A day in an Academic Library
The Library is quiet when I get to work, around 8:45 in the morning. The Library Café is slowly waking up and it welcomes me with a lovely smell of coffee, so much needed first thing in the morning. The Enquiry Desk starts to get ready to receiving long queues of students and staff. I spent a morning shadowing them, and I was amazed by the variety of enquiries they deal with. It is not only about books to borrow/return, how to use the Wi-Fi or how to search for resources. They are the real “one-stop-shop” for every need students and staff may have. Do you want to arrange an appointment with one of the counsellors? Are you about to start a course and you want to know what accommodation options are out there? Do you need to borrow AV material for your group project? Who you gonna call? The Enquiry Desk!
I head up to the office and while I cross the Library floors I see that only a handful of very keen students are already at work. “Good morning everyone” - I greet my colleagues, a few of them are already in front of their screens, typing away. I switch my PC on. The office is always very quiet. We are a small team. This has more advantages than flaws, in my opinion: since we are all in the same open-plan space, we all have the chance of being up-to-date with what each of us is working on and what is happening in the Library and across the institution. The first thing I do is looking at the emails: I have joined several mailing lists, such as the Alma (Library Management System) mailing list. It can be overwhelming at times, since I struggle to understand all the technicalities; but, when it comes to cataloguing stuff, there can be very interesting things, including ready-made normalisation rules, which I can reuse to clean up records…ops sorry, delving into technicalities myself here! Let’s just say that mailing lists can be helpful ☺
In all of my previous jobs, I have always been the first point of contact for the users – that’s why I developed excellent customer service skills, as my CV says! – but this time is different. I am behind the scenes. I make books magically appear on the catalogue, with all the information students may need, but nobody knows I make that happen! I like that. The same happens for the records I create on our institutional repository, with details and (when possible) full text of research outputs that the University staff publish.
I have very limited direct contact with the users in this job. I have to say that I miss that part a bit: I miss that feeling of satisfaction when you help someone and you see that sense of relief and gratitude on their faces. However, I love what I am doing now: I love the idea that I am working in the background and that I enable users to identify and locate the resources they need to carry out their work. It is a big deal for me. If I should choose a word to describe what I deal with on a daily basis is METADATA. I spend part of my time editing (sometimes creating from scratch) bibliographic records for the print and electronic resources we acquire. It seems that “cataloguing” is becoming a more and more neglected - almost obsolete - term in the librarianship world. Well, too bad! I am going to leave reflections on the role of cataloguers and metadata experts for another time. Let me just say one thing: if you are one of those thinking that cataloguers’ jobs need to be cut (rather than reviewed and upskilled) since they are useless, just think twice. Good luck finding a book, an article, a video, a TV show, a podcast if nobody has bothered to create metadata for it.
The other area I work on, besides cataloguing, is research data and institutional repository. I sometimes feel like Sherlock Holmes when I have to try and dig into the Web to find information on conference papers presented in some remote place of the Earth in 2005. Or about an art installation which ran for 3 days in 2009 and has a website with lots of broken links in some unrecognisable (at least to me!) foreign language. On some occasions I feel excited; on others, a bit discouraged (if things are not there, no matter how many Boolean operators and sophisticated search skills you may deploy, you won't find them!). I spend a good chunk of my time trying to spot research outputs created by the University’s researchers. Let’s see today what journal article has been published by the University staff and which we have not been informed about (naughty naughty!). Oh this record needs an update: we now have page and volume numbers! Let me add that to the record. Everything I need to keep track of, for different reasons, goes on our “worksheet”: ah, what would we do without our “good old” Excel! Things I keep an eye on: if the article has been accepted but not yet published; if we have emailed the author to ask for some information and we are waiting for a reply; if the conference has not taken place yet and we need to wait till it’s over to release the information on a conference paper; and so forth.
The only occasions when I need to interact with users is either to inform them that the book they were waiting for has been processed and is waiting for them at the Enquiry Desk, or when I need to ask researchers to provide more information about a journal article they have authored or a conference paper they are going to present. Most academics are helpful and keen to learn about the Open Access requirements and what they have to do so that their research outputs are eligible for REF21 (Research Excellence Framework 2021). You may ask: what is this all about? Well, we basically need to prove that we are worth of receiving funding to support the research our institution produces. It is another big deal. Few academics, snowed under their teaching, research and other commitments, might, err…forget?! How bizarre though: there are information about REF and Open Access everywhere. They should know by now that they have to contact us as soon as they have a paper accepted. It is not always the case of course. That is why I spend so much time playing Sherlock Holmes! And it is a race against time: has your journal article just been accepted for publication? What day exactly? Oh, 2 months and 29 days ago…right. We basically have 1 day left to create the metadata, check the publisher’s policy and copyright to see if they require an embargo, how long the embargo period is supposed to be, create a cover sheet for the accepted version of the article, with links to the published version and DOI (Digital Object Identifier), since the deadline for inclusion in the repository is 3 months from acceptance. Oh well, you have just had the time to do it, we are all so busy…and forgetful. Except that we cannot be that understanding, since there is so much at stake. We need to send out a clear message: you just had an article accepted for publication. Who you gonna call? The Repository team! (I love The Ghostbusters, did you guess that?)
Lunch time is a good opportunity to exchange some words with colleagues working in other departments and taking some fresh air. I think it is not the best of habits to devour lunch at the desk, with eyes fixed on the screen. You need to give your brain a break! And get your limbs moving! “Mens sana in corpore sano” (= A healthy mind in a healthy body”), the Romans used to say.
I walk again through the Library to get to level 4, where the office is and, wow! The Library is packed! I love to see all the students there: who chats, who works, who chills out, who freaks out for an assignment due in a few hours. Well, I do not enjoy seeing them eaten alive by anxiety. The librarians are always ready to help ;) Fear not, young lad!
My colleague today is delivering a drop-in session on how to use Google forms to create a survey. I have signed up to it, it can be useful. I am very lucky to work here: they support my professional development and encourage it, even. That’s how it should always be, but, unfortunately, is not.
The delivery man can arrive at any time, especially when you least expect him. You never even know how many books he is going to carry: it can be one, or it can be several boxes full of books. It is quite funny to look at the faces of my colleague – who deals with orders and invoices - and mine when he comes in with the trolley! Oh well, he is bringing in what we have ordered, items that students and lecturers have been waiting for, so let’s get those new acquisitions ready ASAP! What I need to do is going onto Alma, where I have my list of assigned tasks, which corresponds to the list of items whose bibliographic records need attention. I open each record one by one, I edit and improve (that’s the intention, at least!) the metadata and I record the item as available, so that people can finally borrow it.
When things with the repository and cataloguing are a little quieter, I like spending time reading blogs and resources on cataloguing, Open Access and REF. There is so much to know!
Before the end of the day, I usually spend a few minutes writing down what has happened at work in my work journal. I double check my “to-do” list, to ensure that I did all that I was supposed to do. OK, all seems fine. I switch the computer off. It’s gym time ;) Wait, my day is not over yet! I have the homework for that online course to do. What about those emails I flagged during the day? I have to read them. Oh yes, there is an application for a bursary I need to complete and submit. And that interesting article on the role of libraries in the community? I also need to finish the blog post. Our readers (billions of them) are waiting for it, I cannot disappoint them. How is it already bed time??? Oh well, another day in the life of an academic librarian is gone!
Love this Laura :)
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