Leo S. Lo

This post is written for Round 6 of the Library Day in the Life, a project started by Bobbi Newman, where librarians across the world share details of their daily activities.

I am the Research and Development Librarian at Kansas State University Libraries. It is a recently created position in a recently created Office of Library Planning and Assessment. I am beginning my 3rd year as a professional librarian.

So, what does a R&D Librarian do? I’ll chronicle my activities this week to hopefully give you an idea of this new position in librarianship.

6:30am P90x yoga kicked my butt! But I felt unusually flexible for the rest of the day.

9:00am Mysterious technical problem with laptop battery. Problem solved mysteriously by unplugging the adapter cord and plugging it back in. Checked email. Wrote Thank You Letter to Kansas Library Association (KLA) – College University Library Section (CULS) for giving me a grant to attend the 2011 ALA Midwinter Conference.

10:00am Coffee meeting with professor friend of a Phd program I’m interested in. Doing a Phd while working full time seems insane, especially that I don’t really need a doctorate. Since when have I turned into someone who actually enjoys studying and researching? What has librarianship done to me?!

10:30am Campus secure IT training. It’s mandatory for all State of Kansas employees to attend this training. Having a engaging presenter with a sense of humor definitely made the session go by pleasantly. Lesson learned: create a strong password that is long enough and uses different characters/symbols/numbers/cases. Note to self: scrap the smart ass idea of using “unhackable” as password. Instead, maybe something like, “UnF&^%in’HacKabl3!”

11:30am Weekly lunch with department colleagues. Loved the Al Fresca Salad at Coco Bolo’s. At first, I was a bit skeptical about going to the same restaurant every week, but I’ve grown to really enjoy having our own waitress, who knows exactly what I want for drinks without having to order. I am a regular! Like those folks at Cheers! It also helps that Coco Bolo’s is a good local restaurant with personality. (I love those).

1:00pm Excited to receive a email from LLAMA President asking me to be the convener of the association’s new discussion group for new librarians. (LLAMA, Library Leadership and Management Association, is one of the divisions of ALA, American Library Association). I said yes of course! We will come up with something excellent for ALA Annual in New Orleans. Stay tuned!

2:00pm – 4:00pm IM (virtual reference). Surprisingly, no IM question about textbooks today. At the beginning of each semester, we tend to get asked a LOT about availability of textbooks.

4:30pm Faxed the 2011 ACRL Conference registration! When the fax took forever to go through, I exclaimed (to no one in particular), “Who uses fax machine anymore?!” (Seriously!) “Apparently, you do,” the answer came immediately from my very observant colleague Sara. Ahem… anyway… so looking forward to Philadelphia!