librarypunk - 106 - Day in the life of Jay

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

We’re going over the daily life of a library worker for those who are interested! First up: Jay! Media mentioned Segment:https://journal.radicallibrarianship.org/index.php/journal/article/view/96 https://youtu.be/v1eWIshUzr8?si=jc3ouGYgcJIlfJsx https://www.dukeupress.edu/complaint   Discord: https://discord.gg/qTMg4v7Xu 

I'm Justin, I'm a Skullcom library, and my pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they them. And I'm Jay. I'm a music library director, and my pronouns are he hem. Now listen, you, the right, of the same thing, let's call in your goddamn face. You'll stay plastered. Stay plastered. And you'll stay a plastered. I think he's slurring.

Say plastered. Listen, here, you queer? William Buckley and Gorvadol, me and who, you know. Gorbadole is like one of my problematic faves. I can't read up on Gorbadole because somebody keeps coming up. Yeah, because I work. A couple different podcasts that are listening to just keeps coming up. I'm like, I don't remember anything about Gorbadole.

I was listening to a Gorvadol audiobook when I had my head on collision in grad school. And it happened in front of a church and I was coming back from a night of sodomy. And so I think I was like, and this was on Easter. And so I was too gay and God tried to kill me, I think. Mm-hmm. And it didn't work. It was a sign to keep going. I live, bitch.

All right. So we're going to do, how did I use to do this? I wish we could sample the Beatles, but we would get killed so fast. Also, the Beatles suck. Enemy of the pod. Monarchy. Arthur, don't listen. So the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions have announced that the 2024 World Library and Information Congress will be held in Dubai.

Boo. So you probably saw this. It was making the rounds on social media. People were talking about the Dubai. I think Emily Dravinsky retweeted a couple things about it. There was a vote of the IFLA members. institutions, volunteers, and forget the fourth category, honoraries. And they all overwhelmingly were against it.

And they're doing it anyway. So like, fuck you. Because money. I mean, really, this is sort of, I was thinking about this the other day when, like, how the ALA always invites like the Obamas or whatever. Like, you know, they've got to give them like a ton of cash. And it's like, we all know that the post-political speaking campaigns are, what you're promised for doing favors for people while you were in office.

So it's like, okay, so who owes the Obama's what for, you know? Or are you just like a rube and are like, we love you, let's pay you a lot of money. If you didn't get anything from Obama and you pay him like $5,000 to talk for an hour, you're a sucker. But you always have to assume that this is just some kind of like quid pro quo. Everyone assumes that the Dubai hosting the Congress is a quid pro quo of some kind. I can't really work out exactly how. I assume... If we're getting a lot of money from...

I assume maybe they're just getting like they don't have to pay for the venue or something? I don't know. Well, doesn't like the hosting country have to pay to have it hosted there or is it the other way around? I mean, that's how it works for the Olympics, but I don't know about like the World Library Congress. Yeah, I went to the one in Columbus.

I volunteered at it. It was actually really fun. Yeah, I mean, it's nice to have a, Federation of World Library Organizations, but... Yeah, I met a lot of cool, like, New Zealand librarians that way. Oh, sick. Who were, like, talking about, like, in, like, Maori subject headings and... Yeah.

Stuff like that. Yeah. Like, cool shit was happening. Yeah, they've always got cool stuff going on with, um, intellectual property. Yeah. This is, I'm pulling from a piece in the Journal of Radical Librarianship, uh, that Jay sent in the Discord. they make a comparison to the arguments that were made for hosting events in apartheid South Africa,

which I thought was a pretty apt comparison. Also, when the bathroom bills and stuff were happening, I remember that was the thing too with people being like, oh, we can't host conferences or pay for employee travel to like North Carolina. Yeah, that's why we can't host D-Space in Texas. We can't have like a D-Space meeting, even though we do a lot of contributions through like Texas Digital Library and stuff. I forget which bill it was that triggered that, but they won't come here because the other big one is California and they won't be reimbursed for travel to Texas. I don't know if that's still in effect, but that was what happened a year ago when we wanted to host it.

And it's a good choice. They're right to do it. More people should. The argument they used that was similar to the one for having like sporting events in apartheized. South Africa, which is the same one they're going to have for having them in Saudi Arabia when they have like the World Cup there in a few years, is that it's spreading democratic values in a few years, is that spreading democratic values. Did liberals forget about monarchy? Did they forget that that was a thing? I feel like they did.

