I came across the Library Day in the Life Project and thought, “How cool!” It’s a great way for us librarians to give the patrons and, more importantly, those who might be considering entering the library and information sciences field insight into what our work lives are REALLY like. Some might say that I’m not really a librarian, as I work mostly with technology, but I would counter that idea with the fact that 1) I am a librarian by degree, training, and experience, and that those things certainly influence the work that I do with technology. Also, a huge part of my job has to do with interacting with patrons (technology reference, teaching classes, etc) so don’t write me off! 
. Also, 2) I represent another path that is open to those with an MLIS. So, here’s one day in my life as a human and Manager for Technology Education & Computing:
5:45 AM- Wake up. Check work email to see if there are any emergencies or absences; check calendar to remind myself what my day looks like; consult the Weather Channel app to double-check that the coats and shoes that I put out the night before for the Beast (my three-year-old son) and I are still appropriate. Begin getting ready for work. Wake the Beast and help him get ready. Do all the things that need doing every morning before we leave.
7:40 AM- Leave for school/work.
7:55 AM- Drop the Beast at school and drive to my parking lot.
8:10 AM- Wait for, then ride the bus. As I wait and ride, I check Facebook, Twitter (via Twitterific), and Google Reader (via Google Apps Browser). I also check my work email again to make sure that there aren’t any absences or emergencies.
8:30 AM- Arrive at my office, turn on my computer and unload gadgets (I take my iPad home every night). While my computer is booting up, I take my lunch to the refrigerator and make another cup of tea. I take a quick look again at my RSS feeds, and save to Delicious the ones that I’d starred earlier. One of them is interesting enough to share, so I tweet about it.
9:00 AM- Weekly meeting with the Boss. I update him on items from last week, and he adds a few more things to the list. We discuss some long-term projects.
10:00 PM- Weekly meeting with my team, the Technology Education & Computing folks. Each of us keeps a to-do list in the Basecamp project management software. As usual, we go around the room with each person reporting on the items in their list and adding some as necessary. I make a couple of announcements, and ask for opinions on the best way to approach an upcoming project. We gleefully finish our meeting at 10:28 AM!
10:30 AM- I meet individually with one of my team members to follow up on a long-term project that he is spearheading.
11:00 AM- Our Marketing & Communications Librarian brings a complaint that she found in the suggestion box to me: a patron is upset that the Library has set up a charging station for Apple-only laptops and mobile devices, and expresses the view that the Library isn’t being fair to all of its patrons. We discuss the best way to make sure the anonymous person sees my response, and decide to go with displaying the complaint and my response on our SmartBoard, which we’ll move to the Library’s front entrance. I then write a response and email it to my colleague for her edits.
11:45 AM- I eat lunch in my office, as I read and respond to emails. I also check Facebook and Twitter, and fall down the rabbit-hole of the New Media Consortium’s wiki .
12:05 PM- I order an iPad, cover, wireless keyboard, and laptop for the new faculty member who will be joining us at the end of the month. I then schedule several meetings, and begin roughing out the class on tablets that I plan to teach later this spring.
1:30 PM- Respond to an email from a colleague about the content on our new, soon-to-be-deployed Kindle Fires. One of my team members is working on an image and asks me to come out and use my login to make sure that a certain program is working with that image.
3:00 PM- My hour-long shift on our technology reference service (called Rover- “We come to you!”) begins. Things are pretty quiet; I only have two calls: both to help patrons set up access to the university’s encrypted wireless network. One of the librarians stops by to tell me that she’s having problems with the control panel in one of the classrooms. I speak with one of my team members about it, and we discuss resetting the control panel. As he goes to do that, I stop in the Boss’s office to make sure that he hears about it from me first.
4:00 PM- My colleague and I trade (via email) a few more edits on my response to the patron complaint, and I send the final version to the Boss for approval. A colleague and I spend a few minutes discussing an email about a project across Grounds, and whether or not we might want to consider doing something similar in our Library. As part of an overall software inventory, I send an email to our librarians asking if and how they use two particular pieces of software.
4:40 PM- Pack up gadgets and travel mug and head to the bus stop. As I wait for, and then ride, the bus I read a book on my iPhone (via the Kindle app).
5:05 PM- Arrive at my stop and begin driving to the Beast’s school.
5:25 PM- Arrive at the school and round up the Beast.
5:55 PM- Arrive home, and badger the Beast into doing his chores while I begin dinner preparations. I then do all of the things that we do every evening- I won’t bore you with the minutiae 
9:40 PM- Make one last cup of tea and drink it while taking one last look at work email. Scan RSS feeds for any breaking news. Get ready for bed.
10:00 PM- Log onto “Star Wars: The Old Republic” and do a quest.
10:30 PM- Plug in all mobile devices and go to bed.
So there ya go! I hope that was helpful to someone besides me (I tend towards introspection).
Here, have a snow monkey:
