Lincoln County Library District


I thought about developing my own blog or wiki for this project but decided that I don't have time to do that this week.

 

For a little about Lincoln County Library District (LCLD) I have a wiki at http://lcldinfo.wikispaces.com/ but it isn't terribly exciting.  I use it for providing open access to our documents and meeting information.

 

Day 1 of Round 6 of the Library Day in the Life Project

 

The day actually may have officially started Sunday evening between 10:30 and 11:30 p.m. when I put together and sent out a press release about the next LCLD Board meeting and a second press release about the two openings on the Board.

 

8:30 a.m. – checked email on my phone at home to see if anything important was happening.

 

10:10 a.m. – drove out to the Siletz Public Library, about a 17 mile drive.  I was at the library to process items on hold for the courier to pick up and to get the hold items the courier delivered ready for Wednesday, when the library next opens.  I was also there to see what had been going on in the last few weeks since I had been unable to visit, update programs on the staff computers, add a virus program on the newest computer and see what supplies they need.  For some reason, I forgot the alarm code for the library this morning.  I am the person who assigned the codes and I have been using the codes for over 4 years.  I actually had to call the alarm company to ask them not to send the police and then go out to my car to look up the code.  Not the way to start a day.

 

2:05 p.m. I made it back to Newport to start my real work for the day.  I first picked up the mail at the post office and went out to the Oregon Coast Community College to have the librarian there sign checks for the Coastal Resource Sharing Network, our computer consortium.

 

2:20 p.m. Connected up with our temporary courier driver and our cataloger.  The courier driver had not done the run for over 3 years so I needed to make sure there weren’t any questions and to make sure that we have all of the employee documents updated.  I also had to see what the cataloger was doing since she had to do the ILL’s.  Unfortunately, our long time courier driver and library assistant is out getting radiation treatments for cancer.  We are all trying to fill her shoes but none of us are as good at her job as she is.  We work with the public libraries and community college but we are not a library.  We have an office and a garage. 

 

3:00 p.m. (approximately) I settled down to try to make it through some of the piles of work to be done.  I read email and responded where needed as well as sending a note about spam phone calls to PUBLIB and local libraries as well as our staff.  I took a very quick glance at Facebook but haven’t gotten back to it yet.

 

3:30 p.m. I opened up the boxes with the Userful computers that I will be setting up at the Siletz Library.  Everything was in good shape so I sent a message to Userful about arranging working on the next steps after I set up the computers.

 

4:00 p.m. began all of the bookkeeping tasks of the day.   We are small and, until now, have not had funds to hire a bookkeeper until now.  Of course, now I am using the bookkeeper funds to pay for the temporary courier I just hired.  I processed payroll for deposit in staff checking accounts on Friday, paid the state and federal taxes, and worked on several other bills.  I also am the treasurer for CRSN so I had to pay several of those bills as well today.

 

4:23 p.m. I realized that I probably should eat my lunch while working.

 

6:30 p.m.  I filled out the forms from the County Clerk’s office about the upcoming Board election (May 17).  Because one position has been empty for a while and one Board member died around the first week of December all 5 of our Board positions will be up for election.

 

7:33 p.m. left the office after putting some items for the community college in the courier van but the day didn’t end.  I went home for a few minutes and then went back to  the office because I realized there was something not quite right in the courier van.  I found 2 boxes of books that should have been delivered today to the Newport Public Library.  I also found that the ILL’s that had been processed had not been loaded into the van.  So, I straightened up the boxes in the van, distributed the ILL’s and put the boxes for the library in my car and delivered them on the way home.

 

This evening I am writing this and may get the chance to fill out the ALA form for individuals running for ALA positions.    Tomorrow won’t have as much detail but might be a more interesting day.

 

Day 2 of Round 6 of the Library Day in the Life Project

 

6:40 a.m. checked email and facebook then got ready to hit the road.  I had a 2 hour drive to Salem, OR today for the Special Districts Association of Oregon (SDAO) Legislation Committee meeting.  The Oregon Legislative Session has just gotten underway so there are lots of bills to discuss.