Distance themselves enough. They think that monarchies are also democracies because freedom is democracy. Because of Elizabeth. I blame that bitch for making a monarchy look all cute and grandmotherly. Fucking parasite in chief and her idiot. I'm glad that bitch is dead. Lizzie's in a box, in a box, in a box. Lizzie's in a box.

And so now that they have like a gross old man is their king and they don't like saying king, and they're like, oh, that sucks. So maybe they'll get rid of the monarchy now. Yeah. Having a queen is feminist, don't you know? Yeah. Like when market, they're not that to us and gentlemen. It's girl power.

So it's in Dubai, which is one of the Emirates. They're all authoritarian monarchies. And I don't think the ALA said anything about this. No, but I do remember back when this was first announced, so IFLA has its own, like, membership group or council or committee or something for LGBTQ librarians. And, like, they do, like, committee work at IFLA. Fla meetings and shit, right? And they were like, hey, none of us can go to this meeting, my dudes.

And they, like, wrote a whole statement about it, like, condemning the decision and everything. And Ifla responded to them. And basically to them and to everyone else who is like, uh, maybe don't have this in Dubai sweaty, besty. Um, maybe don't do that. they basically said that they realized that some if the members and librarians won't feel comfortable coming to this one. But some librarians who haven't been able to go to other ones will finally feel comfortable going to this one. It isn't that good.

And like we value diversity and stuff. So basically you were saying we are going to sacrifice this group for this group in a really way, in a way, way that's very cynical and doesn't mean anything. And also, like, they cited the, like, no one's been, like, killed by the state for being a faggot in, like, five years. It's fine. How do you know that? Yes, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of being thrown into a foreign jail. Like, Jesus. And yeah. So I'm like, this? I'm like, if, uh, maybe don't. I did, though, worry that, like, a lot of, like, there's correct backlash to this Ifflit decision, but also I worry that this is going to be an excuse for the fucking French to just, like, unleash a wave of, like, uh, Islamophobic

and like anti-M Middle East sentiment because they're the champs at that. Like, I would say that, like, in a ring of the United States and France for Islamophobia, I don't know who would win. Like, you know. You can always get a lucky hit in. Right? So I was like, I was very worried about like any like French library association or whatever, like statements about this. Maybe that's me being xenophobic against the French. But they kind of earned it of being like, women can't wear hijabs here.

Surprise. So that's like my main worry with this is like intentional or unintentional, like Islamophobic sentiment, poisoning actual legitimate critiques against this regime. This regime, like this has nothing to do with Islam, you know? Well, I'm not clear if ALA voted against it because most member associations did. So I assume they did vote against choosing Dubai when they did that hole that they ignored. So it doesn't really matter either way how what the ALA said because it seems like IFLA is just going to do whatever. I feel like ALA is like a big part of IFLA that they could pull a little more sway, but can't do everything.

It's like IFLA and C-LIP or whatever. But Lieber did put one out, which is the association of. European research libraries put out a statement about why they were voting against it and that they were voting against it. And I think that's good. It doesn't say that they're pulling out of participating in any way, but it says that they voted against it and they don't feel like it's a free space for open discussion. There was an interesting thing in the, that I thought of in the article where the IFLA describes

itself as having core values of equitable access information, promotion, and diversity. and inclusion, including on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. And I was just watching through some philosophy tubes videos that I haven't seen, some of the new ones. And she had one that really went into Sarah Ahmed's complaint. Yes. Which is about, I haven't read it yet. I just asked my library to buy it. And that goes about the ways that institutions defend themselves.

And she was talking about how it is non-performative speech, meaning speech. So you have performative speech, which is speech that is an action. So I promise to do it is both speech and an action, the act of promising and saying that you're promising. And there's non-performative speech, which is speech that is intending to stop an action from happening. So that's what it turns your diversity statement into is it turns these documents into non-performative speech that exists to say, look, we're listening to you, we care about you, but we're not doing anything. So it turns them into a form of. non-performative speech i think it's pretty cool distinction i'm going to keep that in mind that's why i want i ordered the put in the request for the book because i don't do the dey i anymore hopefully we'll get it if not i'll just i'll l l it i've got a stack books i'm going through i got too many to read i'm reading batai i'm trying to read uh tomorrow nieces death glitch so that we can have her on the podcast so that's all i had fuck afla yeah if flas in their statement they really hide behind their middle Eastern and North Africa colleagues and saying like, well, we want to bring it to them and they're excited about it.

