Tag: Yesterday

libday7: day 3

The day began with sorting through the new email messages that arrived since yesterday, flagging actionable items with due dates, responding to those that could be done quickly, and deleting the irrelevant stuff.

Then I began to work my way through the to-do list, starting with verifying which ebook publisher licenses we have set up in GOBI and if any others need to be added. I tried to do this yesterday, but my login wouldn’t work. But, now that I’m in, I think I need admin rights to see them, so once again it’s on hold.

getting over the afternoon slump

Being thwarted in that, I dug back into an ongoing summer project — adding holdings years and correcting holdings errors for print journals in our OpenURL knowledgebase. I was lucky to have a floater assigned to me long enough to get the physical inventory done, and now it’s a matter of checking on anomalies (physical holdings but no catalog record, no physical holdings but with a catalog record, and neither physical holdings nor a catalog record but still listed in KB) and entering the holdings years into a spreadsheet that gets uploaded to the KB. I’m also adding location information, since we currently house print journals in four locations on campus, as well as adding notes about shelved-as titles.

Since I was on a roll with this project today after nearly a week of being distracted by other tasks, I decided to stick with it after lunch. I’m at 55% completed and I was hoping to have it done by mid-August, which will require a bit more diligence than I’ve given it for the past couple of months.

I had a brief afternoon interlude with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a can of Coke Zero. Ahh…

I also paused to help a friend who is tech support at a medical non-profit in town. She was trying out their new remote desktop support service, so I let her take over my computer for a brief moment. Hope that was kosher with campus IS, but I figured it was for a good cause, and librarianly of me to aid in someone’s information needs.

Then it was back to the spreadsheets and the data and the ZOMG WILL THIS EVER END.

Hit a stopping point and decided to use the last 15 min of my day to wrap this post up and catch up on some professional reading.

beer & food

My review of Bob Skilnik’s book was published yesterday, and the first comment that I received was a snarky commentary on a misspelled word. Sheesh. I have written many reviews over the past year, and most of them have at most received a comment from the editor that published them. Not the most pleasant way to wake up in the morning, let me tell you.

Anyway, the book was interesting, albeit not exactly an exciting read. I’d recommend it if you are interested in beer, food, and history, as well as old recipes.

I’m about half-way through a book on the history of Guinness, and I hope to write the review of that this week.

Oh, and for those who are keeping score, this is #25, which means I’ve read half of my annual goal.

crossing this off my list

This isn’t really on the list, but I had to take time to write it anyway.

I’ve been struggling lately with feeling overwhelmed by everything I have to do, and not knowing where to start. I realized yesterday that I need to do something to organize my tasks and give me short enough goals to feel like I can accomplish useful things every day that will get big projects done.

I had a stack of professional literature on my desk that needed to be read and then routed on to the next person on the list. Since I get annoyed with my colleagues who hang onto routed journals for weeks and months, I started by browsing through them and reading the articles that caught my eye. One such article was Aaron Schmidt‘s Product Pipeline column in the NetConnect supplement to Library Journal. One of the shiny new tools he writes about is Ta-da Lists, a free online resource that allows you to create lists of things to do and check them off as they get done. As with any Web 2.0 gadget, each list can be shared with others and it also has an RSS feed.

In the afternoon, I spent some time catching up on my librarian blog reading. I’ve resolved to try to stay on top of my Bloglines subscriptions. Steven Cohen’s comment a couple of weeks ago about spending approximately an hour a day keeping up with his 600 feeds every day inspired me to try to keep on top of my 150+ more regularly, particularly since I was a week behind on reading them when I saw his post.

Part of my feed-reading catch-up yesterday included Jenica Roger’s Thinking Out Loud. Last week she wrote about her day in time increments, many of which involved adding and removing items from her to-do list. Her physical to-do list with space for doodling and concrete evidence that yes, something was accomplished today. I’ve never been much of a to-do list person, but something clicked when I read that post, and I found myself over at Ta-da Lists creating an account and making my first digital work-related to-do list.

So far today, I have had the pleasure of crossing off five items and adding two. In a way, my tasks and projects have become a sort of personal competition to see if I can clear off the list before the end of the week, and that is exactly the sort of motivation I’ve been looking for. A hearty thank you to Aaron, Steven, and Jenica for your inspiration!

birthday

Yesterday someone asked me, “So, are you 29 or 29 and holding?” I could take it that they think I look older than I am. Or, I could take it that they think I’m young for a department head. I think I’ll go with the latter.

Yesterday someone asked me, “So, are you 29 or 29 and holding?” I could take it that they think I look older than I am. Or, I could take it that they think I’m young for a department head. I think I’ll go with the latter.

do your worst

I’m totally fascinated with the new photo pool over at Flickr called Do Your Worst. Those of you reading this via RSS probably saw my contribution to the pool come through yesterday. My favorite so far is this one:

I’m totally fascinated with the new photo pool over at Flickr called Do Your Worst. Those of you reading this via RSS probably saw my contribution to the pool come through yesterday. My favorite so far is this one:

do your worst photo

never underestimate the librarian

Librarians are more than what they appear to be.

The title for this entry came from a blog entry that was posted yesterday by a user on xanga. My friend Bonster sent the link to me today. The rest of the entry is a rather amusing interaction between a patron and the librarian at the circulation desk.

Kentucky Libraries article

I submitted my first article to Kentucky Libraries yesterday. Normally, it would be a given that all submissions are printed, but for the past few issues, they’ve had more submissions than they’ve had room for them. I had a collegue look it over and made suggestions before I submitted the article, and they thought it … Continue reading “Kentucky Libraries article”

I submitted my first article to Kentucky Libraries yesterday. Normally, it would be a given that all submissions are printed, but for the past few issues, they’ve had more submissions than they’ve had room for them. I had a collegue look it over and made suggestions before I submitted the article, and they thought it was well-written. I suppose I’ll find out in the next few weeks.

weeding

No, my non-librarian horticulturally-minded friends, I am not going to talk about my gardening habits (or lack thereof). Weeding is a term commonly used in library-land to describe the act of permanently removing items from the library collection that are no longer needed or desired. Steven posted a quote from Richard Evans Lee yesterday, which … Continue reading “weeding”

No, my non-librarian horticulturally-minded friends, I am not going to talk about my gardening habits (or lack thereof). Weeding is a term commonly used in library-land to describe the act of permanently removing items from the library collection that are no longer needed or desired. Steven posted a quote from Richard Evans Lee yesterday, which compelled me to leave a lengthy response of my own. However, after hitting the Post button, it occurred to me that I should have simply written my response here and used the trackback option. Silly me. If you want to read what I wrote, go ahead and click on “Steven” above, and you will be enlightened.

css.php