8:35am - Arrive at work, set up program room for the first Mother Goose on the Loose of the fall! To set up the room, I arrange tables and chairs, get my books and props ready, pull books for a book display, get the music ready, go over the rhymes to make sure I know them, print out the words to a new rhyme we're doing so the parents can follow along, and set out brochures for the Imagination Library.
9:20a - Check email. I respond to an email about setting up library programs at our local YMCA after school programs.
9:43a - Print out flyers about upcoming parent workshops to hand out at the program.
10:00a - Mother Goose on the Loose! This is our program for under-2's. We took a break from the program for August and it's great to see my babies again! I see lots of familiar faces and a few new ones - one of my moms has brought along her new baby that she had while we were on break!
10:45a - The program's over but I leave the room set up because we'll be doing it again tomorrow. I head upstairs to administration to have a few meetings with various managers.
11:30a - I talk to the director of our local Head Start preschool about setting up regular visits to their classes.
11:45a - Our evening shift worker comes in and I chat with her a little bit.
12:00p - I work on August's monthly report (which is over a week late - whoops!).
12:20p - Email report to my boss and start a file for my September monthly report. In library school, our children's services professor assigned us a monthly report with the idea of teaching us to keep up our reports as we went along instead of sitting down at the end of the month and remembering everything that happened. I guess it didn't quite stick, but I'm working on it!
12:30p - Lunch time! I go out and grab a sandwich and read Kelly Creagh's Nevermore while I eat.
1:30p - I'm back from lunch and I show my staff what I've been working on for our fall storytime handouts. This fall we're going to try giving patrons a take-home craft instead of doing one at the library and we'll be including handouts that go along with the storytime theme each week. The handouts are half-pages, and one side has a list of related preschool-appropriate books and the other side has early literacy activities, rhymes, and crafts that they can do at home.
1:50p - I attempt to clean off my desk. I tend to let things pile up, but I try to clean off my desk at least once a week.
2:06p - One of the things on my desk is an invoice for some shelving units we ordered, so I open the boxes to make sure we got what I ordered. We ordered new bins for the board books and my looking at the bins somehow turns into me weeding the board book collection (for condition) and moving all of the board books into the bins and putting them out.
3:30p - Done with the board books, I put in an order for some craft supplies.
4:00p - I head up to the business office to turn in the invoice for the shelving units and complete the order for craft supplies.
4:30p - On my way back down, I stop by computer services to ask a couple of questions and our tech guy shows me the stuff he's been working on for our website updates.
5:05p - Back in my department, I talk with staff and make a sign to indicate where the board books have moved.
5:15p - I get things squared away and then head home... to make millions of piñatas for the program that's coming up on Friday...!