 

10:00 SDAO meeting begins.  It is always an interesting meeting and helps me keep up with legislation that affects public employers, employees, special districts, and libraries.  I share information useful to libraries with the Oregon Library Association (OLA) Legislation Committee.  This is today's agenda:

 

 

SDAO Legislative Committee Meeting

January 25, 2011 | 10:00 am to 1:00 pm

SDAO Main Office Conference Room | Salem

 

Agenda

1. Introductions – Todd Heidgerken

 

2. House/Senate Leadership – Hasina Squires

     3. House Rules – Hasina Squires

     4. House/Senate Committees – Hasina Squires

     5. Session Timelines – Hasina Squires

     6. Governor’s Staff – Hasina Squires

     7. SDAO Legislative Priorities – Hasina Squires/Mark Landauer

  1. Contract Signing – HB 2709

  2. Debt Distribution – HB 2707

  3. Annual Audits of Pools – LC 1585

  4. Multi Purpose Service District – HB 2808

 

8. Franchise Fees/Roseburg Case – Mark Landauer

     9. Public Records/Kroger – Mark Landauer

     10. SDCs – Mark Landauer

     11. HB 2075 – Prepaid Wireless – Hasina Squires

     12. SB 213 – EMT Patient Referral/Transport – Hasina /Genoa

     13. PERS Legislation – Hasina Squires

     14. Ethics – Genoa Ingram

     15. BM 76 Implementation – SB 342 – Amanda Rich

     16. Revenue Forecast – Mark Landauer

     17. Other

     18. Next Meeting/Adjournment

 

We are choosing what bills to support, oppose or monitor for changes.  The public records legislation could affect our library exemptions but we don't know yet.  The PERS deals with changes in public employee retirement for those public employers using PERS.  The LCLD Board chose not to invest in PERS so it is not personally of interest but it is of interest to may library employees.

 

I actually get so much more about management issues, public meeting laws and employment issues from SDAO than I do from library associations and training.  I am a big support of library associations but recognize that each type of groups has strengths and weaknesses.

 

3:00 - 5:00 p.m. took some personal time to go to a movie and check out smart phones.  I hope to update my phone in February but haven't decided which one to get yet.

 

5:00 - 7:00 p.m. Drove from Salem to Newport

 

8:30 p.m. - 9:45 p.m.  Put together an estimate of how much it could cost to send the CRSN Systems Administrator to the Pacific NW COSUGI meeting, updated the CRSN agenda and wiki with this information and the cataloger's report in preparation for tomorrow's CRSN Board meeting at the Driftwood Public Library in Lincoln City.

 

That's it for the day.

 

 

Day 3 of Round 6 of the Library Day in the Life Project

 

I wrote notes for the rest of this week but it is now Saturday and I am catching up.  This really is what I did on day 3.

 

10:15 a.m.  After checking various electronic communcations I went to the post office to pick up ILL's, bills, advertising and other bits and pieces of mail including two of the local weekly papers that come out on Wednesday and the Wednesday edition of the paper that comes out on Wednesday.  We do not have a weekly paper and usually go to the "Oregonian" for more information about state and national news.  But the local papers, the Newport "News-Times," the Lincoln City "News Guard" and Waldport's "South Lincoln News" are the best places to go for information about city councils, county commission and various local agencies news and other community news and activities.  There are also several new electronic news sources that I check regularly.

 

10:25 a.m. I was at work updating the software on my laptop and getting ready for a noon meeting.

 

11:20 a.m. I left for a meeting of the Coastal Resource Sharing Network (CRSN) Board in Lincoln City.  This use to be a fun meeting because there was such a cooperative spirit between the libraries and we were creating an library network that we could point to as a real example.  However, things have changed.  Some of the people have changed, budgets are tighter, we no longer have a systems administrator with the talent of our last one, and we seem to have lost that cooperative spirit and good vision about what we can do next.  We have become mired down in the current shortfalls in the system with no one really on board to pull us out.  I am really hoping that the OCLC Web-Scale Management Services becomes a reality (my first choice) or that we can switch to some other system that will make it so that we no longer have to manage servers locally.

 

2:15 Made the return trip to Newport

 

3:10 Debated with myself about what to do next.  I decided to edit my notes from the CRSN meeting and post them on the wiki.  That took at least an hour because I did have to track down some of the information from the meeting and make use I had links to everything discussed in the notes and/or on the wiki. 

I checked the courier van to see if it looked like the new driver had a better day than Monday.  It looked like he did.  We had not connected face to face that day because I had been at the meeting.

 

Next I had to create a special pay check for a staff member who is on maternity leave.  There had been some confusion about her hours before she went on full leave but that is now all worked out.  Pay check deposited, taxes paid and life goes on.

