Leo S. Lo

This post is written for Round 8 of the Library Day in the Life, a project started by Bobbi Newman, where librarians across the world share details of their daily activities. The is the 4th time I am participating. Here are my Round 5,  Round 6 , and Round 7 blog posts. 

I am the Research and Development Librarian at Kansas State University Libraries, and I work in the Office of Library Planning and Assessment.

Whenever I tell people my job title, I always feel the need to explain further. It is after all a very new position in the library world. In fact, part of my job is to actually define the position- to myself, to my library, and to my profession. In a nutshell,  I “research” innovative things in and outside of the library world, and I “develop” new programs and services for my library based on those research. I think it’s a perfect library job for someone like me, who likes to be creative, who is curious about new things, and who has a bit of an entrepreneurial drive. However, as with most new things, it evolves constantly. Recently, a colleague in my department, our Service Quality Librarian, resigned. As a result, I am going to take over some of her projects. Many of them have to deal with assessment, which I have developed quite an interest in recently. I’m taking a statistics class, and a consumer evaluation class this semester, and both are highly relevant to these new responsibilities. So, while I’m saddened to see a colleague leave, I’m excited about the new directions of my position.

This morning, I read a Harvard Business Review blog post on Culturematic. It’s an interesting article on some of the really cool things libraries are doing to draw children in, to create a “magical” experience for them. I am intrigued by the culturematic concept, but I’m not quite sure if I really understand it yet. It’s now on my “To Explore” list.

I also worked on a paper/presentation proposal for IFLA 2012 this morning. I have always been intrigued by IFLA, but have never attended. This year, it’s going to be in Helsinki! I’ve been to Helsinki once when I was 17, and had a great time there, so I’d love to go again (especially after watching the above short film on Helsinki and libraries). I remember it being very clean.

For my job, it’s important for me to network with people from different libraries (and professions). So money permitting, I try to go to as many conferences as I can. Next week, I will be going to the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, NM, to co-present a paper on the instructional design of cooking shows. (In case you don’t know, I’m a foodie). I wrote a little about it in one of my blog posts. As librarians try to create engaging video tutorials, I think we can learn a thing or two from cooking shows, which are some of  the most successful (and certainly popular) video tutorials today.

In the afternoon, I had a 4 hr Consumer Evaluation class. FOUR HOURS! But it’s amazing how time flew when you’re actually interested in the subject! I was so interested in it because I was recently put on a library Help Desk redesign project (one of my new job responsibilities as mentioned earlier). I kept thinking about how to apply consumer evaluation techniques to that project during class. I have so many ideas now. The most important thing I learned today – MUST have clear project and test objectives.

The class ended at almost 5pm. I went back to my office to check and reply some emails, and it’s time to go home.