Look at the beginning of my day

7:15
- get to work
- enter through the first floor doors
- straighten chairs in the popular reading section as I walk past them
- make sure first floor Opac is logged in
- Check to see if first floor announcement board is on
- walk to my office on second floor, open door, turn on light, dump keys and cell phone
- take leftovers to breakroom
- back to office, turn on fishtank light, feed fish

7:30
- go to Circ desk, see if second floor announcement board is on
- unlock doors to library if library secretary is running late
- Login in second floor Opac (because it never stays logged in for some reason)
- make sure public access computers logged in (about once a week check the history on them to see if we have people looking for porn)
- get remote to turn on first floor announcement board if it wasn't on when i came in
- turn on reference desk computer
- answer random email that has arrived overnight

8:00
- drag myself out to reference desk
- check security camera's to make sure they taped and my student workers didn't close too early
- check my bloglines and scan the local newspaper
- invariably this is also the time, at least once a week, that a student comes up with a printer problem in the computer lab (usually solved by turning the printer off and turning it back on or removing the jam from the left door)
- This is also when I should start working on my paper I am writing but often times I let it slide

Actual Reference Work :)

In my position I am technically a reference librarian with other tasks thrown in but it seems like I do a whole lot of the other stuff than referencing. Until today, this morning one of our more esteemed professors (IMO) shot me an email wanting all statutes passed in the last 2 and half years in our state on a certain subject (think an entire volume worth of subject in our 25 volume code). So, after a slight email war of back and forth over exactly what he was wanting I got it down to around 30 bills and sorted through about 125 bills making sure I didn't miss anything. It's not that my research method sucks its just that I am trying to be thorough since this guy has lots of pull around town if I want to escape to greener pastures. I have just sent off the attached page with the bills and their titles and await some sort of response indicating I missed something. In my defense it's not greatest system to search by but I applied all the keywords I could come up with, cross searched using different restrictors, and even went to the paper to back up my findings, I should be o.k.

Library word for the day - Disbound

I was skimming through the LLMC newsletter and found the term disbound to describe what would less gently be said as tearing apart a book. Perhaps much to the publics knowledge this happens more often than you would think. As a librarian I have multiple duties that sometimes overlap and contradict each other. Applying this statement to disbound(ing) it goes something like this.

1. My job is to protect books, keep them from getting torn up and repairing them when they are.
2. My job is perserve the information for as long as possible which may mean "disbounding" a book to scan it into electronic or fiche format (which I don't do but is done by others).
3. My job is to provide information to patrons in an effective manner and be able to index it so it can actually be used efficiently. (If it takes forever to find something often a patron will give up and what use is having it if it takes two weeks to find it).

So the conundrum exists in "Do I tear up the book to .pdf it because the public will tear it up anyway and then it will be lost forever?" or do I "put on the gloves and eliminate pens and make it a super hassle for anyone to use the book".

My answer to this point has been that I don't "disbound" anything with historical significance or the only copy our library has. However, if it is younger and multiple copies I lean towards making the information much more usable to the public. What is a library?, is it a warehouse to store things never to be seen again (think Indiana Jones) or is it a place where learning and knowledge are to be shared? I lean to the later while keeping a mind on the former so it will also be there for future generations (and technologies to improve on how to save it).

Policies

I have not been posting as much here recently as I have been spending a lot of time at the Reference Desk as my co-referencer has been out with his wife just having their first kid (he came back this week so things are starting to get back to normal). I send this post out there to try and pick the brain of other librarians out there of some good policies that are not necessarily mainstream thought. The library that I work at could be called conservative in that it seems that maintaining the status quo is the the objective, which may or may not be good since we are a Law School Library and not "public" and seeking funding and the such.

By policies I am thinking things such as the anti-smell policy I read about yesterday and some of the no minors without adults with them policies that are out there. (Neither of which we have but it might be nice to have something in writing if we need it)

I am also considering pitching the idea of moving some (a couple) of monstrous sets down behind the circulation desk to facilitate easier loose-leafing of them. It shouldn't terribly restrict use (like anyone uses the Federal Tax Coordinator anyway) and it would keep me or my workers from loading 30 volumes on to a book truck rolling it downstairs to the Circ Desk, every week when they come in. If you have thoughts, or alternative solutions to this let me know.