 

I did not get the chance to update the staff calendar, which I had planned on doing but still haven't done.

 

6:30 p.m. Decided it was time to go home.  On the way home I stopped at 2 stores, mostly to do some personal shopping but I also picked up cleaning supplies and paper for the Siletz Public Library.  I think I actually made it home about an hour later.

 

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Day 4 of Round 6 of the Library Day in the Life Project

 

I had planned on taking a vaction day because I needed to make a personal trip to Eugene.  I have accumulated something in the range o 250 vacation hours and who knows how much overtime so it did not seem like it would be a problem.

 

10:00 a.m.  I stopped by the office to do several little projects including investigating the possibility of hiring someone to do the Erate grants for CRSN.  The library director at Tillamook County LIbrary has been submitting these grants but she really does not have time to do this any more.  I admit that I am a bit worried that if she does not do them that the task will fall to me since I have the more flexible schedule for these kinds of cooperative network activities but I really don't want to try to add this to my schedule.  I posted the question about hiring someone to do these grants on two discussion lists, libs-or (Oregon libraries) and PUBLIB.  I got some very useful suggestions.  A couple of people recommended contracting with the Education Service District to do this.  That sounded good to me so I put in a call to the ESD.  I have not heard back from them yet but will pursue this more next week.  I reported back to the CRSN Board what I was doing and what I had found out.

 

12:30 p.m. Left work for the day, other than checking email now and then to see if I needed to answer any questions for anyone.  I did have to contact someone in a Friends of the Library group that needed to use up  the last $55 of a cleaning grant they had gotten for a library.  I gave her a list of possible cleaning supplies that she could purchase for the library.

 

10:30 p.m.  Thought about posting here but didn't.  Instead I went to sleep early for a change.

 

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Day 5 of Round 6 of the Library Day in the Life Project

 

This is kind of an odd week for me because I had planned on taking time off.  I did work about half a day on Friday.

 

12:00 p.m. Picked up mail, mailed an ILL, and picked up the Friday newspaper.

 

12:15 p.m.  I spent some time working on the Oregon Library Association's Legislation Day, Monday, February 7.  I am OLA's Legislative Network coordinator and I help set up this day and I also help find people to speak with state legislators on particular topics.  I had several messages from people having problems posting to the wiki schedule or having problems finding out talking points for the day.  I did fix a link on the wiki and updated the appointments list.  I had sent an email to my district's Representative and Senator to schedule an appointment for Legislative Day but had not heard back from our Senator.  I called the Senator's office and was able to get an appointment for the day. 

 

I then sent out reminder notices to OLA members and people on the libs-or discussion list about setting up appointments or making plans to call or email their legislators on Legislative Day.  I also sent out a notice to the local library people to let them know that we now had times for both of our appointment and asked them to let me know who would be joining us at Legislative Day.

 

I also checked on all of the paperwork for my new employee.  He had worked for us about 3 years ago so some of this was just updating information.  I still needed bank information so that we could directly deposit his pay check.  I also was able to talk with him for a few minutes after the courier run to make sure we had covered all of the information he needed.  There is a real advantage to having done this and other jobs in the Library District myself so I really do know tricks for making some of the jobs easier.

 

3:45 p.m  Left the office for the day.

 

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Day 6 of Round 6 of the Library Day in the Life Project

 

10:20 a.m.  Attempted for a second time to explain to the Systems Administrator what the Cataloger is requesting he do.  She explained it well but he just is making it into a cataloging issue when really it is about turning on bits and pieces (some MARC tags) in the system, a computer system issue and not a cataloging issue.  I just rewrote what she originally wrote but the response message I got back indicates to me that some headway is being made in explaining what needs to be done and a bit on how to do it.

 

11:00 a.m. I attended the memorial celebration for one of my Board members who died in early December.  She had been a very active member of our community and had volunteered to work with many groups, including ours.  She had worked with the Watershed Council, AAUW, Master Gardeners, the Recorder Society, as well as the Lincoln County Library District and the Siletz Valley Friends of the Library.  The memorial was very nice.  It was filled with music and fun memories and a very nice luncheon which allowed us to share even more.

 

Now I am catching up on 3 days of contributing to this effort and doing laundry.

 

Later today I am going to update the staff calendar and finish filling out my biographical information for the ALA ballot.

 

Basically, it is hard to take a full day off. ;-)