library day in the life 8.3

What can I say about today? I guess I could sum it up as a day of questions, ideas, people, technology, and materials. Hmm...that kind of sums up librarianship, doesn't it?

Reference desk. After the usual check of emails, I was on the reference desk from 9-11am. I like to be on the desk in the morning because that's when I'm most alert and energetic. But early mornings are actually quiet on the desk. Not that the reading room is empty. It can actually get quite full. But it's mostly undergrads studying.

at the reference desk

While I was there, a faculty member came in to ask a question (which I don't remember anymore), then he asked if the library does training for iAnnotate. He said that he and he his colleagues were interested in getting training on it. I had never heard of it and didn't know if anyone in the library knows, so I took down his info. Once he was gone, I looked up what it was --an app for making annotations on PDFs, and that certainly has research applications. I emailed my departmental listserv and a couple of other librarians if they knew about this app.

While I waited for the response, I posted this on Facebook:

Should there be a specific librarian in a library whose job it is to keep up to date with apps & other programs that have research applications? If so, who?

I'm mostly a subject bibliographer, and I can be caught up in my own little world. It's not that I'm not interested in technology, but that I don't have the time to play around with it. That's why I posted that status. I know there's people who do stuff like that, but I wanted to see just what my friends have to say about it. The consensus was that emerging technologies or user experience librarians do this kind of work. I've seen these titles before, but I guess I never actually thought about what they do! Consequently, I didn't even think of my friend, Evivva Weinraub Lajoie, Director of Emerging Technologies and Services at Oregon State University Libraries -- that's basically what she does! [head slap] She even has a whole department who works on these things with her. Now that the lightbulb is on, I am now wishing that I could do a field internship with Viva.

Peer review. When on the desk, I usually bring things to do. Today, I brought redacted copies of my reference letters for peer review. (You can actually see them in the above picture.) I have to read them before my packet can be turned in, and today is the deadline. Later, in the afternoon, I was getting antsy because I didn't want to have my packet turned in late, and I still have to see the whole packet and sign off that I've seen the documents. By the end of the day, I knew it wasn't going to be turned in on time. I hope I don't get dinged for that.

Orders. I also brought lists of titles for collection development. I am a bit behind on this and have to really get cracking. I also did some of this later in the afternoon.

Research proposal. After my shift, I hand-delivered the signed hard copy of the research proposal I was working on. I still wonder if I'm a bit crazy to want to do it, as I already have too much to do, but I know it will help me in my job. So, do I will, if I get funded. For now, though, I can forget about it until April or May, when the decisions are made.

Colleagues. Normally, I'm cooped up in my office, barely coming up for air. Today, I actually talked to quite a few people. As Martha says, it's a good thing.

Networking/Outreach. I have a colleague, Eloisa Borah, who regularly organizes get-togethers with students of Filipino heritage from UCLA's library school. She usually invites me to these. Today, we had one, but it wasn't just for library students. There was one PhD student in the information school, but there was also a grad student from the World Arts and Culture Department and the Pharmacology Department. A Filipina staffer from the Asian American Studies Center was also there. It was a good event. I not only got to meet the grad students, but we came up with some ideas of how we can work together. I better follow up with them. I also came away with a couple of research ideas. Unfortunately, I already have a lot of research ideas and can't really get to anything new for at least 2 years. Still good to keep in mind though. And who knows? When the applying-for-grants bug hits me, I just might go for them anyway.

Data visualization. At the end of the day, there was a little bit of excitement, in that I had to decide really quickly whether I wanted to go for an opportunity or not. A couple of weeks ago, I had asked our Librarian for Digital Research and Scholarship if she knew data visualization because I'm interested in getting training in it. She sent me some links but, because I'm so busy, I'm really less likely to do things on my own as I am when there are scheduled classes. Long story short, Edward Tufte is having a couple of one-day courses in LA next week. I'm not entirely sure how helpful it'll be, and I'm not entirely comfortable with the implication that I will then become a resource on this, but I would really like to learn this stuff. But, if work is willing to pay for it, why not, right?

Letters. I didn't have to go to the trainer today (thank goodness, as I'm too tired). Instead, I got to start the A Month of Letters challenge, in which we're supposed to mail at least one item--letter, postcard, cookies, a leaf--each day that the post runs in the month of February. We also have to write back to everyone who writes to us. That's a total of at least 24 items to mail.

I'd been meaning to write to people for a long time, so this certainly force me to do it. I'm actually really excited about this challenge. I happily gathered all my stationery that's been languishing forever in my drawers. I searched for the calligraphy set that I acquired during one of my trips last year, but I couldn't find it. I did find the wax and seal that I bought at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany.

stationery galore

I only got to write two letters because 1) I was trying to figure out who to write to first, 2) I then had to pick the appropriate stationery, and 3) I wrote somewhat lengthy notes. My shoulder, which had been bothering me, complained, so I had to stop.

sealed and ready to go

I'd say it was a good day...

library day in the life 8.2

Today was a slow day. I don't mean that I didn't have work to do, but more that I lacked energy. It's probably because I slept after midnight last night and had to get up at my usual 5:20 am. I'm sure it's also tiredness from the busy weekend and Monday.

Unlike yesterday, there were no deadlines today, so I could afford to be a little bit flexible with my schedule. Don't get me wrong, I still had my whole day planned out from 5:20am through 11pm as part of my time management experiment, but I was okay with moving things around. I did some of the things that I didn't get to yesterday, and I moved up a couple of tasks that I had (re-)scheduled later in the week.

Commute. The day started out fine but, like yesterday, the commute took longer than usual. I don't know what it is these days. It's either the traffic is worse, or my vanpool is leaving a few minutes later, which then makes a big difference in the amount of traffic we encounter. I arrived at work closer to 8 than 7:30.

E-mails. As part of my time management, I'm only supposed to be on emails until 9am, and then another hour in the afternoon. Yesterday, I never got to my afternoon hour. Since I got in later today, I had less time to do emails and other online stuff. That felt weird. Today, I wasn't as strict about the whole email thing. I found myself reverting to my habit of looking at all my email accounts every so often and looking at some emails when they pop up. I don't think I was doing it as much as normal, but definitely reverting.

At 9am, I had a phone meeting with Sandy Wee, President of the Asian / Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA). I don't think I ever announced it here, but I was elected Vice-President/President-Elect early last year. So, I'm fulfilling that role in 2011-2012. Sandy is a super-organized person--I really need to take lessons from her! Before my tenure even began, she started copying me on emails. Once my term officially started (after ALA Annual 2011), she instituted regular phone meetings between the two of us. (I think Immediate Past President Florante Ibanez was the first to do this.) So, today's phone call was our regular once-every-weeks meeting.

We had a lot to talk about today. At Midwinter, Sandy generously gave me time during our Executive Board (EB)to do a brief "future of APALA" brainstorming session. I wanted to use that discussion to help me inform what I'll be doing during my presidential year. During today's call, we talked about a lot of the things we discussed at the session, including creating a planning task force, which I intend to do soon. Sandy was also giving me some advice about making committee appointments, something I also need to do shortly. We had so much to talk about that we actually went over our allotted hour.

Since I was already in the APALA frame of mind, I did a few APALA-related things throughout the day, mostly reading and responding to emails and communicating to the committee to which I'm the EB liaison.

I have so much to do to prepare for my presidency. I better start scheduling all these tasks! But it should, hopefully, make my actual term a little bit easier. My upcoming presidential term is actually part of the reason I'm doing this whole time management thing--I need to get ready for a crazy 2012-2013. In addition to being President, I will also be Chair of ACRL's Dr. E. J. Josey Spectrum Scholar Mentor Committee and might potentially be doing a research project (if awarded funding). Egads!

ANSS. I think I was really in the mood to do committee work today because I decided to do work for the Anthropology & Sociology Section (ANSS) this afternoon. Well, maybe it's more that it's been a week since Midwinter, and I really needed to follow up on things and get them moving. I was actually supposed to do this yesterday, but it got preempted. I had moved it to later in the week, but I decided that I needed to pay attention to this sooner rather than later. I typed up the notes I took during the 2012 Program/40th Anniversary Planning Committee and posted it on our Facebook group workspace. I hope people start discussing soon because we really need to make some decisions and get the ball rolling quickly.

"save the date" magnet, without an actual date
(photo by Erin Gratz)

Commons. After chatting with Sandy, I had Zoe Borovsky, our Librarian for Digital Research and Scholarship, give me a quick tour of our Research Commons. I've seen it before, but I was specifically asking her which spaces would be ideal for a small class (5-10 people) that wants to view a film. She pointed out the research pods, the study rooms, and the small classroom as possibilities.

research pods (picture taken over the summer, before the Commons opened)

When we were touring, I could see that the spaces were full. I haven't really been in there, other than passing through, since we first opened it last fall. What struck me was that, though the Commons is supposed to be this dynamic, collaborative hub, people were really just using it as study space. Questions: If all the students want is study space, do you give them that? Or, do you force them to see the research possibilities? How do you make this space live up to its potential?

In the afternoon, I showed the same spaces to a student in charge of the class, which is on the experience of Pacific Islanders (PI) in educational systems. Like me, he thought that the pods was not a good option. It's hard to have a discussion when you feel like you're intruding on people studying. He did like the study rooms, which I found out had whiteboards as walls. (I'm not sure if I knew that before but just didn't remember or not.) I showed him the small classroom, as well as our conference spaces.

smaller group study room, with screen

Part of my goal with meeting this student was to reach out to the PI student population. As PI Studies (among other subjects) librarian, I technically do collection development, research, and instruction in this area. While it is PIs who are most likely to do research on this topic, not all of them would necessarily want to. However, while I am committed to developing a PI Studies collection (it actually wasn't an area of focus until I made it so), I also want to help the PI community, whether or not they are actually using the materials I purchase or taking PI Studies classes. I want them to know about libraries and what we have to offer. I also want them to know that we can work together to create programs on PIs or that interest them. I think I conveyed that. Let's see if something comes out of it.

Lunch. I was supposed to have a working lunch today, but I decided to have real lunch instead. I had brought lunch for me and a co-worker, which we ate outside in the sun.

Minutiae. Other than the stuff I already mentioned, the other things I did today included: doing a reimbursement form for ALA Midwinter (somehow took longer than the 30 minutes I allotted for it), the Midwinter survey (procrastinating much?), more emails, and some cleaning up/filing.

After. The rest of the day remained sluggish. Got to my vanpool early and to the trainer's early. But everything was just going really slow at the gym--everything I did seemed to give me pain, and I hadn't come in sore from yesterday's workout. I think I may have done something to my shoulder -- a pinched nerve maybe? Left the gym a little bit early, started the rest of my evening ahead of time. I even started this post early. But now, I am behind. Sigh. Better go to sleep.

library day in the life 8.1

Or, I Don't Like Mondays

Today was a long day. This is because today really started over the weekend. And, I am exhausted.

Time Management

This year, one of my goals is to be more organized and to be more efficient with my time. Though I think the main problem is that I just have too much to do, I feel that maybe I could manage my time better. So, I finally bought a smart phone, which I hope will help me in this endeavor. This weekend, I started using the Errands app to put in my to-do list and put due dates and reminders. Well, my weekend was packed! I had a few things I had to do for work, plus household and personal tasks. By Saturday, I was already behind. By Sunday, I had a bunch of unaccomplished tasks, which I had to move to future deadlines. I wasn't slacking this weekend, though I did take an afternoon nap on Saturday and walked both days. The rest of the time, though, I was busy. So, not only did I not get to relax or get enough sleep over the weekend, but I was already tired before the work week even started.

my schedule for the week

As part of this organization goal, I started a time management experiment, where I scheduled everything from the time I wake up to the time I sleep. For accountability and support, I turned in my schedule for the week to my partner in crime on Sunday afternoon. I was afraid that I really wasn't giving myself enough time to do the tasks but, at the same time, I had a lot of things that needed to get done. So, I thought I'd limit the timing, hoping that being more focused on specific tasks would help them get done faster. Turns out things just really take a while to finish.

Things Go Awry (or Aray (Ouch) in Tagalog or Cebuano))

I was off to a good start. I didn't press the snooze button once and wasn't rushing to leave the house. But it went downhill from there. Traffic was somewhat bad for a Monday morning, so we got to campus a tad late. When I got to my office, my computer was locked out. I wasn't sure if IT people were working on it, so I didn't want to reboot it. Some more minutes wasted. Mid-morning, the alarm went off, so we had to evacuate. More time taken off my tight schedule. Fortunately, there were no other surprises.

fire alarm evacuation -- there were a lot of people in the library!

It Just Takes Time

I basically only worked on two things today: my peer review and a research proposal. I have been working on these for a while, but I wasn't quite done.

Peer review: At UCLA, librarians are not quite faculty, not quite staff. We have our own version of tenure and the peer review process. We have to go through peer review every 2-3 years. It is a time-consuming process that includes gathering/creating the following materials:

• statement of responsibilities: sort of a job description, in essay form. If your responsibilities changed during the review period, you'll need more than one.
• data summary: list of everything you've done for the review period--work-related and for professional development
• statement of professional achievements (an essay highlighting your accomplishments), putting together statements of responsibilities (more than one, if your responsibilities changed during the review period
• annual work plans
• goals table for the next review period
• list of referees: needed if you're going for career status (our version of tenure), promotion (to the next rank), or acceleration (going up 2 or more steps within your rank)
• supplemental materials (optional): includes publications, brochures, and anything else that you think would help make your case
  

These materials go to your review initiator (RI), or supervisor, for feedback. The RI has to write a recommendation and an essay to support that recommendation. The unit head, department head, and supervisory associate university librarian (AUL) also have to write their recommendations and assessment. My unit head is the same as my department head so I only need 3 recommendations / assessment.

This is my 2nd time doing this, and it sure isn't any easier. I thought the first time took forever -- I was pretty much working on it for 2 months. But, at that time, I had no supervisor or unit head; my AUL filled all those roles, so we had some leeway time-wise. This time, I started talking with my supervisor in late summer. I began working on my materials in November, knowing that I'll need to turn them in earlier since there are a couple more people involved in the process. I spent a good chunk of my Thanksgiving weekend working on my materials. I was looking forward to being done by early December. When we weren't, I looked forward to being done before the holidays. Still not the case. So, due to circumstances that were not in my control, I was still working on it today, 2 days before the final deadline! And I was working on it over the weekend, too. But now, I've done my part, and it's out of my hands. My consolation is that this tedious process will soon be over. Then, I can forget about it. For a while anyway.

my peer review materials

Research proposal: UCLA is part of the University of California (UC) system, and the UC librarians have an association called the Librarians Association of the UC (LAUC). (Each campus also has a chapter.) LAUC offers its members the opportunity to get funding for research projects related to librarianship or their subject specialties. Last year, I applied for a mini-grant (only up to $500) from LAUC-LA, the UCLA chapter, to begin exploring a potential comparative collections analysis project. Now, I'm applying for a full LAUC research grant. I've been working on the proposal for weeks and turned it in a couple of weeks ago to our local committee. Late last week, the committee came back with suggested changes and today was the deadline for the revised proposal. I was supposed to work on this yesterday, but I just didn't get to it. I did turn the revised documents today but, just before I had to leave for the day, it was suggested that I modify my timeline. So, I had to do it tonight, during the time that was allotted to write my LibDay post. But, again, it's over. Well, almost. I still have to get signatures. And the local committee will review it once more before sending the packet on to the statewide committee. Wish me luck!

There's Always More To Do

Because these two projects took up so much of my time (even with a working lunch), I did not get to do the tasks scheduled for this afternoon. So, tonight, I had to find new days/times in which to do them. I tell ya, I don't think it's me.

