Too many irons in the fire....

You're all familiar with this phrase, right? It means to be involved in, or doing, several etc things at the same time. Well, that's how I would best describe most days at the public library where I have worked for the past 12.5 years. I am the Collection Development and Reference Manager and I have recently become the Supervisor of our Teen Zone staff and new Collection Dev/Teen Services professional. I am currently working hard on our community reading program known as Capital READ. Our community chose R.M. Kinder's book An Absolute Gentleman, and I am trying to set up discussions and other programs that thematically relate to this novel.

This is what my day looked like today, August 6, 2008:

9:30 Wednesdays are Management Team days. They begin at 8:30, but due to a child drop-off situation I could not be there today. These meeting generally last an hour and half and cover a wide range of library issues. I called my Supervisor, the Director, and he was completely fine with that. I am fortunate to have a very understanding boss who is really nice about things that suddenly come up----especially family stuff. The library has been a great place for me to be a working mom. It's been beyond flexible! I am so grateful.

As soon as I get to work I am looking for the local paper from the night before. The Editor read "An Absolute Gentleman" and loved it. He wrote a fabulous article promoting to our community. I feel incredibly blessed. I am walking on air! I am so happy it's probably annoying. I am so ecstatic I force all my co-workers who cross my path to read it. I love my co-workers. They are a HUGE reason why working at my library is so great. Anyway, I couldn't believe my good fortune. Last year, we were fortunate to have Jeannette Walls come to talk about The Glass Castle. People had heard of it. That book had been on the NY bestseller list for 90 weeks at the time she came to our town. Kinder's books is relatively unknown, but it is a great story and extremely well written. I am thrilled with this editorial and the Director is pretty happy to.....the day is getting off to a good start.

The rest of the morning is spent returning phone calls, e-mail, and signing invoices for the business office. I also spent a considerable amount of time working with the library Administrative Assistant booking rooms for all the Capital READ programs I'm putting together. Oh, I almost forgot a Selector stops by to ask me if Picture Books with more mature themes should be sorted out and placed in a different location. This selector feels the longer, more mature stories might be used by teachers to read aloud in the classrooms. It's an interesting thought, but I think leaving them alone is probably okay too. I make a note to myself to get more input from the children's staff.

12:30 I take lunch even though I came in late because I will make it up from home later this week. I often order books from the comfort of my own home using Baker and Taylor's TitleSource 3 when I need to make up some time. It's handy and I get a lot done between 10 and 11 p.m---no one stopping by the office to ask me anything. We are allowed to count 8hrs of work from home a week. That works perfectly for me.

1:30-2:30 I talk to our Digital Services Librarian about our NetLibray contract. We have had downloadable audio the past year and the two of us spent some time talking about increasing awareness and some training possibilities for the Reference staff. I'm sure we talked about more than this, but I can't remember anything else right now.

The rest of the afternoon was spent making phone calls to arrange book discussions, lectures, and other cool programs for Capital READ. Since the book is about a serial killer who is also a creative writing and poetry professor I have arranged to host an evening of poetry (where people can read their work or that of a favorite poet) , a creative writing workshop, and a showing of a Peeping Tom a 1960 British film. I've got some other things in the works, but I need to save something to tell you about tomorrow. I have made many phone calls to find someone to speak on the criminal mind and so far this is proving to be harder than I thought. Maybe tomorrow my luck will change.

5:15 My day is done because I also have kid pick-up duty today too. I need to order more new books and go through all the damaged ones collecting on my floor, but I'll worry about that tommorrow.