My Library Day : July 31, 2009

This was really an interesting project! I have been enjoying reading a day in the life of librarians. Mine is routine mostly, but with challenges every single day.

Here was my day, Friday, July 31, 2009. I found it quite difficult to record exact time frame for things I did during the 8-hour for work plus 1 hour for lunch.

• Woke up at 5:30 am, spent 20 minutes preparing breakfast and lunch for my son and husband, and headed for gym. It is my daily routine to workout in gym for one hour before going to work. During the one-hour workout I watched TV feeding my brain with national and local headlines or news.
  
• Work started at 8 am when staffed the Reference Desk for one hour. It was quiet this morning. I quickly checked Ask a Librarian email account and my work email to see if there were things that needed immediate responses.
  
• Posted a library tip to the library blog for our scientific editor, who once in a while sent out Library Tips to the campus via email. Whenever he posts a tip, I would repeat the tip in the library's blog.
• Logged in the library's Twitter account to view followers' tweets and posted tweets to the library's Twitter account.
• Answered two email questions from Ask a Librarian email account. One requested research help and the other was about off-campus log-in problem.
  
• At 9 am, telephone meeting with LISTEN project coordinator and my supervisor about BOLT (Brief Online Learning Tutorials) we developed for LISTEN modules. 10% of my time devotes to this grant project since July 2007.
• Right after the BOLT meeting, two nursing students came for help with their group project. I spent 40 minutes with them searching PubMed and showing them how to limit searches and retrieved full text articles.
• During my one-hour lunch break (11-12 pm), I stepped out the library and took a nice 20-minute walk. After the heavy rain and tornado sweeping through some areas of the city last nigh, it turned out to be a beautiful day.
• My second shift at the Reference Desk was from 12 - 1pm. I was able to use this hour preparing budget report for the SC/MLA '09 Local Arrangement Committee meeting as I am the conference treasurer. The meeting was held from 2-3:30 pm.
  
• I spent 30 minutes going through my RSS feeds briefly and bookmarked interesting information to my delicious page, and saved some favorite articles to my EverNote site.
  
• Spent one hour on my social web profile to maintain a professional appearance on the social Web. Two people subscribed to my FriendFeed, three people requested to follow me on Twitter, one person added me as a contact in slideshare.net, one Facebook friend made two comments on my wall.
• At 5 pm, I finished my 3rd shift at the Desk and went home.
  

What I enjoy most is everyday is not the same.

Google Voice SMS -- Libraries

I've been playing with Google Voice since I received the invitation to pick my GV number.



Awesome things I like about GV:

1. Use GV SMS. When people text me back, I can receive their text messages either from my cell phone or my GV interface.
2. Forward my home phone to my GV number and choose to listen to voice messages or view them in my email right from my computer.
3. Transcribe voice messages left at my home phone to text messages and email messages and deliver them either to my cellphone or GV interface.
   

I still consider myself a beginner of using GV and there are more GV features for further exploration and experience.

While I was testing GV SMS, one thought came to my mind: can libraries use this feature to provide SMS reference service? We can call it Text a Librarian. Thinking about this I immediately sent a request to get a GV number for the library.

I can almost see how Text a Librarian comes live:

Patrons send text messages to the library's GV number from their cellphone, desktop, and laptops. Librarians login libraries' Google Voice account and answer questions using GV interface like the way they were using Instant Message.

Note that pick a GV number carefully. If you want to change your GV number later, you will be charged $10 for the change fee.

EBM Survey Results

Last year, we surveyed practicing medical librarians related to their roles in supporting and enhancing evidence-based medicine (EBM) practice and here are the preliminary results on the 11 multiple choice questions. We got a total of 596 valid responses to the survey questions with 51 % coming from hospital libraries, 42% from academic libraries, and 7% from special libraries. Some survey result highlights:

• The most frequently reported role is to provide EBM research to users, followed by teaching EBM, and contributing to EBM initiatives in their institutions.
• Hospital librarians are most active in providing EBM research.
• Academic librarians are most active in teaching EBM.
• Attending journal clubs, morning reports, and medical rounds is not a popular responsibility among medical librarians.

The survey results were presented at the Canadian Association of Information Science (CAIS) 2009 Conference and published in the conference proceedings. Here is the presentation:

Exploring the Real World: Medical Librarians' Involvement in Supporting EBM Practice

View more Microsoft Word documents from lwu5.

Our next step will be looking into librarians' comments to get some idea about what they really thought about their EBM roles.

Hawaii Notes and Pictures

Going to MLA Annual Conferences has been part of my professional activities since 2004. This year like previous years, MLA sparkled lots of excitement and ideas. Most important of all, I gave a presentation entitled "Infusing Information Literacy Skills by Researching 'Never Events' at the conference. Without the financial support from the LISTEN project, I might not have been in the conference.

Infusing Information Literacy Skills by Researching 'Never Events'

View more Microsoft Word documents from lwu5.

As you know, I always have lots of pictures from the Conference and pictures about Hawaii.

The best and the outstanding among us

The very exciting thing to do in Hawaii was to go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.

Swimming with fishes

The most touching event was to watch the Lantern Floating Hawaii on the Memorial Day at the AlA Moana Beach Park.

Lantern Floating Hawaii 2009

My first time inside a submarine and saw up-close magic of Hawaii's undersea world.

Undersea world

Hawaii features in ABC Stores that are more than churches.

ABC Store for tourists

The Big Island Tour took us to the Black Sand Beach.

Black sand --"Chicken of the Sea"

Monkey pod trees are everywhere in Hawaii. I've never seen so magnificent banyan trees there.

Over 100 year-old banyan tree

Monkey pod tree

Walking and swimming along Waikiki Beach felt like in paradise.

By the beach

I really enjoyed shooting sunset pictures along the beaches.

Sunset at sea

This is a place worth visiting again! I know I will have a waterproof camera case when I revisit Hawaii some day.

The Joy of Stress

I like reading articles that provide food for thought such as this one "The joy of stress" by Cath Jones from BMJ Careers. The article talks about the stress in medical profession and how some health care professionals interpreted work stress.

Is there a profession stress free? Is there anyone working in a profession free of stress? Most likely no if you want to do a better job and advance your career. The attitude and interpretation of stress really makes a difference in career advancement. Take library instruction as an example. More and more librarians are required to teach especially in academic libraries. It is not unusual librarians resist in teaching and many don't like teaching at all or maybe afraid of teaching. True. What teaching involves can stress you out such as developing curriculum, writing class notes, preparing class materials/handouts, creating subject related exercises, practicing how to deliver the class effectively, and modifying class content constantly based on students' level. Worse of all, you have to overcome the fear of speaking in public. No doubt, the whole procedure can be really stressful and sweating. I had the experience of butterfly in my stomach and palm sweat. Even though I teach once every month, I still feel stressful and nervous before each class.

Is it a good thing feeling stressed? I would use quotations from the article to tell how I love and look at stress.

“To live without stress would be to live in a vegetative state.”

“Pressure is good. It keeps me motivated.”

“Yes, it is a pressurised environment but if you have the right mindset it is enjoyable. It’s about seeing situations as a challenge, searching your own knowledge and looking inside yourself to overcome the problems you face. I find that if I want to perform well I need to have the stick rather than the carrot and that’s why I’ve been attracted to this particular role.”

What is your take?