This Really Is a Small World

An unexpected thing that happened today--a pleasant unexpected thing, that is--is that I ran into Jim Deutsch, my former colleague at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (SFF). Jim is a curator for SFF, a lecturer at George Washington University, and, like me, has a background in folklore and librarianship. When we had to evacuate due to the fire alarm, I saw Jim standing among the crowds, and I was so shocked to see him there. Turns out he's here to do two days of research (today and tomorrow) at UCLA before he heads back to DC. If he hadn't been for the alarm, we wouldn't have run into each other. Isn't that crazy?

TTFN

The day is finally over. Though I was supposed to go to bed an hour ago, I was at least able to finish this post before midnight. Yay, me! Here's to an easier tomorrow...

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...

library day in the life 7.4

Or, A Day for Details

Today was supposed to be a day to buckle down and focus on my Southeast Asian serials review. And I did do that. But I also didn't. I had a hard time getting started this morning. In my usual check of various email accounts and social networking sites, I was seeing so many great links to blogs and articles that I spent a little bit more time on it than I've been doing during the earlier part of this week. Then, I started really chugging on the serials, though there were some minor distractions here and there.

Here's the approximate breakdown of my day:

• 3 hours - emails / social networking / feeds (including during lunch & snacktime)
• 4.5 hours - serials review
  
• 1 hour - reference desk (brought circulars)
• .25 - stretching (am), looking for snack (pm)
• .25 hour - student consult

The Main Road

Serials review was the order of the day. It was extremely painstaking work; it involved:

• looking at last year's list and transferring notes for the titles to this year's list
  
• looking up all the titles on LC CAPSEA (Library of Congress - Cooperative Acquisitions Program for Southeast Asia) site, including those not on the list (just to be sure), to a) check if other institutions have cancelled and b) see if the publications are relatively current
  
• looking up our catalog records for titles we're supposed to have and see if a) we have a record for them and b) if our holdings match what LC has listed as sent to us, then writing notes for each title on my Excel spreadsheet
  
• looking up on OCLC for titles we don't have and check the holdings of other institutions, especially UC Berkeley, as well as to find out subject headings for titles that I don't already have notes for
• checking list sent by the University of Washington for titles that they are cancelling
• deciding whether to keep, add, or cancel, then writing notes on the spreadsheet
• adding totals to another spreadsheet that's keeping track of budget for both monographs and serials
  

I didn't get very far at all. It took me 2 hours to finish Brunei, and that's one of the easy countries to do. I worked on Burma for 2 1/2 but didn't quite finish. There has to be an easier or smarter way to do this. I do believe, though, that once I do all this heavy work for all countries, then it will be much, much simpler work in subsequent years.

Side Roads

Though I had a clear project, I needed to work on, I also had to do a couple of things, such as:

• reference desk - It actually was very quiet because a) it's summertime and b) our main floor is being renovated and the reference room is so hidden that you really have to be determined to get there (or, more often the case, you really want to borrow a laptop, which is in the same area as the reference desk). To get to the desk, you have to go down the stairs from the ground level and go down this hallway. (Follow the light...)
  
  When you reach the door, you see our fancy sign.
  
  This is what the inside of the temporary reference reading room looks like.
  
  This is the view from the reference desk.
  
  
• circulars - For some countries, LC CAPSEA sends out circulars, or lists of titles; these come monthly. Since I knew the desk was probably going to be quiet (and it was to hard to do my serials review over there), I brought along circulars for the Philippines and Vietnam. All I did today was to go through the list and cross out the ones I already know I don't want, based on title or brief description. (Afterwards, I give it to my assistant or student to search on our catalog and OCLC for UCLA and other UC holdings, as well as to get subject headings and/or descriptions (since most of these are in languages I can't read) before I then make my decisions.) A note about Vietnam circulars: They are especially challenging because they do not have diacritics, and the Vietnamese language is all about diacritics. So, searching for more info is very difficult and time-consuming. I am really missing my student assistant (as I'm sure my staff assistant is), who won't be back until the winter quarter.
  

Off-Road

In addition to the things mentioned above, I also ended up doing other things, because a) I needed a break and b) I needed to deal with it right then before I forgot. These activities included:

• reading social networking posts/feeds - I get so much info through FB and, now, Twitter, especially related to libraries and librarianship. Examples from today include:
• Shepard Fairey, street artists brighten West Hollywood library - on a local library
• Are You Reading YA Lit? You Should Be. - on my favorite kind of literature
• Bravery based librarianship is the (only) future - on the need for pattern disruption in librarianship
• What Librarians Do - an infographic on the myriads of things librarians do (I do almost everything on there, except for the very technical stuff, such as actual preservation, cataloging, and creation of systems.)


• sending an email to the Preservation Officer - I saw him in the office, which reminded me that I had a couple of old materials in my possession: a set of ledgers and letters from early 20th century Philippines and an old Indonesian book of unindentified script. I want to add these to our collections, but they are in pretty bad shape, so I want to see if they're salvageable. He had to rush off to a meeting, so I sent him an email instead.
  
  This is the cover of the Indonesian book. I think it's leather.
  
  These are letters of previous owner (?) trying to ascertain the script; there is also a reply from a some expert -- he didn't actually know the answer, but he thought it was some sort of bastardized Arabic.
  
  And here's the actual content of the book. Do you know what script that is?
  