Which is like that in the same valid statement. You could do it maybe not in Dubai. There are other places. I mean, you've got like, you've got options. It doesn't have to be fucking Dubai. Yeah, like when I. Of all the places, like, yeah, let's do Dubai. It's because Dubai's got money. Yeah, we're going to do it in the line. We're going to do it in Neum when they build. Yeah. I'd go to that fucking IFLA. I'm not getting stuck in the middle of the desert with no sources of natural water. Are you kidding me?

The place is going to be a disaster. Yeah. Something's going to get built there, but I don't know what. Like, there was a time where like every other Twitter ad I got was for the fucking Niam or whatever. They're still doing it. I haven't seen him in a while. They never stopped typing it. Anyway, that was the enemy of the pod.

Monarchy. So we're going to try a new format today, which is Day in the Life of. So we have a lot of people who are interested in becoming librarians, people who are on the way to becoming librarians, people who are just curious about the field in general. So Jay suggested we do some days in the life of how our work actually goes and what our daily work schedules look like. So he's going to go first, and we're going to interview Jay. Jay, how are you? Thanks for coming on.

Yes, I've never been on this podcast ever before. We also thought this would be interesting because it's like, you know, sometimes we're very siloed in our work and don't know, like, I have no idea what Justin's work looks like as a scholarly communications librarian. And I've worked with plenty of Scalcom librarians, but I don't know what the fuck Justin does all thing. You know, so it's like our kind of like, even library, even people who are in the field already. don't know what their colleagues across the hall do, right? To be fair, I don't know what I do every day either. Yeah.

I don't know what's going to show up. I wrote fan fiction with my day today, so like, got to love work from home. I did that. I used to do that a lot at you and A. Right fan fiction. Yeah. I don't usually. I will say that.

I think this is the first time I've actually, like, been that, like, delinquent about it. But I took a nap in the middle of the day. I've done that. That's what work of our home is for. But I also have a bed in my office under my desk. Yeah, like, to be fair, I know plenty of librarians who, like, have a little couch or a sleeping bag or something in their office for if they need to take a nap in the middle of the day. Like, if their meds are making them crash or whatever, like, that's actually a pretty normal thing. Yeah, someone who has Parkinson's was writing about it.

I don't remember, I think it was when we were doing one of the episodes on, um, disability. and libraries. And one of the things we read was, I think it was one of the co-authors of something we read. And we're talking about how they needed to have that under their desk so they could lie down, like, you know, every couple hours or when things are flaring up. And I've always, like, just lay down on the floor. But I was like, I have money.

I can buy, like, a little camping mattress. It's, like, two inches thick. And it's a little more comfortable. But a nice big couch would be also cool. I want a shiz in my office eventually. one day, but my current office is too small, alas. Yeah, we're thinking about moving my office to another floor, like my whole department, because we're growing.

But like the layout of the room is like really weird because it was like a media lab at one point. It was like a recording studio. But my office would be like huge. And I would definitely put a couch in there. So anyway, I've got a few questions for Jay. You figured out because Jay, you went from working in big libraries. too small, which is the opposite of what I did. Although, I mean, as a graduate assistant, I worked in special collections at a big library,

but as a librarian, I started in a small one, which was closer to like what you're doing now as a solo library. And so when you were preparing to move into this job, like, how did you get ready? So I luckily, so even though I like, when I went to grad school, when I went to library school, because again, like I've said before, I think I'm one of the few. librarians I know that had a really good experience in library school and actually found it helpful still. I don't feel like going to grad school was a waste of time for me. I know that's not everyone's experience. I thought mine was very valuable. And when I went into library school,

I was like, I want to be a cataloging library. I want to do cataloging. I wanted to do mark cataloging. That's what I wanted to do. And then that's slowly morphed in just like more general metadata, but like most of my stuff focused on the idea that I wanted to do cataloging and metadata. However, I couldn't get a graduate assistantship in cataloging or metadata. So I worked in reference and instruction, as well as I worked one year with the GovDox librarian and one year sort of being an admin for lib guides and stuff like that. And like teaching everyone, like teaching like people how to make them and everything. So it's like I actually got most of my experience before having a professional job was in reference and instruction while I was taking classes more on tech services.

