Keeping up

It’s been an incredibly hectic week. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that my To Do list just keeps growing, and that I haven’t quite managed to answer or follow up on many of the emails that came in last week while I was in Malaysia, and the emails that have come in this week. This is to be expected when you go away at this time of the academic year.

My only consolation is that most of my colleagues are feeling swamped too. At morning tea* on Tuesday we sat around commiserating with each other over the mounds and mounds of stuff we each have to get through at the moment, and we had the following conversation:

Librarian J: Ahhhh, but don’t we love being librarians?
Librarian K: Oh yes, it’s a nice quiet job…
Librarian J: Yes and you get to read books all day!
Librarians J, K, G, and CW: [hysterical laughter]

I think every librarian has had this conversation before, when you tell someone at a dinner party you are a librarian, and their response is, “Ooh, that must be a nice quiet job, and so nice to be able to read books all day!” (Firstly, it’s not a particularly quiet job, in the sense that we don’t just sit in our little cubicles all day – I attend faculty meetings, give lectures, go to lecturers’ offices, even go overseas; secondly, I seldom even touch a book in the course of a normal day’s work – for many librarians a lot of the information sources we provide to the users of our libraries nowadays are online, and IT literacy is really really important. And most days are so hectic I don’t even have time to read during my lunch break!)

The reality is very very different. Yesterday, for instance:
8:30 – 11am: Meeting. Make asterisks next to all items on agenda that I have to follow up on. A pox on all meetings that go for more than an hour!
11am – 12noon: Work on a PowerPoint presentation for a group of postgrad students. A pox on all classrooms that lack Internet connectivity in this day and age! Ignore all incoming emails during this time.
12 – 12:30pm: Lunch with M. Yes I gave myself the luxury of lunch away from my desk as it was the only break I was going to have all day.
12:30 – 1:45pm: Continue work on PowerPoint presentation. Tell self to focus, that inward swearing wastes time and concentration.
2 – 3pm: Presentation to group of Accounting postgrads, as requested by Professor. Prof and students are very interested in what I have to say (library resources, etc) and ask lots of questions.
3:30pm: Finish questions and discussion after presentation (presentation has gone half an hour over time).
3:30 – 5pm: The Boss calls me in to his office to look at a couple of proposals involving the staff I supervise. Colleague shows me stacks of donations from students (the library is where some students dump their old textbooks – we then have to go through them and decide what to do with them). We agree on a process that will hopefully cull the number of donations very quickly.
Then phonecalls with various faculty staff. Forbid self from looking at emails while talking on phone:
CW, were you on holiday last week?? [No. I need a holiday now, though.] A minor ‘situation’ is brewing with a subscription to an online resource that seems to have lapsed. [sigh]
CW, have you managed to find out why EndNote is behaving so strangely on my PC? [No.]
CW, can I send you some lists of publications by academics and you tell me the number of citations and the impact factors of the journals in which they were published? [Yes. While looking at To Do list and wondering how many times a person can reprioritise without things imploding.]
CW, please give me a report on your KL trip as soon as you can. Dot points! [Right.]
CW, can you send me a draft of your presentation to the entire faculty next Thursday? [Sure! Note to self: DO PRESENTATION!]
CW, can I see you when you come out to the city campus on Friday? I have these weird EndNote problems, it might take a while… [Yep… ]
CW, don’t forget I need your comments on that policy. By Friday. [OK.]
5pm: Go home with M. I could stay on but I prefer not to have a headache all evening.

I fell asleep on the couch last night, watching an episode of Futurama.

*In case you’re wondering why we were wasting time having morning tea when we had mounds and mounds of stuff to get through, it was the only morning tea time we’ve had this week. An occasional morning tea session is essential for good mental health, I find. I wonder if I would be a better-adjusted librarian if I had time for morning tea everyday…

Categories: work