  This is the packaging for the Philippine materials; they belonged to a Mauro Tayko of Dumaguete. Have you ever heard of him? I wonder if it was sent by Donn V. Hart, well-known anthropologist and Philippine specialist.
  
  These are some of the papers on top, including a telegram (remember those? I never did get a chance to receive a telegram) receipt and a letter, both written in Spanish.
  
  Also included are ledgers, like the one below. As you can see, it's in terrible shape.
  
  
• look up classrooms for an instruction session - I know I'm supposed to do an instruction session in a week, but I actually hadn't thought about the details (too many other things to think about!). An email from the instructor nudged me, and I started to see if our classroom is available. However, it will all depend on how many student there will be -- I might have to book a classroom that requires permission from other people, so I started looking at possibilities. As this is a summer course, I realized that this might be a session that's more than an hour -- that's going to require more thinking/prep work. I sent an email to the instructor; I can't really move forward until I get more info. (Just got an email from the instructor: one hour is fine--whew!-- and 25 students--have to book a bigger room.)


• impromptu student consult - Okay, I admit it. I don't like it when students show up and think that I automatically have time to meet with them. I usually don't. I have other deadlines, and I have a lot these next two weeks. I especially don't like it when they show up 10 minutes before I have to leave work. (I am on a vanpool, and I have to leave exactly on time, or there will be 10 ticked off people waiting for me.) I asked if it was something that can be answered in 10 minutes, and they said it was just a quick question. Of course, it wasn't.
  
  The quick question was: where is the section for Filipino materials? The answer: there is no one section; it would depend on what your specific topic is. They didn't really know, so I told them to do some exploring first. I quickly showed them the library website (which they've never been on), the library catalog, and a federated search tool for general databases. Then, I said to make an appointment for additional help. I have to say that they were quite appreciative, so I'm glad I saw them after all.
  

So, that was my day. It was tiring; my back was aching by mid-morning. By late afternoon, I needed a little something sweet to reward myself and to keep myself awake, but I went searching for it too late; the store next door was already closed. Fortunately, there was a little bit of leftover ice cream from last week's retirement party. Yay! I was winding down my day with some ice cream and reading of emails/feeds. Until the students interrupted me, that is.

But it's all good. I had a good evening. I'm going to bed late again, though, writing this post. Tomorrow, more serials review. Oh, joy.

library day in the life 7.3

Or, An Easy, Breezy Day (Somewhat)

Today was nothing like yesterday. I wasn't tearing my hair out over some tough decisions I had to make, though there was some frustration over some painstaking work I did in the morning. In fact, most of the day was actually quite relaxed. And I definitely needed this kind of day to offset the first two days this week.

Here's the approximate breakdown of my day:

• 2 hours -reading/responding to emails (throughout the day, including answering a couple of surveys)
  
• 3.5 hours - Southeast Asia serials review
• 1.5 hour - meeting with catalogers; chatted with other folks in cataloging; looked at show shelves & serials shelf
• 1 hour - getting to/from technical services building
  
• 1 hour - reading social media links/feeds

As is often the case, lunch was again at my desk while reading emails/feeds.

I'll Take It

Today, I had intended to focus on and make some headway on my annual Southeast Asia serials review, but a number of small but good tidings made today a much more relaxing day:

1. The field director for LC CAPSEA sent out an email late last night saying that we have a few days grace period from the deadline of July 28 to get out profiles and serials review done. Obviously, I still have to the work in the next few days, but it gave me a little bit more leeway for how quickly I needed to accomplish it.
2. Our monthly area studies meeting this morning was cancelled, so that's 2 hours I didn't have to spend in a meeting and around which I would have had to schedule my other work.
   
3. I have some interns coming for the month of August, and I have to do a lot of prep work before they come. I thought I would have to do that this week/weekend, but I checked the starting date this morning, and they're not starting until August 8. So, I can do that work next week and focus on the serials the rest of this week.

All these gave me some breathing room, and I took it!

It's in the Details

After emails/social media stuff during the first hour of the day, I began on the serials review. Like the profiles I was working on on Monday and Tuesday, I have to do a review for each country. Last year, I did a thorough review of 6 of the countries, choosing to do first the countries for which we already had a number of subscriptions since you can add new serials throughout the year, but you can only cancel during a set period.

I had intended to begin by looking at the countries that I didn't do last year, which I did initially. Since I didn't really have many or any subscriptions for these countries, this means going through the list of serials and deciding which ones I would like to add. Some titles I can easily cross out just by looking at the titles. But for most, I have to look up OCLC records and see what the subject headings are, as well as look at the CAPSEA website to see if the titles are being received regularly. (Many titles take a couple of years to be received, e.g., the latest issue received might be from 2008.) I also have to check if we have subscriptions through other vendors or if we have access through online databases. It's also helpful to know if any other other UCs have access. Too many things to look up, and there are hundreds of titles!

So, you might understand why I then got distracted and started looking at my Excel spreadsheet from last year and checking if the cancellations had indeed been cancelled and the additions added. I also wanted to add the new subscription prices so that I can do my budget more accurately, since serials are included in my country budgets. For Brunei, everything was fine. For Burma, I noticed that none of the cancellations had been recorded and two additions hadn't been included. So, I have to write to LC Jakarta but, then, I thought maybe this was a good time to think if I really wanted the new serials that hadn't been added after all. That way I only had to send one email. I didn't make any decisions yet, so email not sent.

