Friday, July 29, 2011

Library day in the life, Round 7, Friday...

This morning I read my rss feed news, email and newspaper over (slow-chewed) brekkies at home. Of interest:
I was at Main Library today, which is cool for various reasons, of which I will list three:
  1. I get to see my peeps at Homebound Services, one of the depts I supervise
  2. I get to chill with my other friends at Main Library and in various government buildings nearby - and I brought them leftover raspberry shortcake tiramisu!
  3. I get to walk to workLink
So, yeah, I made it into my basement office. Even though I was here last Wednesday, it felt like years, somehow. Hello, other office! I missed you!

I began the day with e-mails and voicemails, as usual, and then I wrote up a short summary of the situation I was worrying about yesterday on the way home. I work best with an actual written account of things, so I wanted to have everything laid down on paper before I met with my manager this afternoon. I decided one question I had about how I handled this situation might be answered by a certain procedure document we have .... Alas, this doc is not on our Intranet and my paper copy is in my office at Greenboro. I figured someone at Main should have it, too, so I asked around. Eventually, one person said she did, so I ran upstairs for said paper document ... which ended up not being the one I needed. Crap. On the way back to my basement lair, I spent some time on each floor of Main Library: I strategised with one colleague over a dilemma, and generally networked with peeps (and yes, by network I mean chat, but srsly, it is networking, you know....).

Then I worked on e-mail and various randomy things until finally deciding I still needed to find a copy of this doc, so I threw myself at the mercy of the brains on the 4th floor (where our admin offices are). Success! But, as I had suspected, there was still no clear answer to my question in (several) procedure documents. This is why I was so torn up about it - there was nothing actually documented about what to do in this situation. It seems to be one of those "at your discretion" things.

Back to randoms: e-mail, answered voicemail, approved some leave requests, read some docs, called the garage about a Bookmobile issue, etc.

Noon - Grabbed a soup and smoothie at the amazing Grounded and retreated back into the office with it.... Read docs over lunch - these ones pertained to something going on at the Mission, which both my husband and I are marginally involved in (me through him and also through an OPL Rideau Branch - Mission connection). I then e-mailed my contact at the Mission with my thoughts on the documents, cc'ing the acting supervising librarian at Rideau Branch and the manager of Rideau Branch. Here's hoping more fruitful partnerships will come out of this! Then I e-mailed my manager to keep her in the loop about me spending time on a Rideau project. I don't think that any of us think that's a big deal, but I like to play nicely with others. But that was some serious e-mail cc'ing. I try to avoid that when possible: no one likes an overloaded inbox!

1:30ish - Meeeting with my manager.

2:30ish - Tiramisu party with two of my favourite peeps!

3 - DONE - Resolved the Situation successfully, at long last. I continued to knock off a few other tasks in the PM, including some stuff related to Bookmobile's involvement in the Pride Parade next month. I also revised sections of a City document that pertain to the Library, delivered something to the 4th floor again (P.S. the back staircase between 4th floor and library smells of the same cleaner used in the tunnel between my high school and the neighbouring sports arena ... flashback!), had revisions approved and sent final document off, made a to-do list for next week (AAAH!), gave a colleague some $ for ALSO's Amazing Scrabble Race, planned my day shadowing Homebound Services (I know, it's appalling that I haven't done it yet and have been with that dept for 4 months... shuddup! As you can see, I've been busy!), listened to part of CBC's What has your library done for you lately? podcast while working (digression: this is the first time I have ever listened to a non-OPL podcast while working! Weird, eh? I do this stuff at home because in my substantive position, I am on the Information desk almost all the time... But now, in my acting position, I have an office!), made a diagram about parking the Bookmobile in a certain neighbourhood, made notes about a project I have to deal with in the coming weeks based on my meeting this aft with manager, sent more e-mail, read Google Alerts, finished a report, packed up some interoffice mail to myself, returned some more voicemail, received an email that began "Hi amazing boss" (my favourite kind!), drafted a memo for senior management, found a typo on next week's Bookmobile schedule (corrected it and called the bus on the road to clarify), sent my schedule to deptartments I supervise and my manager... etc.

5:30 - husband called and was just getting on the bus, which is OK because I was still tinkering with that memo. We like to meet at Main Library when I work here and go home from there together, so we made a plan to do that.

The end!

As a final note, it was fun doing Library Day in the Life again, although I am selfishly glad that I was off for the first two days, because doing this is a lot of work! It was, however, also informative for me, since I am in a new(-ish) job and it's interesting to compare this week's notes to my previous notes from Library Day in the Life 6, Library Day in the Life 5, and Library Day in the Life 3.

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