10/17/2005
a day in the life
Jessamyn writes about a day in her life; I figured I’d write about a day in mine.
I am not a salaried librarian; I make a fairly decent hourly wage, and like everyone else, vice presidents on down, my time is carefully separated and organized into charge numbers. Today I spent three hours on corporate library services and five hours on chemical proposals. How it actually breaks down is a little bit more complicated:
Corporate Library Services
- Check e-mail [much of my communication with my clients comes via email, as my clients could be in Houston or London or Bangkok or Pittsburgh or Chicago]
- Read ICISNews [This could take from 10 minutes to 30, depending on whether there’s any new company information I need to take note of]
- Search for two reports for the London office [Had to use the OLD OPAC, which meant getting on the computer in the library instead of my office. Naturally, the monitor was shot on said computer, so it was off to IT to wrangle a replacement. After 20 minutes of fun, I was finally on the database and searching]
- Sort mail [Put bills aside to be paid in the morning. Sorted through serials. Routed said serials. Sent extra copies of Chemical Week to London as they are still sorting out their subscription problem]
- Search through Dialog invoices for documentation in regards to the current payment snafu [Trust me, you do not want to know. Really, you don’t]
- Two reference interviews [1 - chemical pricing, capacity, and supply/demand data. 2 - chemical producer information from the most up-to-date Western European directory. Emailed London for that one]
- Discussed training possibilities with Dialog training representative
Chemical Proposals
- Sought trade information from COMTRADE [Hit a tangle when faced with my great nemesis, Middle Eastern trade data. Hit another unexpected one with Western Europe]
- Emailed GTIS to see if they could help with the Middle Eastern problem [Nope, no Middle East data]
- Emailed supervisor to see if she had any suggestions for routes [Nope]
- Emailed consultant in Houston to get my Commodity Trade Statistics Yearbook back [Have not received email back; may call tomorrow]
That was my day; fairly typical, as these things go. Some days involve nothing but “library stuff” - cataloging, acquisitions, serials management, circulation, database cleaning. Other days are spent beating my head against a research question for eight hours, or working on several different research questions. Most, however, are a mix of the two, like today.
Filed under: Librarianship
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