I also noticed that, for Burma, the conversion rate seemed to be off -- annual subscription rates were in the thousands of dollars! Another thing to include in the email. For both countries, I could see in CAPSEA's records that issues had been sent but they don't show up on our catalog. Something I have to pursue with the acquisitions department and with my assistant.

Then, I started to look at the cancellation list sent to the West Coast Southeast Asian librarians. This is important because there are only so many institutions subscribing to each serial. The most subscribed serials probably has less than 10 subscriptions while most titles only have 2-4 subscriptions, including LC. LC doesn't really count because you can't ILL their stuff. So, when cancelling, it is important to look at whether there are remaining subscribers.

I then decided that I really needed to go back to the countries I hadn't done yet. I had started with one country when I first started this work, but I thought I should go with a more important country. But then time ran out. So, as you can see, I did a lot of work, but I was all over the place. I will just have to be more focused tomorrow.

Woman Around Town

I had a 1pm meeting with a couple of our original catalogers who have been dealing with the backlog of Southeast Asian materials. My library is located in the northeast side of campus, while our technical services building is on the opposite end, just a little bit outside of campus. I had a choice of either walking or taking the campus shuttle there; I decided to walk since a) it's the slightly downhill direction; b) it was a nice day; c) I could always use the exercise; and d) I wanted to take this opportunity to show you around.

It took me about 35 minutes on an easy pace to get there, and here are some of the places I passed by. (You'll have to forgive the quality of these pictures since I was mostly just walking and taking quick photos, without really trying to necessarily get the good shots. I probably have better shots elsewhere, but these are the ones I took today.)

This is the slightly hilly, grassy area between Janss Steps and Bruin Walk, where a few students were sitting in the shade of the big trees.

This is the Bruin statue, located in Bruin Plaza, between the student union and the Wooden Center (in the background).

This is the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, on the southwestern edge of campus. (On the lower right hand corner of the picture is the campus shuttle I could have taken.)

This is the Fox Theater in Westwood Village, the site for numerous movie premieres, including the Twilight movies.

On the same street, some vendors were setting up for the small weekly farmers' market.

And, here is my destination: Kinross Building South, a low-lying, ivy-covered, trailer-type building that I don't think was meant to be permanent. It is home to our acquisitions and cataloging/metadata departments.


Going, Going, (Almost) Gone

The reason the catalogers wanted to meet with me was to show me how much inroads they've made into the backlog of Southeast Asian materials and to come up with a plan to deal with what's left. See, here is the problem. Almost all of the 11 Southeast Asian countries have different languages, including major languages like: Bahasa (Indonesian and Malay), Tagalog, Thai, Burmese, Khmer, Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese. Some are Romanized (with and without diacritics), while others are not. And that's just the major ones. But each country has other languages -- e.g., the Philippines has Bisaya, Ilocano, etc. and Singapore has Chinese and Tamil. I can only read 2 Philippine languages: Tagalog and Bisaya. And there is no one in the cataloging department who has Southeast Asian language skills.

Part of the reason I rely so heavily on the CAPSEA program is that the materials come with LCCNs (Library of Congress control numbers), so that we can at least look these up in the LC catalog. The LC records are usually minimal-level cataloging, but it gives catalogers a starting point. For languages in a different script, they can at least get the transliterated version and use that to search in OCLC. However, way before I started here, there were a lot of materials that were not obtained through LC, and these were what constituted the backlogs. Also, the ones for which I wanted full cataloging ended up here since they had no way of really providing full cataloging if they couldn't read the content.

A couple of years ago or so, I had told them what I do to come up with subject headings. This basically meant looking at the records of institutions that I know have catalogers in these languages and comparing their records. If the choice is providing no access to the materials or this sort of copy cataloging (though often still not full records), I chose to go this route. The original and copy catalogers came up with workflows, and that is how they have managed to almost eliminate my backlog. Yay!

This is what the Southeast Asian shelves now look like:

Isn't that beautiful? I would have to dig up the pictures I took before so you can see the difference.

We also talked about what to do with the remaining materials. We have a couple of options, and we're starting to explore them.

After the meeting, I stopped by to talk with the serials cataloger (I actually didn't know where her office was), especially since I have new subscriptions from last year. I discovered a snag, so will have to deal with that first. I then visited another original cataloger and chitchatted with her. I rarely visit this building (due to the commute time and because I have other priorities), so I don't get to interact with these folks much. So, it was nice to be able to visit with some of them.

There And Back Again

I took the shuttle back to the library. Between the shuttle drop-off and the the Young Research Library (YRL) is the Murphy Sculpture Garden. Here are some of the sights:

fountain sculpture

ubiquitous tour groups

sculptures

film students doing their work

another sculpture

And, finally, here is my library.



Once I got back to the library, it was harder to focus, so I mostly did emails and looked up stuff. I'll have to buckle down tomorrow, though.