So I feel like I had like the unique like Jack of All Tradesy kind of experience in grad school. So that like even though when I finally got a job that was metadata, right, my residency was a kind of. of I rotated around departments in the library, sort of each semester. So that gave me a lot of experience in a lot of different things. So actually, I didn't do a lot to prepare for the idea of like suddenly having to do everything because I, there wasn't a lot that I didn't know. I might have more experience and stuff, things than others. And electronic resources management was something I never touched before.

So I was like, how do you do this? and I'd like never had to bind a book before. The book binding class at U of I when I was there, by the way, was online and you had to mail your assignments to the professor. And I did not take it because I did not think I would have to bind books. Jokes on me, I guess. But like, because I have to like pam bind scores all the time. So there wasn't like a lot that I was like worried about. Like, fuck, I have no idea how to do this, for example.

And I kind of liked the idea. of being by myself because I'm kind of a control freaking away. And a thing that I noticed I had issues with when I worked at bigger state schools, right? Because I worked at the University of Utah where there were like 40 faculty librarians alone, not even counting all of the staff that were in that library, right? Like the Marriott Library is fucking huge. And UNH, there was like 14 faculty, right? And I was like the only librarian who did what I did.

And then there was this librarian who did this, et cetera. And I would notice that I'd have a priority or a deadline or a task or something I wanted to do. But none of my work was ever, like all of my work, even if I was the one doing it, I always needed sort of stakeholder feedback, right? Or I needed approval or it relied on this moving part from this other place. And the just the machines of bureaucracy and different workflows and everything that would slow me down. and when I don't have control, this, I sound so bad. When I don't like have control over all of the moving parts,

if there's something out of my control, I get frozen up because then I don't know what to do next. And then when things are slowed down and the thing that I'm supposed to be doing, like isn't going the way it's supposed to, then I look bad. And I'm like, fuck, people think I'm not good at my job and I'm not going to get tenure.

And I like start having a panic attack. And then I can't focus on anything else that I could be doing. Suddenly I just like can't work on anything else. else. And so I would just get frozen. Or when I was having my little mental health episodes, which is often, some days I can just like, I cataloged like 30 something books in two hours today. Like I was like on fucking fire today and Pam bound hand stitched like 10 scores today and taught student workers how to do it today. Like that's what I was doing today. Some days I can't even look at my email and I have to play games on my phone in my office and pretend like I'm looking

productive, right? Some days I just, my brain goes, no, I can't do shit today. And if other people are relying on people and I'm slowing shit down, then that's bad. But if I'm the only one, then it's like, okay, I know I'm not feeling good today. This is a day where maybe I, now that my student workers are here, or maybe I spend more time out with my student workers, talking with them, getting to know them, checking in with them or like showing them around or doing stuff. Or today, oh, I know I need to work on, I need to get through all these emails or I know I need to catalog today or I know I need to do this. And it's like because I'm in my own body and my own mind, I know that like sort of what rhythm I'm in and how it might affect other people. But at least it's like I'm the only, the library is just me, right?

there might be other parts of the college, of the conservatory that I affect, but at least with library stuff, I'm the only one who can fuck it up. And I'm the only one I'm relying on. So that's nice. And so, like, that wasn't necessarily something I had to prepare for. And I was actually very honest in my job interviews when they asked, like, what would you say with collaboration is like a weakness of yours or something you struggle with? And like, I didn't want to give the bullshit answer of all, I'm just too good at it. And that's bad. I had like one of those bullshit answers. And so I gave the honest like, yeah, sometimes my brain doesn't work.

And I recognize that. And then I know how to work around it now. So that wasn't what I was worried about. What I was worried about, I had never supervised anybody before. And I knew I'd be students. And that meant a lot to me because I wanted to be a librarian because of how good of experience I had being a student worker in a music library in college. Luckily, I'm still friends and colleagues with the person who was my supervisor, and I reached out to her.

And she was actually helping me throughout the whole interview process. And I was like, hey, how the fuck do I supervise students? What do I do? What do I need to know? So I reached out to her a lot about the supervising aspect, because I just didn't want to fuck it up. And I still feel woefully underprepared for supervising students, especially once. that are so close to my age because we are just too friendly with each other and I'm like, this is probably bad. So that's sort of most of the sort of like preparing mentally

for being a solo librarian that I had to do was just being like, it's okay that I won't know everything and they knew that when they hired me and I can always ask questions because even if I did know everything, it might be a new system that I'd have to learn or new workflows and I'd have to decide those myself, right?

