they are located, and how to use them. This is going to be one of the main source of questions from the students when they return to campus next week. The books are still arranged the same way, the computers still work the same, but the new printing and copying equipment and software is something they'll have to get used to.

 

I went to more training after lunch. This time it was a refresher in using the Circulation module of our library management system. I've worked in Circulation previously and have filled in at the Borrowing Counter when staff have been in meetings, so it wasn't completely new to me. On the service points there are a mixture of reference and circulation staff, so we'll now be dealing with circulation-related queries too. It's going to be a steep learning curve over the next few weeks.

 

Well, there's only one day to go in this round of Library Day in the Life. Next week the ALIA New Graduates Group is beginning a Twitter blitz as part of their #tweetAugust project. I've never been much of a tweeter, but I think I might give it a go next month.

Library Day in the Life - Round 7

I'm a couple of days late with this first post for Round 7 of the Library Day in the Life Project, as I only found out about it via a Facebook post from one of my friends. I'll have to try and summarise two days worth of posts in one.

I work as a Liaison Librarian at Macquarie University Library in Sydney, Australia. Monday 25th July was a landmark day at Macquarie University Library, as it was the day we started offering all our services from our new library. The building has been open since March as a study space, but on Monday it became operational as a library. As with any new facility there have been a few teething problems, but they've been worked out. We're now preparing for the return of the students from their mid-year break next week.

At 9am on Monday I began my one-hour shift at one of our new service points. There weren't too many patrons at that stage, but the shift was filled with figuring out where stuff was and how things would work. When I was at the service point again at 3pm it was a bit busier.

In between these two shifts I was checking email and making arrangements to meet an member of the academic staff regarding some training she wants us to conduct in a few weeks time. I also called another academic to follow up on their request for training.

I'm one of the "Technology Champions" for my department, which means I provide basic IT help and support to staff. We've changed to a new operating system and version of Microsoft Office with the move, so I answered a few questions from staff about problems they've been having.

In a symbolic gesture, I handed in my key to the office from the old library. The new building has swipe card access, so all the keys are obselete.

Tuesday 26th was a similar day to Monday. I had a shift at a service point, which wasn't too busy. The main excitement for the day was our first evacuation drill in the new building, which went off pretty smoothly. It did help that there were probably more staff in the building than patrons - the next one will be quite different.

I clarified some more details about the training rooms in the new library that we'll be using in a couple of weeks.

That's about it for the first couple of days. From now on there'll be a post covering each day.