Monday - Libday 8

Aargh!  Libday has rolled around again!  And despire it now being Tuesday and me having not realised it until this morning, by the Power of Outlook¹ I am able to recreate What It Was What I Did yesterday.²

Does anyone else remember Teachers?

So.... MONDAY.

I got to work at 9, and waited for exactly 14 minutes for my computer to let me actually do something.  Normally I'm at work earlier to combat this but TFL's Evil Overlords prevented me that morning.  Once it was working, it was time to deal with the emails, which is I SWEAR what I spend a good 1/3 of my LIFE doing:

 

•  replying to queries³, helping people, making arragements for teaching sessions or other bits and pieces with academics, colleagues, people at CPD25, that sort of thing.
• deleting JISCMAIL (apart from when they're useful or people are having an amusing squabbles).
• reading Very Important Missives from various people.
• wondering why I've been sent this and if I was supposed to do something about it that I've forgotten
• sending Very Important Missives to various people who will then wonder why I've sent them this and if it was something they've forgotten.
• moving stuff into folders so I can find it later.
• swearing at the automated 'Your mailbox is FULL which will cause the internet to FAIL in three minutes and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT' email, and half-heartedly deleting a few Sent messages with PDFs in them.

Then I spent a few hours (three?  Four?  It was a while, anyway) planning a teaching session with a colleage - on Thursday we've got some Gifted Youth coming to see us as part of a partnership programme with their college, so we're going to do a workshop to introduce them to what academic libraries are about and how they can use them to research - they're all doing extended essays for their A Levels - and a bit about citing and referencing and how to actually evaluate results.

Colleague and I have never actually taught anyone under 18 before so we're erring on the side of Over Prepared.  We teach LOTS of information skills workshops throughout the year, so we've lots of materials to draw on, but getting the tone and level right is hard - we don't want to patronize or bemuse.  Teaching sessions take a huge amount of planning, because you always want to change them and make them better - for every hour in the classroom I do at least 90 minutes of prep, even when I've taught the session  before - for this one, it's even longer.

Look! Ikea! I've still not worked out where the actual drawers are.

After that I had some lunch, when I came to the disturbing conclusion that I might be stuck with my horrible sofabed because the ones that fit two people are too wide for my space, but the ones that fit are too narrow for two people.⁴  On the up side, I did see some nice bedside tables.

Then it was back to the emails - my 'sent items' folder reveals I was mainly concerned with organising an induction for a member of staff outside the library, a focus group⁵ that colleagues were doing at a different site about a web development, organising an induction for some other partnership students, planning a meeting about and some actual teaching for some staff training I'll be delivering for evening and weekend counter staff, liaising with some academic staff about a series of workshops I'm deliving for some PhD students in my department, checking something about our Subject Guide system with a colleague from my last job, and talking some stuff over with colleagues from my CPD25 task group.

Then at 14:30 I was on the Help Desk on our book floor, answering all sorts of questions, from the perrenial 'where is the loo please?' right up to 'Aaargh I am a new PhD student and it's all confusing and here is my topic and here are my fifteen questions' - which is sadly just my idea of fun.  I also got visted by two academics from my department with various problems and questions and book orders.

By 16:15 I was off the desk and chatting with some colleagues about reading list management, looking at the training materials again, looking at emails again, and also worrying about this blasted sofabed.  You know it's time to leave when you're daydreaming about those mittens you're knitting, so I wrapped it up just in time to recieve a phone call:

Customer Services: "You know how you're back up for the late night?  Well, I've not seen Late Night Lady yet...".
Me: *heart sinks to boots* "Oh, really?"
Them: "I'm sure she'll be in soon cause she's not phoned but could you hang on until she gets here?"
Me: *rails internally and considers possible escape routes, all thwarted by being on 6th floor* "Sure, I can do that."
Them: "Great, I'll let you know when - oh, she's here! Never mind!"
Me: *leaves trails of flames as she flees the building*

And that, my dear readers, if any of you are actually left now, was Monday.




¹Much like the Power of Grayskull, but with no actual He-Man.  We're a bit short of those in our office. *writes off to CILIP* 
²I've heard people use memory for this, but I've never had much luck with that.
³The answer to a minority of these would usually have been more easily found by a ritual Reading Of The Instructions or The Searching Of The Google, but as I am frequently very guilty of both of these Crimes Against Subject Librarians when I'm in an unfamiliar situation, I forgive and forbear.
⁴Of course, the real solution here is for all visitors to stay in hotels in the future, but I suspect all my family and friends would develop fairly serious hate for me if I decreed that.  Apparently the state of my back is less important in my mind than the ability to have people over in Tiny!Flat.
⁵CARD SORTING EXERCISE!!!  (there is some debate over this :D)