This post is written for Round 5 of the Library Day in the Life project where librarians across the world share details of their daily activities.

I am the Research and Development Librarian at Kansas State University Libraries. For more about my job duties, please see my entry for Monday.

7:25am Woke up later than I’d like. To reach the daily goal of walking 10,000 steps, I took a long walk late last night (it was hot too). Therefore I went to bed late. Proud to be sticking to my goal though. *pat myself on the back*

8:45am Email (surprisingly few today. Nice!), FB, Twitter, football news. Mark Hughes is the new Fulham manager. Meh. Nothing exciting is happening in the football world today.

9:o0am Many of my colleagues are going to Lawrence to attend a 2 day info lit workshop, jointly organized by K-State and University of Kansas. And some are going to another workshop in South Hutchinson. So, it’s going to be quiet here today and tomorrow. No meetings at all for me today or tomorrow.

9:30am Began work on my tenure/reappointment portfolio. My next reappointment review is in October. Just documenting all the instruction sessions from last year took me over an hour. Glad I decided to start working on it now before the busy fall semester. Also considering making an e-version of the portfolio. This thing will take a while.

12:00pm Lunch with colleagues. Had a very healthy chicken lettuce wrap with salad.

1:30pm Continued work on portfolio.

3:00pm Needed to step away from the computer. Took a walk to get my daily steps up. Highlight of the day: tried to decide which movie to watch tonight: 1. Doberman (stylish French crime action flick with Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci), 2.  Tokyo Sonata (slow Japanese drama with the lovely Kyôko Koizumi), or 3. Something else.

possible "something else".

4:30pm A single purpose day – all about my tenure portfolio today. Nothing exciting. But that’s summer for you. My daily life in the fall semester is very different than this.

This post is written for Round 5 of the Library Day in the Life project where librarians across the world share details of their daily activities.

I am the Research and Development Librarian at Kansas State University Libraries. For more about my job duties, please see my entry for Monday.

6:40am Woke up early enough to take a pleasant 30 min walk before it gets oppressive hot outside. Recently bought an ipod Nano which has a built-in pedometer. Now quite obsessed about reaching the daily steps goal of 10,000 steps.

What a brilliant idea to add a pedometer to the ipod!

7:30am Email, Facebook, Twitter, and football news. Good news to Liverpool as it looks like Torres will stay. Bad news to Liverpool as it looks like Mascherano wants to leave.

9:00am Read a HBR blog post titled, “Why Your Customers Don’t Want to Talk to You“, which discusses why customers would rather use self-service kiosks at airports, or ATMs at banks than to interact with airline service agents or bank tellers. “Most customers these days demonstrate a huge — and increasing — appetite for self-service, yet most companies run their operations as if customers prefer to interact with them live”. This obviously relates to one of academic libraries’ big issues – what to do with the reference/circulation/information desk(s)? I heard that a library (now I can’t remember which one) is already experimenting with replacing all those desks with self-service kiosks, and computers, and telephones (direct lines to reference librarians). This Library Journal article discusses the state of self-service in 2010.

A self issue machine which uses RFID technology to let users check out, return and renew material.

10:30am Summer is quite a bit slower than the regular academic year, so it’s a good time to catch up on my own research. Worked on my diversity research proposal a bit.

11:45am LUNCH!

1:30pm Read my library’s LibQUAL+® survey results from 2007. All 100 pages of it. That’s a long survey!

3:30pm Research reading for my screenwriting paper. A day just for my own personal work.

This is where I work. Kansas State University - Hale Library.

This post is written for Round 5 of the Library Day in the Life project where librarians across the world share details of their daily activities.

After working as a subject specialist for a year and a half at Kansas State University Libraries, I have recently been appointed to a new position – Research and Development Librarian. A brand new position in the brand new Office of Strategic Planning and Assessment. We call it our SPA.

So, what does a R&D Librarian do? Though there is an increasing number of assessment librarians, or user service/quality/experience librarians, it seems like we are the first (or at least one of the very first) library to develop a R&D Librarian position. The rationale is, after we have conducted surveys/focus groups/any other data collecting activities, after we have interpreted the data, we should use our new understanding to come up with new products and services. And that will be my job. This Office is modeled after the R&D departments of for-profit corporations, so it’s a place of experimentation and creating prototypes. While I naturally pay attention to new technologies, I am equally interested in the adaptation of business models to the library field. One of my responsibilities (and one that I love) is to create collaboration with other libraries. So, if you’re doing cool stuff at your library, please let me know!

7:30am Woke up late. Oops. Meant to wake up early to work out. Oh well. Saw Inception yesterday. Had some vivid dreams. Was someone in my dreams? Used paranoia to not feel guilty about oversleeping.  Note to self: Look up positive use of paranoia.

9:00am Checked and replied emails.

9:45am Attended internal candidate presentation #1 for the Undergraduate & Community Services Librarian position(s). My library is in the process of a re-organization, and we have several internal candidate interviews/presentations today (and tomorrow and Wednesday). We hope that we will have most positions filled before the beginning of the Fall semester.

10:30am Did some research on positive paranoia. Apparently, “Paranoia is a near necessity for successful inventors and entrepreneurs”. Not that I was goofing off. Part of my job is to research new trends, successful business models, and new technologies. So I spend a fair bit of time reading sites like Trendwatching or journals like Harvard Business Review, and whatever is interesting on the web.

11:45 am LUNCH!

1:00pm Made monthly appointments with my mentor for the next several months. My library has a very good mentoring program (my mentor is one of the authors of this ACRL article on mentoring program for academic librarians) and I meet with her at least once a month, usually over coffee or lunch. Sometimes we talk about work, and sometimes we just talk about whatever. Not only is it a good way to learn about your organization from someone who has been working there longer and has more experience, it is also a great way to develop friendship with a colleague whom you might not otherwise have an opportunity to get to know. I highly recommend seeking a mentor either within your own organization or participating in a mentoring program such as the excellent one organized by LLAMA (Library Leadership and Management Association).

The Royal Library in Copenhagen looks very impressive. I'll be going there in September!

1:30pm Worked on my own research. Since I’m in tenure-track position, I’m required to publish/present. My background is in film, so research in film studies can be used for my tenure portfolio. (Obviously, I still have to do research on library related topics in addition to film studies). This September, I will be presenting a paper at a screenwriting conference at the University of Copenhagen. The paper’s title is, “An Analysis of Peter Morgan’s Adaptation of The Damned United“. Only have a few weeks left before the conference. Number of words written: 10 (yes, the number of words of the paper title). *sigh*

2:45 pm Internal candidate presentation #2 for the Undergraduate & Community Services Librarian position(s).

3:30pm Replied some emails.

4:00 pm Read an ACRL white paper: Future Thinking for Academic Librarians: Higher Education in 2025. It’s hard enough to think 5 years ahead… I attended the Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians a couple weeks ago (has it been a couple of weeks already?! This time-moving-forward thing is getting out of hand!), and we were encouraged to think forward 10 years to predict what libraries would be like. It was an exercise that I enjoyed. I hope to have more time this week to reflect upon my experience at the Institute and the ALA Annual Conference in D.C..