This post is written for Round 7 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 3rd time I am participating. Here are my Round 5, and Round 6 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.

KU/K-State Professional Development Workshop

An all-day (8:30am – 4:00pm) professional workshop today. About once or twice a year, Kansas State University Libraries and University of Kansas Libraries organize a professional development workshop together and invite other academic librarians in Kansas to join us. This year’s workshop is held at K-State’s Hale Library. Anne Zald and Jennifer Fabbi, librarians at UNLV, present a workshop featuring their work at UNLV with the UNLV Faculty Institute on Research-Based Learning for High Impact Classes. Undergraduate research is the hot topic in higher ed right now. In fact, I am in the process of compiling a report of what programs and services academic libraries are providing to support undergraduate research.

This post is written for Round 7 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 3rd time I am participating. Here are my Round 5, and Round 6 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.

Morning - Check and reply emails. Literature review for a QR codes paper/presentation that I am working on with a colleague for the 2011 Brick and Click Library Sympoisum. Our session is called “Putting QR Codes to the Test”.

Afternoon - Two webinars back to back. The first one is on marketing Primo, the new discovery tool that my library will be using. And the 2nd one is an ALA TechSource Workshop called, Delivering Innovative Mobile Services through Your Library, presented by Meredith Farkas, Head of Instructional Services at Portland State University.  We cheer when she uses our library’s “Ask a Librarian” page as one of her examples.

My library's "Ask a Librarian" page was used as an example in the webinar

Right after the ALA TechSource Workshop, we have a farewell party for our most wonderful colleague, Rachel Crocker, who will be leaving us to attend University of Denver’s graduate program in Peace Studies.

My colleague Rachel's farewell party

This post is written for Round 7 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 3rd time I am participating. Here are my Round 5, and Round 6 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.

My messy office welcomes me back  after a week of vacation in Toronto, Canada.  My annoying habit of checking and replying work emails while on holiday deprives me of the excitement/disgruntlement of seeing an inbox with hundreds of unread messages. This morning, I have only 8. One of them is K-State’s daily newsletter, which is a very nice communication tool to find out about what university events are going on and faculty accomplishments. Today’s issue profiles the recent scholarly activities of our library faculty, which includes a blurb on my appointment to the LL&M’s (LLAMA’s journal) Editorial Board. Nice!

K-State Today

The morning is spent on basically catching up on some of the many projects I am involved in, as my current position is very project based. Apart from about 4 hours of virtual reference each week, I spend pretty much all my time on various projects. One of the current one is an experimental team-approach to embedded librarianship project I initiated. The idea is to benefit the students with a broad range of research skills from a team of librarians, while reducing each librarian’s workload and time commitment through division of labor. We are trying it on an online intersession geography course, which begins next week. We have one final meeting today to finalize all the assignments and the assessment tests.

Fire alarm in the afternoon, and everyone has to evacuate the library to 100+ degree heat outside. Luckily, we get to go back in pretty quickly.

Service to the profession is a important part of our tenure process, and I try to be active in national organizations. At this year’s ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, I convened the first ever LLAMA/NMRT New Leaders Discussion Group (NLDG), which I hope to be the first of many collaborations between the two organizations. (You can join the NLDG’s ALA Connect Community to get updates). I actively try to bring the leaders of LLAMA and NMRT together as I see many mutually beneficial opportunities. As a result, I now work closely with Gail Kennedy, past-president of LLAMA, on a LLAMA/NMRT Joint Committee on Collaboration (the name is not quite set, but you get the idea). Today, I work on the charge and the composition of the committee. The general purpose of the committee is to continue organizing the New Leaders Discussion Group at each ALA conference, and to come up with proposals and projects for the two organizations to collaborate. I am quite excited about the many possibilities.