A day in the life of an elementary school librarian

8:45 am
I was at a conference yesterday so I need to get caught up on a day's worth of email.

9:10am
I am also at least a day behind on the 65+ book blogs I follow for my job both here at the elementary and at Parrsboro High. Hooray, the 2008-2009 Cybils have been announced!

9:35am
A teacher donated some books so I go through them to choose which ones to add to the library collection. I pick seven to add immediately but two of them are in the collection already, so I'm down to five.

9:45am
Check in and shelve returned books from classes visiting later this morning, and do a quick circuit of tidying shelves, organizing displays, and taking chairs down off the tables.

10:10am
Library classes. I check books in, check books out, answer questions, find books (or not: does anyone know the title or author of a Valentine's Day book about cuddling with two squirrels on the cover, and it's either red or brown?), make small talk with students, and tidy up between classes.

12:00pm
Read a few pages of a book that was just arrived the other week and that I haven't read yet (The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman - funny!) while monitoring and signing out books to about 15 students in the library over lunch hour. Some days there are as many as 25-30 grade 4-6 students in the library at lunch, especially if it's cold outside and they'd rather stay indoors. Many use the time to draw or return/borrow books and I have about a dozen regulars.

12:35pm
Lunch!

1:00pm
Update the library's Delicious bookmarks with links from newsletters and other library Delicious accounts that I monitor.

1:15pm
Check out Freebase.com, a website that was touted as a next big thing in librarianship at the conference I attended yesterday. It's pretty cool and I'll play with it more in my spare time.

1:30pm
Read more blog posts and save some reviews from here, here, and here for future reference when making purchasing decisions.

2:15pm
Spend some time wondering why this book was available from Amazon.ca on Friday but isn't anymore. Play around with Google Books, which was also mentioned at the conference.

2:30pm
Finish processing the 5 donated books: inventory them, make up cards (both to sign them out and for the card catalogue), put labels on, stamp them, and add them to the library GoodReads account to keep track of book topics since the library isn't automated.

3:00pm
Tidy up the library a bit for tomorrow's volunteers (I am only in the library on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so three mornings a week volunteers run the library). Get distracted by an atlas for a few minutes.

3:15pm
Chat with some coworkers.

3:30pm
Start writing this blog post.

4:00pm
Head home!