library day in the life 7.5

Or, TGIF!

I'm writing this post really late, and I've forgotten most of what I did on Friday, really. But it was an exhausting week, not only work-wise, but also with the writing of these posts. (It was taking me 3 hours to write these posts, so I was going to bed after midnight, and I wake up just after 5.) By Friday night, I just didn't have the energy anymore. Anyway, here it is for what it's worth. Hopefully, some pictures will make it more interesting. :)

Here's a very approximate breakdown of the day:

• 3 hours - email/social networking/feeds
• 4.25 - serials review
• 1 hour - lunch
• .5 hour - chat with colleagues
• .25 - added pictures/modified libday 7.4 post

Getting There

I thought I'd share more pictures for this day's post. So this is what happens before I get to my office.

As I mentioned at the end of Day 4's post, I'm on vanpool. If you don't already know, traffic in LA is atrocious. I hate to drive, and being on a vanpool is the only thing making the commute somewhat bearable. The UCLA Vanpool is a university-sponsored service. Each rider has to pay a monthly fee, and the drivers are also van riders. My van meets at the far end of a K-Mart parking lot, 5 miles away from where I live. (There's actually an earlier pick-up that's about half the distance but, since the pick-up is earlier, I usually go to this one instead.)

And this is my van. It seats 11 people. Vans used to have the UCLA logo on them, but these were taken off because people--mostly those who are anti-animal testing--were vandalizing them.

It takes about 30 minutes to get to campus, which is 17 miles away. (Going home is a different story, though. It takes the van anywhere from 35-90 minutes to get back; the usual is about 45 minutes.) Since the drop off is at the southern part of campus, I have to walk another 20 minutes or so to get to the library.

As I also mentioned in Day 4's post, the main floor of my library is under renovation. Here's a peek (sort of) -- that glass room is where the reference reading room will be.

Everything is really still blocked off, so I couldn't take many pictures really. But you can see many, many more pictures on our University Librarian's blog. If I ever get a tour, I'll be sure to take my own pictures. :)

Down the stairs, you'll see another common area (sorry for the fuzzy picture). We have a limited number of computer terminals here, plus a couple of microform machines. At the bottom of the picture is the reference desk for microforms. The green covered drawers are some of our more commonly-used maps. You can't see it, but there are big round study tables by the windows.

At the Office

This is the door to my office. On the door are 2010 census posters in Khmer, Lao, and Thai that my student worker at that time got for me. Those flyers, etc. on the side of my door are messy because the nameplate just got put there, and the workers moved them around. I haven't gotten around to fixing them.

I didn't take a picture of the interior of my office as it's a mess. But here's what you see from my door: the hallway leading to the reception area. These shelves are mostly for area studies and government documents librarians.

In the Stacks

As usual, I spent the first couple of hours or so on emails and feeds. Today, more time was spent on emails than on reading my feeds. Specifically, I had to write a lengthy feedback for one of my committee's report/workplan.

Then, it was back to serials review. I had mostly finished going through Burma serials the day before, so I just had to finish it in the morning. One of the last things I had to do was to look at a particular title (to see if we want to keep our subscription), which is in the stacks. I thought that would be a good opportunity to show you our stacks. This is the view of the 3rd floor stacks from the elevator:

Here's another view, this time in the Asian history section:

This was the title for which I was looking. The verdict: keep the subscription.

One of the things I like to do when I'm in the stacks is to check in passing the titles that are in the sorting shelves or the return shelves, so that I can see what topics folks are researching. Somebody appears to be doing research on war in Asia and the Pacific or Australia's involvement in it.

Rest of the Day

After Brunei, I worked on the Malaysia titles. It was very disheartening to see that there are a total of over 1300 titles. I probably only got through about 150 titles. So more serials review on Monday.

I actually ate lunch away from my desk on Friday. My friend, who had been away from work all week, was finally back, so we ate lunch together and talked. In the afternoon, we also had some mochi ice cream. Also in the afternoon, I chatted a little with another co-worker.

So, that's my Friday. If I feel up to it, I would like to write a post about this whole Library in the Life Project experience, but we'll see if it will happen...