Having cast my eyes down my running list of activities from each day of last week I’ve decided that as I’m just doing one post for the whole week I might as well do this thematically. That way I get rid of lots of repetition.
I am basically being somewhat general and generic re a lot of this so that I give a flavour of the types of activity but without being specific. I’m a corporate sector law firm librarian and that basically means anything client related or business development related it would be inappropriate to go into.
Themes Re-occur But There Is No ‘Standard’ Pattern To A Week
The below list isn’t ‘typical’ as such of a week as certain things I may concentrate on in one
Week but not another (e.g. spending a day a week working from all our other offices the week before whereas I was in my own ‘base’ office all last week).
There is also the fact that fulfilling research and other client and business related needs that arise is obviously the priority for my department and can come in from any part of the firm at any time. Everything else is necessarily fitted in around those re more on-going activity that is either important (e.g. medium-term projects) or still needs done regularly to maintain the wider service overall but is not urgent per se.
So, what I do depends to a large degree on the in-coming enquiry stream across the week and what is needed and how urgent. Law is a knowledge-based business.
Themes of This Week
Internal Meetings -
On various subjects across the week.
In-Depth Research Topic Enquiries -
Now on these I’m obviously not going to say what I researched, for who, or why. Suffice to say enquiries tend to be very specific, often urgent, and can be on a very wide range of different things, but mostly legal or commercial subjects.
Sourcing and retrieving and providing required items -
This involves utilising in-house resources, subscription and other databases, memberships of other organisations with information services, and document delivery services. Law firms will tend to hold the ‘core’ materials related to their main subject area’s of interest and sectors but source and bring in more esoteric or rarely needed items from elsewhere when the need arises.
Current Awareness Service activities -
Various discussions with others internally involved in and about potential re-jigs of specific aspects. Being up-to-date and knowing what is in-coming and when in terms of new law and likely impact is, of course, hugely important in a law firm.
Training session -
Small very specific refresher training sessions are useful ways to embed knowledge. Small amounts of actual time take people away from their desks for minimal periods and can be a lot quicker and easier to fit into busy schedules.
Physical Collection Management -
Cataloguing new stock, weeding of existing physical stock, bit of a re-jig of parts of the shelving area in result. Essentially law expands exponentially week by week and space to put it all in does not! Plus certain superseded items may need to be retained for ‘point in time’ research so it’s not just retaining current state of knowledge items on a subject, it can also be about archiving and deciding what to keep and for how long re previous states of knowledge at times.
Publisher interactions -
The usual – accessioning new material, doing renewals, discussion of forthcoming materials, talking to various of my suppliers, exploring new developments re databases subscribed to.
Finance –
This comes down to doing the required internal processes to track spend, budget, and get things paid. It’s also about looking for trends and considering service and user impacts.
The Week’s Project –
Well fortnight’s to be honest! This is basically about choosing and prioritising something from the Miscellaneous Things Not Done That Are Now Annoying Me List so that it does finally get done and hence ceases to annoy me! In this case determinedly reading a new text in my area and compiling a book review for it I promised somewhere last year. See previous proper post on.
Wider Professional Activities -
Various things come under this. I’m a CILIP Trustee and member of the current CILIP Future Skills Project Board so various to do with both of those this week. I followed the Guardian Evolving Role of HE Librarians live chat, attended the photo session to promote the Glasgow National Libraries Day initiative called In The Loop (visiting and touring various public libraries on the Glasgow Underground route) and participated in that for National Libraries Day on Saturday – see separate (forthcoming!) blog post on all of that. And the normal lots of Twitter and blogs reading on various professional subjects and blogging myself. I also ordered myself a copy of ‘The Library Book’ (published for National Libraries Day) which I’m much looking forward to thumping through my letterbox sometime this week.
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