Continuing my Wednesday adventures, for the rest of the day I have...
12:35 - 1:00: Derp around with some administrivia. Find out that the donation assessment stuff is basically settled. Excellent.
1:00 - 1:45: Meet with staff who have flex days to work our a system whereby not everyone is out of the office on the same day. Come up with some great, varied solutions - one staff member moved her flex day off of Monday, one said we could call her in case of emergency, all agreed that if they reschedule a flex day, it won't be moved to a Friday or a Monday. We also came up with a strategy that minimizes library closures in the case that everyone is away on the same day. We're almost to the point where flex days are operationally impossible, but we're not there yet, and quite frankly, I'd like to keep flex days as an option for staff - they cut down on sick days, for one thing.
After the meeting, I had a quick chat with our Systems librarian about serials control and management, and we agreed that we're going to have to assess the level of serials control we apply, seeing as full holdings maintenance is a lot of work, and we're not sure whether the ROI is there. One option might be to only do summary holdings for subscriptions where we have both print and internet access... but that's just a thought at this point.
1:45 - 3:00: I'm on the ref desk this afternoon! Get a call from an external client, do some calling around to find the right person's contact information. I maintain that one of my most useful skills as a librarian is my willingness to pick a likely person from an org chart, call them, and say "Hi! You might not be the right person for me to talk to, but I'm hoping you can help!" (Note that this is different from "You're the first person whose name came up in GEDS. Do this thing for me which is totally outside of your job description because I can't be bothered to look any further, and no I do not want the name of the person whose job that is." I've been on the receiving end of calls like that from other librarians, and let me tell you - frustration city!)
3:00 - 5:45: Work on various administrivia. Update our Chief on the proposed solution regarding flex days. Chat with a staff member about an HR issue that has diffused very nicely. Contract procurement. Subscription management. Contract procurement. Fret about my headache and hope very hard that it's not a cold. Start thinking about what I need to do tomorrow. Start working on a spreadsheet for my awesome Finance admin person detailing subscriptions that we procured on behalf of specific client groups, for which we need to do cost recovery. Listen to The Decemberists (The King Is Dead) while I do it - I really love Calamity Song. Get a call from a regional colleague with more history/better knowledge of our Taylor and Francis file than I have; she's offering to sort it all out, and keep me in the loop. Yes please and thank you. So many of my colleagues really, really rock. I'm new in this position, so it's great to have someone offer to step in and lend a hand every once in a while! I usually ask for help when I need it, but it's nice to have it offered, too.
Husband arrives, and I'm out!
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