So I just have sort of gotten over the like, oh, no, people are going to know that I don't know things. I kind of just, I've gotten over that early in my career. Like, I find it a source of strength that I don't know things because then it's like I ask questions and I make connections that way. And that's like all listservs are four is going, hey, I don't know a thing. Do you know the thing? Can you tell me the thing? Cool things. So that's what I did.

Yeah, that was very long ago. Was there anything that surprised you once you were slow? solo librarian, like something you didn't foresee or something that you didn't think would be as big as it was. Like, is there any aspect when you got there that you were like, oh. Yeah, like, I expected, so like my title is library director, right? I'm technically administrative staff, right? I am a class of employee who can't be unionized, which is very sad. And I was a little bit afraid of the admin part of my job because I've also never

been in an administrative position before and don't particularly want to be. Like, I wouldn't ever take an administrative type of position if it didn't also include actually getting to be a librarian. Right? I didn't go to library school to be a fucking cop, you know? And I was kind of worried about the bureaucracy aspect of being the man and making those kinds of decisions and like the budget and facilities and all this stuff. I was really worried about that.

At this institution, I actually do less admin stuff than I had thought I would. Like, I have to be aware of the budget, and I kind of have to suggest maybe how much I might spend in this category, in this category, in this category. But, like, I'm not the accountant, right? And ultimately, budget decisions, I don't make the final say on them. I can't go. Yes, I would like us to get open in Athens. It's going to cost this much.

And this is how we make it work. Like, I have to get approval of that, like, from the dean of the conservative. right so like part of the like oh i'm i'm the head honcho library director like a lot of that like i a lot of the way that like my decision making and admin decisions and like project planning stuff works feels way more like when i was at unh and like the faculty did a lot of policy and project planning and this more like abstract higher level stuff rather than more day-to-day operations It feels a lot more like that where it's a lot of like, okay, I want to get more integrated into the curriculum. How does that look? Or there's stuff I want to do with the concert office. What does that look like?

And it's less what maybe I imagine a dean of a library or an AUL or whatever, like what I imagine that role to be like. I just feel like I get to be a regular librarian and I sometimes have to like tell the dean I want to do a thing and get permission. So that was what surprised me about being a library director here is that it doesn't feel like what being a library director would be like elsewhere. I feel way more like maybe like a department head in a library or like the head of a like, yeah, like the head of a department or something than I do a director sometimes. Yeah. I think my director at Hodges was like I don't think she had any budget control because the budget was flat and it's all eaten up by, your subscriptions, like your ILS, your e-book subscriptions, the couple of databases we had. Actually, we had a pretty good range of databases because we didn't have like a full university.

We had like a business school, a health school, and like we only need to get so many. We rely on the BPL for most of ours because if you are a student physically where I am, then you can get a Boston Public Library card or e-card. And they have Chase Store and they have all the other ones. So we get education source because we have, we're conservatory, but we also have like a master's of music education. And there's an online version of that. And our online students can't get BPL stuff unless they live in Massachusetts or something. So we have that for them.

And I don't think BPL has education source. And then we have some like sheet music subscriptions and then like things like IPA source, stuff like that, encoder. Yeah, you know, our ILS is like we were actually in cahoots to maybe do a system migration, but I have no idea what that's going to look like with cost. But yeah, yeah, very small budget. That was the thing I was most afraid of. I was like, fuck, I have no idea to do a budget. I'm terrible with money. But I really have to do anything.

I just be like, well, don't buy too many scores. I use ILL for a lot of the time. I got a new office chair last year and I'm not getting too much else this year. Cool. Yeah. A while ago it came up about me having a department budget, but I was like, for what? I mean, like, I can just ask you to buy the stuff that I need and that I don't have to do extra admin. It's like, you know, how often do I need to buy something?

Like, we need a new chair for one of us. Everything else is already furnished. We moved offices like one time, but those were already furnished. So it was like, yeah, we didn't, there's no need to control the budget because it's just like e-press. Yeah. And office supplies. You know, we have plenty. Students just steal pins, so we go through pins a lot.

They just steal them. That's why you put little flowers on them. That's why whenever you see flowers, like plastic flowers taped onto pins, it's so people don't take them. Oh, is that why? Something for your student workers to do. Here, take these pins. Yeah. That's done on pen theft.

Yeah. When it looks like people have put work into it or it's just too bulky to steal. You put it in your pocket without even paying attention. And then you go, oh, it's a flower. Or like, I know where I got this pin from. It's not mine. Yeah. You know, your standard bick where you walk away and you don't remember where you picked it up.

