Well yesterday was a busy day. A lot of different things came up, which I understand is normal for a supervisor.
The day started off as usual, having to do the morning caretaking things we have to do to ready the library for opening -- getting and stamping the newspapers, pulling the morning holds list. There are only two of us here in the morning, me and my assisstant librarian, so I have to pitch in and help with these routine tasks. Upon opening, I work my one hour a day on the reference desk. I like to be there at opening and kind of take the pulse of the day as the morning crowd comes in -- the computer users, the regular newspaper readers. But I have too much "behind the scenes" stuff to do to to work more than an hour a day at the desk. I had to ask my assisstant librarian to cut back my hous on the desk -- I was running around like a chicken with no head and not getting done what I needed to do.
After my hour on the desk I spoke to some vendors and got quotes for some audiovisual supplies that we need. The City of New Orleans purchasing process is quite Byzantine. You have to get quotes for everything. It's the people's money after all. Once I got the quotes I submitted the paperwork for everything up the chain of command.
Then I worked on shifting the periodicals. I felt like I had to take a hand in this and not just dump it on the staff. One must lead by example, I think.
Then lunch.
In the afternoon I met with a fellow division head and a sales rep from Gale Cengage Learning, a major publisher of reference works and online databases. She was trying to sell us on databases. We were saying, our patrons are not computer-literate. We need paper sources.
Then working on the inventory project on the periodicals backfiles in the basement.
