Library day in the life ... (St-Laurent style) - day 3

I was off this morning, so I slept in a bit (8:15), then ate, drank my first coffee, read (plodding through An exploding case of mangoes... Not sure if I like it or not), then went for a short (40 min) run across the canal locks, behind Parliament by the water, across the bridge into Quebec, along the water there, and then back across the Alexandra Bridge.

Had a snack and cooled down with a fan in the home office while reading e-mail and newsfeeds.

Arrived at work for 12:30 pm, and took over the Children's Info Desk. Read (paper) mail, tidied the department (took 1/2 hour - big mess in picture book area. I loooove day camps. Yes, I do!), read various notes left for me, and tried to avoid scratching my Holter monitor scar. Then I signed some timesheets for the circulation supervisor (who was happy about her new desk that arrived yesterday for the workroom, but sore from all the moving around in there she had done...).

I started working on a new poster to go in an easel near the entry to our department, for library program information. I totally should have delegated it (we have a staff member with great artistic talents!) but I wanted to start it myself to ensure it had the OPL logo on it and some way to change material on it without damaging the poster board. SL uses a lot of hand-made signs... some of which are quite lovely, artistically. They just make me a bit nervous because library promotional materials should be standardised - in fact, there are rumblings of future standardisation on the horizon. I think this is great, but, unfortunately, right now, everything that gets out there to our users from branches looks totally different, and a recent attempt to offer (not force upon) branches a shared template was, um, anticlimactic to say the least. They were pretty uninspiring, design-wise. ANYWAY, I designed my little poster, with at least the logo and OPL's standard font on it (so I can sleep at night), shamelessly cut out some book-ish images from the 7000 posters we have lying around, and stuck a plastic folder on the front so we can slip in weekly information. Whew!

Only a few patrons this afternoon - 2 boys horsing around all afternoon (I talked to them once about running around), and a young girl who is disabled (she comes in every day. She has recently taken to calling me Claudia Schiffer. It's pretty cute).

Oooh, checked news feeds and noticed that Cormorant writes that Claire's book was reviewed in Ottawa's Xpress mag. Yay!

In the interests of brevity, here are snippets from the rest of the day:

• Assigned some shifts in Aug, Sept, Nov and Dec so my colleague and I can *hopefully* approve vacation for some of our staff...


• Worked on next week's SRC program - making spy kits! Includes identity badges, spy telescopes, fingerprinting, and more!


• Printed out the August schedule x2 (one for Info desk, one for home - fridge!)


• More weeding in Eng pic books


• Helped a patron use the scanner to scan and e-mail wedding photos from 1980s


• Do you have any Arabic books? Where are the books-on-cd? Did my Dragon Ball Z stuff come in yet? Do you have any Pokemon books? Those are the questions I remember, anyway.... I probably blocked a few out.


• Correspondence with colleague re. rush laminating job (of that weekly program poster I finished!)


• Gah. Inbox is outta control. Please do not pass GO, and instead, sit down and file....


• Made up a proper to-do list for tomorrow and beyond