Yeah, because I would steal pins too because I'm always like, I've got three pens on my desk right now and I only know how two of them got here. So I must have walked another one here from like, somewhere, but couldn't tell you where I got it. Yeah. It's definitely mine because I only buy fancy pens, but I don't know where in the house it was. This is something interesting. You said it was hard to develop a rhythm because your work changes day to day.

So what do you do for rhythm? Because I do a work journal, and I'm a big advocate of work journals. Yeah. So as we've discussed before in this podcast, I like one of my worst traits is that I really like productivity systems and stuff like that. like I don't want to be a capitalist about it or like support capital, but like I like little systems. I find them neat. And I got to experiment a lot with them at UNH because of work from home, because I, my job was like a thing. And I could experiment with like workflows and stuff like that. Here, I don't really get to do that. And like I've talked with,

I just changed supervisors, but my previous supervisor, like he and I would talk a lot because he had similar issues. And we would talk a lot about like strategies and stuff. And it's just like, I might want to like part of me thinks like, oh, well, what if I did a thing where it's like on this day, I do this and I only do this thing on this day. On this day I do this. And I only do this on this day. Figure out how to delegate more things to my student workers, you know, whatever. But it's like I feel like I can ever get on top of things enough to even put that in place, everything's just always now, right? So it's like, how do I put things on pause enough to develop a little system or put something in place when everything's just always happening?

Right. So that's sort of, like, I'm always, for the past year, it's like, man, I really need to get back into like doing my like building a second brain and Zetelcast and stuff. And I really need to get back with my to do lists and get like a little productivity system. or like get back to doing sprints for project-based work or whatever. And maybe now that, like, a lot of the reason why I don't have, I let a lot of that go over the past year was my commute was six hours round trip, and I was just burnt out. And so much of my mind for the past six plus months has been like,

fuck, I need to move, and I don't know what I'm going to do. Oh, no, this apartment application got denied. because of my pet. Oh, no, I don't know how to get a roommate. All of this stuff, I just haven't been able to fucking think, and it just burned me out at work. And so I couldn't even like, how do I focus on, how do I even build a system or rhythm or anything? I mean, my mind is just like, oh, an email came in, I can deal with the email. Oh, no, this thing is now yelling at me because I didn't do it when I was supposed to or in time. Oh, shit, I better do that now. But I'm hoping now that, like, I live in Boston, my commute's not ridiculous anymore. I'm working fewer hours per week now, so I actually have more free time. I'm hoping my mind can like unload a bit and I can start thinking about how I might want to structure things more, especially now that I've got a better sense of what kind of work I do and what that looks like and how I might be able to structure it off. And plus I was like on campus.

Like, I would leave early on Thursdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays this past year because of my commute. Now, it's like, I'm here Monday through Thursday, 9 to 430. So it's like I'm there more. And I don't feel so time crunched. So we'll see how I like start doing that. But I've like, I used to be really into like interstitial journaling where it's like you stop every so often. And like, maybe you do a Pomodoro. And once your Pomodoro goes off or, like, whatever, you write down what, not just, like, what you're doing.

But, like, did you end up going on social media and get distracted and stay distracted? What's distracting you? What are you feeling? So it's, like, writing down not just what you're doing, but, like, even if you got distracted and, like, kind of what you're feeling and why. And then getting back on track and putting the time on there. It used to be super into that. but like I just have felt so every moment is the now and I can't plan or think ahead or remember to do that kind of shit. So I used to love doing that.

I've also like there's this thing called time yuler and it's like a diamond thing that you can buy and like it helps you track your activities by like you assign each side to an activity and like you put it in a little stand and depending on what side is up it tracks time for that thing. A former colleague at UNH had one of these and showed me, and it's how she would track time and develop a spreadsheet for it for her tenure stuff. She could be like, I spent this much time doing this and this much time doing this. Now, that might be nice because it's like a visual reminder, and you can like turn it and it's fun to at least see how long I'm spending on certain things. It's like a subscription. Is it a subscription now?

Fuck, because you used to be able to buy the thing. Yeah, because when you look at the website, It's just like a really nice calendar app. It looks kind of like air table. Do they not give you the thing anymore? I'm sure. I mean, it's, uh, I like the thing.

It's time muller, right? Yeah. Try it. The tracker, the timeular tracker. Oh. So it's like a, it's like a DA.

