A Day in the Life of a Children's Librarian

 

This was a Monday. I generally do not do programs on Mondays and use them for planning and prep, and easing into the week.

Today we were short-staffed so I covered the service desk in the children's department most of the morning, from 9:30a-1pm. During this time I also:

• did a walk-thru to be sure shelves were tidy & face-outs on the shelves
• changed out the weekly scavenger hunt
• changed out a display
• took up/down pictures of animals off the floor and wall and the jumping distance labels left from Leap Day
• set up a table with info for our Peeps diorama contest, with signage and décor to attract attention
• checked for new purchase requests
• left the desk for a brief meeting with the director and assistant director
• looked at a new Indiana Jones version of Monopoly I had just purchased to serve as inspiration for this summer's "Bookopoly" reading challenge (it will go into our circulating collection of games at the end of the summer)
• checked in with another staff member to see if they could cover the playtime after storytime the next day as I was needed to help interview a candidate for our open adult services librarian position.
• and probably a few other little things I've forgotten

Lunch roughly from 1:00p-2:00p. 

In the afternoon from 2-5pm:

• touched base with both part-time teen/tween programmers about their upcoming programs, how things were going, and assigned tasks for the afternoon.
• emailed daycares to confirm visits for later this week
• planned the next day's storytime and printed programs
• discussed candidates we would be interviewing with AD, and likelihood of having to modify the position and re-post 
• informed AD that one of the daycares had responded that they no longer wanted visits, with no explanation, and discussed how to respond.
  

Left shortly after 5:00pm. 

I'm sure I've forgotten various minor tasks, brief conversations with staff about various things, time here and there looking up ideas, but that is a "typical" day in a nutshell. I put "typical" in quotes, because there really is no such thing as typical; every day is different! That's one of the things I have always like about working in public libraries; every day is a little bit different.