So, there you have it. That's how my day went. What a difference, huh?

library day in the life 7.2

Or, A Day of Frustration

Today wasn't as structured as yesterday, so my breakdown of how I spent my day isn't going to be as accurate. Having meetings most of the afternoon yesterday basically left me the morning to do other stuff, so it was easier to keep track. However, unstructured days is more often than not the rule for me. Here's how the day went:

• 2 hours - prepped for and participated in the ACRL (Dr. E. J.) Josey Spectrum Scholar Mentor Committee meeting
• .75 hour - emails (throughout the day)
• .75 hour - checked out the UCLA All-Staff Picnic (actual lunch was at my desk while reading -- see next bullet)
  
• .75 hour - checked/reading articles/links shared on FB, Twitter
• 4.75 hours - reviewed/modifed LC CAPSEA country profiles

The Good:

• Again, I didn't have that much emails today. This is really surprising. I'm glad, though, because I really have some deadlines to meet.
• A recurring meeting that was on my calendar didn't happen, so more time to do what I needed to do.
• I always like to check out articles/links shared on FB. I learn so much from them about library-related things, as well as current events. Now, that I'm sort of active on Twitter for this Library in the Day project, I'm also learning a lot more of what's going on out there in libraryland.
  
• I took time out to check out the all-staff picnic. This is an annual event, and this is the 4th time since I've been here. I never went before, though, because I heard that a) the free food wasn't anything interesting (which it wasn't) and there really isn't much to it (which is kind of true). But it did get me out of the office and gave me something to photograph, so I can finally put photos in my post.

This is what it looked like when I got to campus around 7:30am, and they were still setting up.

It looked quite different at lunchtime. Folks had their picnic blankets and were spread out on the grass and under the trees. There was a DJ and dancing, including dancing mascots, as shown in the picture below. They happened to be playing salsa around the time that I was there, and I was very tempted to dance. That's the Powell Library Building in the background, home of our undergraduate library.

Here is a close up of our mascots, Joe and Josephine Bruin:

The Bad:

• I like to come to meetings prepared. I had actually done a little prep work for my committee meeting, but I actually hadn't done the important part, which was to review the agenda and necessary documents. (I guess those emails came on a busy day, and I missed them somehow. Though, I think it was more that I thought that they were the same documents I had seen before.) So, I spent quite a bit of the meeting reading up and sometimes missing what was discussed. I was still an active participant, though, just not as ready as I should have been.
• Though, I learn from FB and Twitter feeds, they are still distractions. I tend to be more distracted when I'm doing something challenging and/or tired. Today, it was both.

The Ugly:

• Yesterday, I talked about LC CAPSEA and doing my annual review of my country profiles. Today, I had to finish reviewing and modifying the profiles for the rest of the countries. It was such difficult and depressing work. As I mentioned before, I have assigned budgets to each country based on what tier they belong (in the top tier are those countries which are of most interest to our researchers). Last year, I stayed as close as possible to those budgets when I did my profiles. Well, this year, I have the same budget, but the costs have gone up. For some countries, costs went up by 40%! What does one do?

Let me explain about approval plans, since most people don't know what is unless they're collection development librarians. (We were actually talking about this recently, and we all said that we really didn't learn about approval plans in library school and only learned about it once we started doing our jobs.) For approval plans, you set up a profile where you're telling the vendor to send you all books from certain subject categories. You might limit this by content (e.g., research-level), publishers, etc. And you give them a spending limit. This is intended to save librarians' time, by having certain books come automatically instead of ordering titles individually.

Many libraries have approval plans with YBP, as do we. The great thing about YBP is that they pre-catalog the books, and these books have call numbers (not localized, of course). So, when you do your profile, you can not only specify the subjects that you want, but you can also be as specific as you want in terms of call number ranges. That way, you can technically get only the books you want.

Well, with CAPSEA, that is not how it works. You can specify subjects, but these subjects are broad. And you can't limit it by specific aspects of the topic or the authoritativeness of the materials or even by publishers. Thus, a subject like religion might have useful books on religion in the life of Southeast Asians, but it is just as likely to have not as important books on specific temples or the lives and teachings of individual monks. This makes it very difficult when you are trying to tighten your profiles and stay within budget.

For example, take Indonesia, which I have given an assigned budget of 100%. Well, some categories cost almost 40%. That means I can only I have 2 1/2 to 3 major categories. Which areas I am supposed to cut: history, politics, economics, sociology, literature, or religion? These are all important areas. And when you cut, it's all or nothing. If I cut a topic, then it means I'm getting nothing for that topic. And, if I choose to only go with, say, 3 major categories, then I can't have the smaller (meaning, cheaper) categories, such as reference works, gender studies, education, public health, etc.

Thus, I had to decide which areas I can afford not to get books in, at least for the upcoming year. I had to decide which subjects are more important than others. The answers are different for each country, since it depends on the current research interests of faculty and students, as well as what I think will be the continuing or future areas of interest.

And, unlike here, where it is possible to get old publications from publishers or used bookstores, it is a lot more difficult to do retrospective collection development for Southeast Asian materials since most publications are printed in very limited quantities. Either you get it right way, or you lose your chance. With only about a dozen collecting libraries in the country, many also facing budget woes, there is a good chance that the other librarians are making the same cuts and the lesser the likelihood that these titles would be available through interlibrary loan.

This is the reality. Increasing costs vs. budgets. Subject areas pitted against each other. And I had to make those decisions. That's why today was a hard day.