Yeah. And it's like, it's got a little stand and like depending on like what side is facing up. It tracks that activity, which like you can be pretty nice, which like you can do. for free, but this is fun. But yeah, like, stuff like that. It's like, I in theory know how to like track my activities and even maybe structure

them better, but I felt like every moment has been the now and I haven't been able to think through it enough to actually implement it. But I hope that changes now that I'm not fucking burnt out as much. Weird. I want to see this thing in motion. Yeah. It's not a very good sales website. I want to see it move if it moves.

It doesn't. You just set it down a certain way. And it tracks that time. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's like you have to physically, like, I'm setting it this way and the side that's facing up. I mean, so I'm working on that and then it sends it to a little spreadsheet. Okay.

Yeah, like, it's pretty cool. So walk us through a day. It can be a random day because it's, I know that stuff is changing a lot. Do you have any sort of structure you set yourself or what could a day look like? You could give us like a hypothetical day. I'll actually do like a combo of yesterday and today because they kind of show two extremes of like my day could look this way or my day could look this way. Yesterday I was in meetings or doing something like on my calendar from 10.30 a.m. until 5.30 p.m. it's like I got to work closer to 930 than 9 because of the tea and it's the first week that I have my student workers and so it's like I'm spending a lot of time with them of you know get touring them around the library checking in with them answering questions showing them how co-ha works making sure their keys work stuff like that's like that's what I was doing in the morning normally what I like to do the first thing when I get in my office is I like checking my email and I

I like to only check my email for like 30 minutes. So it's like, I'll get to my office between 9 and 930. And if I get there before 930, I dig around until 930. Like I let myself kind of wind down and mentally prepare for work. And at 930, from 930 to 10, that's emails time, baby that's going through. And it's like trying to respond to things if I can, if not saying, hey, I'll get back to you or whatever, marking it as a to do. And I like to archive things, even if I flagged them, because you can look at flags in Microsoft to do and stuff.

So it's like I try to keep my inbox looking clean because otherwise it gets overwhelming to me. I get a lot of questions about like, hey, do we have this? Hey, can we put this on reserve? Or we need this for chamber ensemble. Hey, I'm having trouble accessing this off campus, et cetera, et cetera. Right, so I like to do emails for like 30 minutes.

That's kind of my role. I do have email open during the day because I am the library director. and sometimes things are more immediate, but ideally I would only do emails from like 930 to 10, and then like right when I got done with lunch for another 30 minutes. And then maybe at the end of the day, take a glance at it before I leave just to make sure there's nothing pressing. If I have meetings, I like for them to be in the afternoon.

The morning, I feel like my meds have just kicked in, and I'm not seepy yet, and I'm in work mode and things are maybe quieter. So I like to have meetings in the afternoon and in the morning is when I like to work. Yesterday I had a meeting at, no, my meeting was it, was it a 10.30 or was it a 10? Regardless, I think it was at 10. I had a meeting with some of the librarians at Bard College because we're technically part of Bard and they are migrating, they're doing a system migration and I'm part of the committee to help choose the new system because we might be piggybacking off of it. And I happened to know the librarian over a bar who's in charge of this. And she was like, hey, do you want to be on this? And I was like, yeah, this is not me committing to paying for this.

Should we pick it? Cool beans. Let's go. So it was like that kind of meeting of like external to my workplace, right? And that got out sooner than I thought it would. That did not last a full hour. And I don't know about y'all, but if a meeting ends sooner than it was supposed to, I can't just then go do something else. My mind goes, no, you blocked this time off. And so I just like dicked around on my phone until my next meeting. Because I just like couldn't do anything, right? The trials and tribulations of ADHD. I saw that I had an email from the night before, after work hours from a professor going, hi, are you free at this time tomorrow? a.k.a.a. yesterday to come to my class for an hour to do an instruction session. They need a lot of help. And I was like, you know what? Sure. I'm not doing anything then. I can wing it. I didn't even know what class I was. I had to look up. What's EM 5774? I don't know. I found out what it was. And I went in and yeah. So it's like I had to add something to my calendar that wasn't there before.

And Wing did an instruction session out of my ass. And it was great. We're trialing a new discovery layer right now. So a lot of my instruction sessions have involved, like, also showcasing the new discovery layer and like showing people how to use it and being like, and I want feedback and yada, yada, yada. And in my previous life, I was a discovery librarian. So this is something I know a lot about.

