Library Day In the Life: Day 3, Part 1

Hi, I'm Emily, and I'm the Acting Manager, Licensing and Access Services, for Natural Resources Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. Today, I...

 (As an aside, yesterday my husband asked me if I thought there was an issue with taking work time to blog about how busy my day had been. I don't think so, for a couple of reasons. A) I needed a bit of a break. I could have gone for a walk, but I blogged instead. B) My colleagues and I discuss our library and how we do things with other librarians/students/interested parties on a regular basis. Our Chief fully supports us giving tours, presentations, and demonstrations to librarians who are interested in how we do things - so Library Day In The Life is consistent with our efforts to share our approach with others.)

8:30 - 11:30: Good morning! I'm thinking that there can't possibly be more emergencies to deal with today - got them all out of the way yesterday. No voicemails this morning, no urgent emails - looks good!

• Poke around the Internet to see what's happening while nursing my tea. 
• Get the news that a contract employee working with our Information Management colleagues is here, and since we get her one day a week, and they're not set up for her, they want to know whether we can keep her busy. Heck yes! P has worked with us before, and she's great - I send her to our Map library to go shelve maps. The subject specialist sounds pretty excited. I need to touch base with our Manager of Technical Services to see if she can use P's help - they're super busy, could really use an extra set of hands. 
• Prep for the RLM meeting later this morning. I feel good about it.
• Get an email from our Chief saying that she likes the draft Collection Development Management Policy that I sent her. Hurray! Now I shall start circulating amongst colleagues for more revision/input.
• Email our Systems Librarian about a meeting we need to have with our Techs who do Serials Management. The Evergreen Serials Module apparently isn't ready to go, but our previous system has been taken offline - what to do, what do to...
• Remember that it is February 1st! Change my desktop wallpaper to this one (without the calendar). I really like Smashing Magazine's monthly wallpapers. I was tempted to go with a Valentine's Day-ish one, but thought the "Be Bold and Venture to Be Wise" message was a good one! 
• Review a US Memo on Facilitating Scientific Research by Streamlining the Paperwork Reduction Act Process that was shared with me by our Regional Libraries Coordinator. She suggested it would be useful to my thinking about collection management at NRCan - she likes the tone, and suggests we need to be very specific about collections that are not mission critical. We maintain a lot of information that is no longer directly relevant to our core mandate (because the department's activities have changed over time), and we also manage a lot of collections on behalf of industry/associations, etc. In order for our collections to remain relevant and useful, we need to re-examine their content, and I agree that the approach embodied in said Memo could be useful. Hurray for sharing!
• Contracting & procurement joy, and other varia.

11:30 - 12:00: Regional Library Managers meeting, which took place via teleconference. I spoke to them about actions required in order to go forward with the collection management work we need to undertake, and another colleague spoke about work on a national reference service model. The meeting went really well, and there were some great suggestions from my colleagues in the regions. I really like speaking to my regional counterparts, because it helps me understand what is going on outside of our little Ottawa-bubble. Their reality is quite different from mine (I think...), and it is very interesting to hear what they're up to, and their thoughts and observations.


12:00 - 12:05: Donation assessment stuff. I'm going to look into it after lunch.


12:05 - 12:35: Lunch!