Editor’s note: here’s the first in an occasional series of Day In The Life posts – thanks Lucy! If you’d like to contribute, contact one of the Staff Development Group – Paul, Chris, Suzi, Verena, Clare and Samantha.
Wed 9th Jan
Today the Law Library re-opens in its new home so I start the day by making various configuration changes in Millennium to show that the stock is now available for loan and requests. Then I test the changes in Encore – some have taken effect instantly, some need to wait for the overnight refresh and one doesn’t work at all. Hmm. Nothing in the documentation explains why this hasn’t worked so I open a support call with Innovative. A few additional emails related to the law library move come in through the day – receipt printers aren’t working, self-check machines need to be connected to the network, opening hours need to be adjusted as items are being checked out to the wrong days. Most of these are familiar issues so I can respond fairly quickly with information or tweaks to Millennium.
A tweet leads me to an interesting article about the future of library systems which compares the new ‘Library Service Platform’ products, including Sierra which we will be migrating to later this year. Sierra comes out of this reasonably well, which is reassuring.
After lunch I attend a meeting where we talk about the progress of the strategic spend. I leave the meeting with a couple of actions to obtain some additional statistics from Millennium, which I work on later in the day. An idea occurs to me during the meeting about how we might be able extract better analytics once we have migrated to Sierra, which has direct SQL access to the database. I make a note of this as something to look into later in the year.
During the rest of the day I respond to emails as and when they arrive. There are a few problems. Some links on the digital readings server are not working, a student can’t access a database. A couple of emails are requests for information – I extract some stats about our LibAnywhere app and pass them on. I fill in a survey about the Edina OpenURL router- this is a very useful (and free) service but their surveys tend to get a very low response rate (perhaps not many people are interested in OpenURL technology?) so I try to give more detailed responses than I usually do in a survey.
I also exchange some email correspondence with our account manager at Syndetics Solutions over the new custom branded Library Anywhere app. This is an upgrade to the LibAnywhere app we already use- the custom version gives you an individually branded app instead of the generic ‘Library Anywhere’ app which sounds like a great improvement. I asked for some information about the functionality and cost of this product but the cost turns out to be considerably more expensive than expected leaving me unsure of the benefits of upgrading.
Finally I attempt to write up my day for this blog. This is much more difficult than I anticipated. Sometime in the last 10 years or so I seem to have stopped writing in full sentences and almost never use a pronoun. I have to go back through the blog and add ‘I’s and proper punctuation.