Libraries

And days 6 & 7 too.

Polly, Sara, Jen

And so Library Day in the Life Round #6 comes to an end.

Day 4: I got organized, packed and drove to Plattsburgh, NY to teach a class on Friday. Not a very productive day otherwise. I usually don’t count on getting much else done on a travel day. And this was no different than expected. Ate a lousy dinner of takeout food because I was craving Indian food. Should have listened to my host’s recommendations and gone to the nice restaurant down the road. Occasional lousy takeout is part of the deal with traveling so much though! Great meals with friends are the flip side of that, thank goodness. And making new friends when I travel is undeniably the best part of all the business travel.

Day 5: Taught a full day session on Digital Storytelling & Presentation Tools at the CVES BOCES.  Jen Henry organized the training, which was attended by about a dozen school librarians.  Everyone had such great ideas, I went out of there with my head swimming. And what fun to have a surprise attendee, good friend Sara Kelly Johns.   (more…)

The 6th round of “Library Day in the Life” began today, with over 200 participants this time! Wow. Visit the wiki page to find out more and register your participation. It’s not too late to participate!

Learn more about what librarians do all day by following along at:

• wiki page
• flickr Library Day in the Life photo group
• twitter hashtag   #libday6
• twitter archive on WhatTheHashTag

My Monday:

For those who might not know what I do, I’m an independent consultant. I run a business providing services to libraries, library systems and schools. I focus mostly on technology training, project management and web site development.

• Cold start to the day:  -12. First thing I did was check email & weather on my  phone before I got out of bed, just in case my day might be rearranged due to the weather and I could loll about a bit longer. Really, I try NOT to sleep with my phone under my pillow normally, but if technology can make my day a bit easier, I use it.
• No change of plans, so dashed out to the car in my jammies to make sure the car was going to start and get me to where I needed to go. Glamorous, eh.
• Coffee, checked email, sat in the sunshine in the living room. Now that I have an iPad, it’s great to sit in the morning sun, rip through email, do some reading and get started on projects for the day. Less time spent at my desk.
• Drove about 35 miles to Saratoga teach a 3 hour class on screencasting for school library staff. We had a lot of fun covering free, web-based screencasting options. School library budgets being what they are, they really don’t have money to buy Camtasia or Captivate.
• Sat in car eating a 4PM late lunch, reading email on my iPad. Only thing cool about the was the iPad and the weather.  Retreated to Panera for a cup of coffee and some reading.
• Followed up on questions from the class and updated handout with notes and ideas for the next time I teach that class.
• Tested out some odds and ends of new tools and such that came my way from twitter during the day.
• Sorted out some possible web hosting and content mgmt system issues for a client meeting tomorrow.
• Went through the mail – a bonanza day – a contract and a forgotten check! Woo hoo.
• Accounting. Blech.
• Updating my calendar and sorting out possible teaching dates for the contract that came in the mail.
• Figuring out what I didn’t get done and how I’ll catch up tomorrow.