But the day is done (not that tomorrow will be any easier, as I have serials review to do next). So, I will leave you with this fuzzy picture from my walk on the beach this evening. Good night!

library day in the life 7.1

I am the Librarian for Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the Librarian for Anthropology, Archaeology, and Religion, based in the Young Research Library at UCLA. This week, I'm participating in the Library Day in the Life Project because:

1. It seems like a fun thing to do.
2. I don't have enough things to do. (Not!)
3. I'm trying to be do more creative things, including blogging (even if it is about work).
4. People just have no idea what librarians do. (Sometimes, even I don't know what is I do, though whatever it is sure keeps me busy much more than 40 hours a week.)
   

Okay, that seems like a really boring way to start a post; I feel like I'm introducing myself at a meeting or conference. But the instructions say I should do that and, since this if my first time doing this, I should probably follow instructions. (Though, of course, nothing's really going to happen to me if I don't.)

Here's the approximate breakdown of my day:

• 2.5 hours - prepping for and participating in search committee meeting
• 3.5 hours - LC CAPSEA country profiles review
  
• 1.25 hours - monthly (though it happens more like quarterly--not that I'm complaining) meeting with supervisor
• .50 hour - sign up for libday7, set up new Twitter account for libday7 (@librariansdream), skim tweets
• .50 hour - APALA work: add wiki users and submit 2013 Program Committee budget
• 1.25 hours - check emails, FB (throughout the day); eat snack & lunch (both while working)

Some of this work requires explanation, or at least I want to provide more information:

• Search committees: Most librarians, especially in huge academic libraries like mine, participate in search committees, i.e., the committees in charge of selecting librarians, library staff, etc. (Search committee work includes: going through applications; narrowing down candidates; creating lists of questions for candidates and references; scheduling and conducting references; scheduling and conducting day-long interviews; writing recommendation of who to hire.)
  
  I'm in a search committee for a librarian position. This is the second time I've been on a search committee in the last year. This particular search is more complicated, time-consuming, and drawn out than the other.

• LC CAPSEA: The UCLA Library has excellent area studies collections. Many of the area studies librarians develop their collections with the help of the Library of Congress' cooperative acquisitions programs (CAPs). Basically, the Library of Congress, through its overseas offices, acquire publications for participating institutions on a cost-recovery basis.
  
  As the Southeast Asian Studies librarian, I work with CAP-Southeast Asia. The main office is in Jakarta, Indonesia, with satellite offices in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Bangkok, Thailand, and Manila, Philippines. They collect materials in various formats (e.g., monos, serials, A/V, ephemera) and languages (e.g., English, Southeast Asian languages, other Western languages, Chinese), according to your country profiles and/or your selections on monthly circulars. They collect for all 11 Southeast Asian countries (Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste, and Vietnam).
  
  Every year, I have to review and modify my country profiles because costs keep going up while our budgets keep getting cut. Even though we self-select (through circulars) for a few of the countries, we still have to do country profiles for these countries, as this will determine how much LC will charge us, since we have to pay them upfront for the upcoming fiscal year. (Their fiscal year begins in October, which is why we're doing this now.) If we go over what's in our LC account, then they send us a supplemental bill.
  
  Since I started this job just over 3 years ago, I've been trying to do some kind of equitable distribution across the 11 countries (before, we weren't getting anything for some countries at all), based on a tier system that I devised (i.e., Tier 1 countries get more money, but all countries have a base amount). With the rising costs and budget cuts, it's inevitable that some topics get cut out of our profiles. I have to weigh things like this when I'm going through these profiles. Today, I was only able to go through 5 country profiles (guess you know what you'll be reading about tomorrow).
  

That's probably more information than you want, but maybe you'll be interested, especially the CAPSEA stuff. There are, after all, only about a dozen SEA librarians in the country (collection development librarians, that is), so this information is not necessarily out there.

Highlight:

The highlight of my day actually came at the very beginning. When I was signing up for Library Day in the Life, I skimmed through the list of participants, and there are two that are my friends (at least on FB). The first, Leo Lo, wasn't a surprise because he's pretty active in social networking and 2.0 kinds of stuff, and I knew that about him.

The second, however, was a big and pleasant surprise. Áine Lynch is a librarian at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown in Dublin, Ireland. I met her in May when I went on a photography holiday in the Andalucía region of Spain; she was my housemate for that entire week. The two of us shared a 3-bedroom, 2-bath apartment in Torrox Pueblo. I was really tickled by the fact that I ended up with another librarian for a housemate. (For the record, we were the only librarians in that group of about 20 photographers and painters.)

Anyway, when I was looking at the list of participants, I was shocked and excited to see her name. I guess I didn't really think of this project as being international in scope. But I was also thrilled to see that she has a library-related blog, Gutenberg's View, which I skimmed through this morning. I have to say that I was impressed by what little I read; her writing style is engaging -- informative, but fun and concise (unlike this post!). Even though we spent a whole week together, we were focusing on learning photography and taking pictures and didn't really talk as much about librarianship. So, I'm glad to see this side of her. So, thanks, Library Day in the Life!

Conclusion:

This post is really long, and it's almost midnight (it's taking me 2 1/2 hours to write this!). I just want to say that I'm glad that my email was surprisingly light today so that I was able to do a lot of what I set out to do today. Oftentimes, I feel like all I do is read emails and do associated work, so I'm glad today wasn't like that. I'm also glad that this project is happening this week because it actually gets to highlight what I do as an area studies librarian (and this isn't always the case). Since I think I may be the only area studies librarian participating in this project, it's good to represent in that way.