The following post is written as part of round 5 of the Library Day in the Life project.
I am currently Academic Support Librarian for Business, Management and Economics at the University of Warwick. I have been in post for almost exactly 2 months. Everyday I drive a 100 mile round trip to work and back. My iPod is my friend and about the only thing that keeps me going. For the next week, along with my daily work activities I am going to share with you my commuters soundtrack. It follows a familiar pattern everyday, in the morning I listen to a podcast and on the way home some tunes.
Morning soundtrack: The Archers Omnibus – you may well laugh but I have a valid reason for this choice; I listen to this out of nostalgia. Listening to the Archers reminds me of Sunday mornings when I was a kid.
I have decided that for this round of Library Day in the Life I’m going to base my posts around my daily to do lists. Over time I have experimented with a range of electronic to do lists but none of them have quite suited my needs. A good old fashioned scribble on a piece of paper does me just fine. So here is today’s to do list:
As you can see today was a pretty successful day with everything on my to do list ticked off. It makes up for Friday when I managed to cross absolutely nothing off. First up this morning I had to do a few sums for my subject budget for next year. Nothing too taxing as I’d done all of the hard work already. Now I’m just waiting for a few suppliers to get back to me and then I can send it off.
Next up a colleague gave me a whistle stop tour of the citation management software EndNote Web. I’ve never used it before so I’ve got some learning to do before I teach some dissertation workshops later in the year. This afternoon I had a play with both EndNote and Zotero trying to work out the merits of each. Registering for both was fairly straightforward as was downloading the add-ins for Microsoft Word and Firefox. When it came to adding citations however I had a nightmare with EndNote. I tried to add a couple of articles from both ABI/Inform and Business Source Premier to both accounts. With Zotero the process was as simple as selecting a radio button and clicking save. EndNote however was not playing ball and failed twice for no apparent reason. I shall try again tomorrow but so far it’s Zotero 2, EndNote 0.
A constant of my job are the enquiries – these never make it onto the to do list unless they are particularly complicated. Today I answered three; one about EIU data, one about access to case studies and one ongoing enquiry for a student needing help with Datastream.
One thing I set up early on in my new job was the Business & Economics Information Solutions blog. I try to post at least once a week. Today I added a quick post about Gapminder.
The last thing on my to do list to get crossed off was the mock-ups for my new business information pages on the library website. I have inherited a set of pages which are incredibly text heavy and require multiple clicks to access information. My aim is to redesign them before the start of the new academic year to make them more accessible and useful. The first step is drawing up a range of options – which I did today. Next I will present them to the rest of my team so that others can input their ideas and hopefully we can redesign all of the subject pages to a standard pattern.
Evening soundtrack: an impromptu playlist including Melissa Etheridge, KT Tunstall and The Indigo Girls.
Fantastic: nice to know I’m not the only mad librarian doing a 100-mile round commute every day. Like yourself, I don’t think I ever really appreciated my iPod and the range of Radio 4 shows until this past two months.
Thank you for this.
Hi Simon, thanks for your comment. It’s odd how reassuring I find it that there’s someone else as crazy as me! In actual fact that’s what helped me make the decision to take the job – I figured there were plenty of people out there who do a similar daily commute.
You both are crazy! Although saying that I used to do a 100 mile round trip to work until I realised I ended up paying more in petrol than I got paid. Doh. The experience was worthwhile though.