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Thursday, February 17, 2011

A Day in the Life of a Children's Librarian

8:45a - Arrive at work, put stuff away, greet coworkers, etc.

8:55a - Start pulling materials for the preschool storytimes we're doing at a local early learning center.  We are building our professional collection to make this an easy process.  On a shelf in our office, we keep copies of awesome books that we like to use in programs.  They don't circulate, so they're always available when we need them for storytimes.

9:20a - I am so sick of snow that, in addition to stories on snow and snowmen, I pull Bark, George to take with us.  It's one of my favorite favorites and I never get bored with it!

9:35a - A and I leave for the school.

9:45a - We arrive at the school, sign in at the office, and make our way to the first classroom.  We'll be visiting three classes on this visit.

9:50a - 11:15a - We visit three preschool classes and share the following books with each of them: Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner, Snowballs by Lois Ehlert (this was an unexpected hit with the kids.  They LOVED spotting all the different objects used in the snowman pictures!), and Bark, George by Jules Feiffer.  We also did an activity having the kids help us "build" a snowman (we brought a prop snowman made out of Styrofoam balls) and we did a Five Little Snowmen felt rhyme (on a glove so we didn't have to bring a felt board with us).

11:30a - We're back from the school and record our statistics.

11:40a - I work on my staff's time sheets.

12:30p - Lunch time!  I grab my lunch and eat in the staff room, reading Rival by Sara Bennett Wealer.

1:30p - Back from lunch, I zip up to the teen section to take a look at the space and check out what displays and booklists our teen librarian has put out.

2:00p - I have a meeting with one of my staff members to touch base on some projects and programs she's working on.

2:30p - Done with the meeting, I try to clean some things off my desk.

3:30p - I do some thinking about the Summer Reading Club and delve into trying to figure out a budget for us.  The money for our SRC comes from the Friends of the Library (and any outside sources I can scrounge up), so I need to figure out how much to ask for at their meeting early next month.  I look at performers, supplies like reading logs and book bags, decorations, and prizes.

4:50p - Inspired by this SRC work, I start working on a mock up of a baby Summer Reading Club log.  I think we're going to try having a separate club for pre-readers and parents will have a bingo sheet and cross off various early literacy activities that they complete throughout the summer.  We'll have space on the back for parents to record the titles of books they read to their kids if they want to (I think it's nice to have a record they can look back on in 10 or 20 years!).

5:30p - I finish my mock up and then it's time to go home!