... I get up early and take it to the max every day. I'm usually up about 7.15 and out the house soon as I've showered and kissed my partner Dave goodbye. I walk to work because I'm too cheap to pay for travel, and I've got a nice route through Alexandra Park sorted.
I get to the library about 8.30ish and open it up if I'm first in; I'll set the computers on the desk up for the day etc and get some teas/coffees on the go for myself and my colleagues. I usually eat my breakfast in the staffroom before we open up which is kind of unprofessional, but I'm usually too hungry to consider this.
The full time library assistants here will usually spend 2 shifts of 2 hours on the enquiry desk each day and I do the same. That's about half the average day accounted for. When we're not busy with borrowers or red bags, blue crates, pull lists, book bins, SCONUL counts, shelving/shelf-checks etc we'll do some admin. tasks or data entry/filing. I also like to tell ribald stories and inappropriate jokes to my colleagues during any downtime.
When I'm not on the desk I'm never short of things to do. There's shelving of course and other tasks I've volunteered for or been assigned. At the moment I'm redoing the signage of all the stack ends, trying to catalogue materials for a reading list for one of our liaison librarians, helping/hindering with the survey of students who've had training at the library etc. Basically, I like to throw my weight around and poke my beautiful Roman nose into everybody else's business! I'm learning the ropes on interlibrary loans and repairing books is next on the agenda.
I usually have lunch as late as I can and spend the hour composing ribald stories and inappropriate jokes for my colleagues' amusement. I also like to listen to mid-'90s dance songs on my computer. Here's a link to one of my favourites!
Finding amusing pictures and making my colleagues look at them is one of my favourite pastimes. Here's a picture now:
The people I work with at Archway are ace, really good to talk to and good at what they do too. The borrowers can be more difficult to relate to but I try to remember that they're all at the library because they've felt a vocation and they want to contribute to improving people's health - and that's pretty admirable in my book.
Wednesdays are probably my least favourite day because that's when I have to process the recall notices. This involves putting blocks on borrowers' accounts, but it takes ages because our borrowers are slack so there are loads of blocks to put up! Mondays are a different beast entirely because I work the late shift (1 - 8) so it's just me and the boss 'holdin' down tha block' in the evening. I like having the morning free and the library's nice 'n' peaceful in the evenings - especially with summer coming on.
Most weekday evenings I stay behind for a bit to do dead important things then run back home.
Fridays are cool because at closing time the team are usually begging me to take them down the pub and tell them some ribald stories and inappropriate jokes to kick-start their weekend.
I oblige, natch.
Hope that's shed some light on the subject. Any questions just blog me. Thanks,
Adam Charles Tocock.
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