10:00 - 11:00 As always, I spent my first hour of work reading and answering e-mail.
11:00 - 12:00 I had a few e-mail questions from my online students, so I checked into my online class and tried to calm a few of them down. It's that time of the quarter where students see the mass of work being asked of them, and they're slacking and getting behind. Because of this, I get to play "hunt the student down," making sure they understand the material.
After this, a student came through that needed help printing from a flash drive. While this is a common question for us, and I'm still baffled that people don't know how to do this, I'm happy to help. The student gets logged into a computer and I sit down to begin helping. I notice though that the file in question doesn't have the normal Word icon associated with it. I ask the student what program was used to create the document, and I'm told Abiword. I've never heard of such ... but apparently it's freeware. It seems to have the capability to save as a .doc, but that's not how this student saved it. Word couldn't open the file, so I try a zamzar conversion. Zamzar couldn't convert the file either. In the end, I ended up opening the file in notepad and editing out the coding gibberish. So here again, I'm baffled that students don't have the tools they need to complete their coursework successfully. In my library though, where there's a will, there's a way and we'll find a way to make it work!
12:00 - 1:00 I did a few background searches and sent a few e-mails to students in my ground class that are having trouble finding information on their topics (medicare cost & child social security fraud). I think I've got them back on track...and one student e-mailed me back very appreciative of my help (yay!).
1:00 - 2:00 My assistant librarian is the subject specialist for Logistics, and she has never worked with Libguides before, so we conversed just a bit about a framework for her research in preparation of starting her research guide. As she did some background work, I began more work on my own subject specialty research guides (project management and gaming & interactive media).
2:00 - 3:00 Lunch! I ran home again to let the dog out, and spent my lunch hour reading a bit. I'm currently re-reading A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. My first time reading this series, I didn't get all the way through the first book. I'm not sure why, but I wanted to try it again.
3:00 - 4:00 After getting back from lunch, I spent some time going over the basics of Libguides with my assistant, and she was able to run with it. We also played with join.me a bit in preparation for our Free and Fabulous presentation tomorrow.
4:00 - 5:00 I'm the administrator for our campus Facebook page, and I noticed a question come through after posting event information. I answered the question and administered 3 keyboarding exams.
5:00 - 6:00 A student came through wanting to checkout 2 of our newly purchased books. Once she was checked out, I restocked the book display with other new items, and then proceeded to work on my Libguides pages. I have decided to create a delicious account for my subject specialty areas in order to create a bookmark tag cloud. I spent the time creating the account and researching websites and associations of interest. You can see what I was able to accomplish today below:
6:00 - 7:30 My day is coming to a close, and I spent my last bit of time conversing via e-mail with our APA committee on our abstract guide. I fixed a bit of coding on that page to remain consistent with our other guides.
During this time, I noticed an e-mail come through from an online student. This student completed an extra credit assignment! I introduced my ground and online classes to diigo and gave them a quick assignment that walks them through the setup and bookmarking process, with hopes that they will use this frequently when searching for their sources. I was quite pleased to see a student completing this already!
7:30 Headed home! I grabbed a quick dinner, and then the hubs and I needed to make a grocery run. Just a bit of time is left of today before bed... and then I get to wake up and do it all over again. Stay tuned...
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