It's been quite awhile since I posted about a day in the life of a Children's librarian. Since I recently took an AMAZING online class on youth services management, I wanted to choose a day when I have several manager things to do. It certainly varies a lot from day to day, but here's one day in the life of a Children's Services Manager:
8:45am - I arrive at work and debrief with one of my staff members about what had happened over the weekend, etc.
9am - 12pm - I work at the Children's reference desk. I pull the holds list, pull a School Collection, and work on an ALSC Blog post in between answering questions about:
- Choosing a poem to recite for a school project
- Bob books
- Dinosaurs
- Where people vote at the library
- Name tags for storytime
11:30am - One of my staff members arrives back from last week's vacation, so I catch her up on what's been going on.
12:00pm - Off desk, I get booktalking stuff together for later in the day.
12:15 - 1:15pm - Lunch time!
1:15 - 1:45pm - I email out reminders for next week's booktalking programs.
1:45pm - I leave for this afternoon's booktalking program. I booktalk five books to a fourth grade class at one of our local schools. I visit them every month!
2:35pm - I'm back at the library; I put my things away and record my statistics from the booktalking program.
2:50pm - I clean off my desk (mostly?) and prepare for a staff evaluation meeting. I've already written the evaluation, but I get all my ducks in a row and make sure I have my notes for questions I need to ask and things we need to touch base on. We're doing annual evaluations right now.
3:30pm - I meet with one of my staff members to go over her annual evaluation.
4:00pm - Our meeting is done; I polish up the evaluation and add the goals that we discussed together and get that printed off for my employee to sign and add comments if she wishes. The original signed copy will go to our director and I make copies for myself and my employee.
(Side note: I once worked for a library that refused to give us copies of our staff evaluations, even when I asked for one. It was the weirdest thing! So I always make sure everyone gets a copy!)
4:30pm - I print out a PO to take up to the Business Office and deal with an order of books that's come in.
5:00pm - As manager, I'm here late tonight covering a program for one of my employees who had to be off. It actually doesn't happen that often, but I make sure that I am familiar with all our programs being offered so I can step in if need be!
I start getting ready for tonight's program (Books and Building, a.k.a. Lego Club!). I pull the books I'm going to read, set up tables, and set up our arrow sign pointing to the room we'll be in.
5:20pm - I work on a book order.
6:00pm - I tackle my email inbox. Oy.
6:30 - 7:30pm - Time for Books & Building! We do this program weekly and share books in some way each week - it might be one or two readalouds or a few brief booktalks. After our books, we break out the Legos and have some time for building!
This week, I read Sam & Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen (Candlewick, 2014) and Ugly Fish by Kara LaReau, illustrated by Scott Magoon (HMH, 2006). We have a nice crowd of about 13 kids (great for us in the evening!) and everyone has a fun time. The kids are SO imaginative and they mostly like to help each other out, looking for specific pieces, etc.
7:45pm - I've got the room all cleaned up and reset to how we'll need it for the next morning and it's been a long day, so I head for home!
And that's just one day in the life of a children's librarian! If you want to see more, check out the posts I've tagged with "day in the life". One thing I LOVE about being a librarian is that each day is different!