Instead of posting about my usual geeky things, I thought I'd do something a bit different for this blog post, and join in on the Library Day in the Life Project where librarians from all over the globe share a day in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates. So: all about me and my job:
I work at a library for blind and partially sighted people. My job title is 'Information Management Librarian', and I gather, evaluate, synthesise and organise internal information and relevant external information into resources which are used to both answer queries from members, staff and the public, and to capture the collective knowledge from across the organisation and the blind community. I'm also responsible for the library's web content, I do quite a bit of cataloguing, and I spend quite a lot of time researching current library topics.

7am
I clear through all my in-house emails and voicemails, which entails lots of quick reading and deleting, and slightly longer reading and filing of more relevant emails. (A friend has sent me an email that includes a link to the TV Tropes website; I DON’T click on it because I know that I’d never get any work done but would simply vanish into the black hole that is TV Tropes.)
7.15am
I run the magazines migration program. This is normally a small task that doesn’t relate to anything else I do in my job (and I’m doing as a favour to another staff member), but we’re transitioning over from audio cassettes to digital audio, so borrowers who have received magazines on cassette have to be switched over to digital. Looks like the program will be handling about 75 people per day (that’s about 450 magazines in total to switch over each day) for the next few weeks at least. It’s a bit tedious, frankly – normally I just let it run and fiddle around with paperwork, but it’s so big at the moment that I won’t catch errors unless I keep gazing at the screen and matching the names against my list.
8am
I read through my feeds, which is one of the major ways that I keep up with professional librarianly matters (in particular to do with social media and ebooks, because those are two areas I research and feed on back to the rest of the team). I noted with interest new developments such as Apple’s new in-app selling rules triggering withdrawals from major companies, Amazon eyeing ebook companies in India, and discussions on how authors can use piracy to promote their books. And hmm, Twitter has a new search page, eh? I send a reminder to my home email to have a good play with it.
8.20am
I read through the emails from mailing lists that I subscribe to. Usually it’s a quick read and delete, but today there are some really meaty discussions about original publication date, which MARC doesn’t handle particularly well but apparently the FRBR model does (it allows for date of work, date of expression, and date of publication/distribution of manifestation). I nod my head sagely and file the key emails in a safe place.
8.45am
I check all links to entries for the letter ‘O’ in my alphabetical index for my information resources on the intranet. No broken links – that’s a first! It’s a shame that our intranet software is old and has no automatic checking feature, but – looking on the bright side - at least it means I can stay “hands-on” with my index, as it gives me a good chance to assess it for relevancy as well as currency/correctness.
9am
I send out a few emails to colleagues containing snippets and pointers from some things I happened upon yesterday (a few good articles in the Code4Lib  Journal about commenting facility in catalogues and breaking down MARC21 as data, and a reading game that we might be able to adapt for our own members).
9.15am
I check through my email folders ‘to update’ and ‘new info’, which is where I snuggle away all the snippets of new or changed in-house (or relevant external) information that I’ll need to work with. I did heaps of updates two days ago, so there’s not much here at the moment. A couple of things I re-evaluate and decide to wait for a response or for further development. One thing has been left hanging, so I chase up a staff member. I check on one changed contact detail and add one resource to ‘Professional development resources for library staff’. I have received an answer to a question that I’ve been waiting on; things have changed quite a bit since I last checked, so I re-write the entry and add in a few links to other information to enrich the entry. There’s nothing brand new to work on at present.
9.35am
I catalogue the last of the big, colourful stack of kids’ books that I’ve been working my way through a over the last week or so. Once I’ve finished the catalogue records, these books will go upstairs to our accessible formats team and be made into kitsets, which will include the original book, a CD and a braille version. Then they’ll go to the blind children's library and get posted out to kids around the country!
After the nightmarishly complicated cataloguing of digital resources I’ve been doing for the last few months (they were of a lot of old books with scanty catalogue records, crappy imported records to work from, complicated series to trace, and subject headings to find/scratch our heads over), these are a walk in the park! These are all fairly new books, published within the last five years, so there are good records out there for them and it means it’s mostly straight-forward copy cataloguing. Of course, I’m not actually making catalogue records for the published works in my hands, but for the accessible resources we’re going to make in-house from these original works, so there are plenty of differences. And copy cataloguing isn’t quite as mindless as you’d think – you do have to appraise each and every bit of data you’re copying, because a) people make mistakes, b) in-house standards differ from library to library (e.g. we’ll often re-write annotations to our own standards), and c) when you’re doing subject cataloguing you can extend upon what’s already been done (or totally disagree with it, sometimes).
10.35am
Tea break! I trot around to the magnolia garden behind the museum, admire the flowers, and come back in time to munch on a mandarin.
10.50am
I re-write the entry about the magazines in our collection for the intranet, based on a list our Acquisitions Librarian has sent me.
11am
This list needs to go on our website too, so I check to see where it might be best positioned. I decide the page will need a good fiddle with, and that it’s about time that I finalised my month-old notes on the re-vamp of our website content as a whole (I’ve been sitting on it, waiting for feedback and major re-writes of two sections that aren’t going to happen any time soon, it turns out). I went through it all again, checking my comments for each page (alas, the improvements haven’t magically happened when I wasn’t looking!). I spot a few more things that could be worked on, and add in my suggestions. Then I tidy the document up and send it to our communications team, who will make the changes.
1pm
Lunch! Hot, homemade beef/vegetable/barley soup = yummy. I finally finish off Roger Zelazny’s “Lord of Light”, which I’ve been making my way through during tea and lunch breaks the last few weeks.
1.30pm
I clear through my emails again. They breed when I’m not looking, I think.
1.45pm
I check my ‘to do’ lists and find that I’ve actually managed to clear through most of the major projects I set myself this month (though I haven’t had all the responses to my questions in yet and there’ll still be chasing up and checking to do). I check my diary for the little “bits and pieces” that inevitably don’t get managed in the course of a day. Only a few left for this week, and they’re a bit too major to handle today, so I leave them for tomorrow.
2pm
I work on this blog post, tidying up the notes I’ve been hurriedly typing during the day. At the same time, I update the Word document I use to track my monthly work.
2.15pm
I start following the links in the latest NZ Library Life issue. I think the editing staff have been doing really well with this fortnightly publication over the last year, ensuring there's a good mix of content. I save the LIANZA communication plan for a more thorough read later.
2.45pm
I forgot to have my afternoon tea-break (I started extra-early today, which always throws off my sense of time), so off home early!

So, the day: representative of a usual day? Kind of - usually there’s a lot less reading of feeds and emails, and a lot more working on my information resources on the intranet. But all the other stuff is definitely a part of what I do.