My strengths are coming through right now. I feel in my element. It's very fun that I get to do the thing and also show. people how to use the thing and get their feedback. I also had a staff meeting yesterday, and I did that over Zoom instead of going in person because it was during a time when I didn't have student workers. I try not to schedule them over lunch or at noon, right? Then I was the only person in the library. And if people needed help, I didn't want to be gone for an hour. And then one my new student workers came in for her for a shift and I had to show her around, right? And then I had to

run off to that instruction session, right? As soon as I got back from that instruction session, I had a meeting with my new supervisor for an hour where we went over like what my goals were, what my projects are, what my some problems have been, what I'm working on, what I want to work on, let's brainstorm solutions, stuff like that. I really like her. We started here around the same time. And so it's like fun to be working together now. Immediately after I got back from that, I had to do another instruction session. This time for a course on a string quartets. And so like I had to show off the discovery layer, but there was also this focus on like, how do you find diverse repertoire?

How do you find repertoire specifically for string quartets? What kind of copyright info do you need to know about this stuff, right? What external resources are there? that kind of thing. So that one actually had to do a lot of prep for, and I knew about that one, like a couple weeks ahead of time. And then I went home. Today, I had no meetings, and it was beautiful.

So it was like I went from having a day with like seven hours of meetings straight of meetings and instruction sessions to no meetings. But I've been very behind on cataloging stuff for our music ed course reserves. And I had to buy a bunch of stuff for course reserves this year. as well, and all of that came in. And so I was just cataloging shit on morning. And I don't do really in-depth cataloging anymore. I do copy cataloging.

I find a record that looks good, and I don't change it. I ain't got time for that. So, like, that's what I was doing all while, like, talking to my gradfellas. I actually streamed myself doing this in the Discord because I was like, hey, maybe some of the library school students in the Discord would find it interesting to see me do boring copy cataloging of music scores and stuff while listening to me, like, answer questions from

my student workers and just hearing them being chatty, right? And like me going like, why the fuck is this not working? Like, that's, like, that's what I did for like two hours was copy cataloging. And then after I was done with copy cataloging, like in the afternoon, I then had to bind a lot of, so if you haven't worked. in a music library at all scores most of the time don't stand up on their own on a shelf so you

pam bind them you get pamphlet binding and it's these weird board folder things and you can either staple it but that's boring or you can hand stitch with a linen thread in like the score like the sheet music into

the pamphlet binding and sometimes that pamphlet binding also has folders in the back for the parts if it's a score plus parts, right? And so I had to teach myself how to do pamphlet binding last year because I was like, how do I do this? I don't know. I've never had to. But now I know. It's very fun. And my student workers were there. And I was like, oh wait, delegation, that's the thing. Hey, student workers, who wants to learn how to do pamphlet binding? And so I got to teach my student workers how to do pamphlet binding. And it was very fun. And we all did it together at the circulation desk, like a happy

little family, while there was printer problems because rule number one of working in libraries that the printer's always broken. I don't care how much fucking money your library has. The printer's always broken. I don't care if you bought it two seconds ago. It's broken. And it's going to be broken

until the end of time. That's just the truth. So there's always, there's printer issues on top of me teaching students how to do a pamphlet binding. And then like, I just spent my afternoon like book binding with my student workers.

And that was like really chill and fun. And we were like talking about what auditions they had coming up, what how their classes were going, um, stuff like that. just like chatting. I was like getting to know what they're doing in school and stuff like that because like I try to care about them. I try to care about all the other students as well. Like I learn what they're doing. That was actually something that got like written up about me and like my annual review

and stuff this year was that like I actually remember that a huge part of this job is about forming relationships with the students and caring about them and what they do and like learning their names and like going to their graduate recitals and stuff like that. And so like I like, I like, I like doing that. That's what I do as a librarian. Like being a librarian is about connection. Surprisingly, what a fucking concept. You got to do that.

So I do that. And I tell them about labor laws and how I treat them as if they're unionized even know they're not. And hey, here's a thing you should look out for in future workplaces. And how is everything? Do you need to be let out early? What's going on?

How can I help? You know? Dirty commie. Yeah, no, I try to, I try to be like, hey, listen, let me know what's going on. I'm not your friend. I'm your boss. And I will treat you as if you're unionized, even though the graduate fellows aren't unionized. I don't know if they can be because it's not like a graduate assistantship or anything. It's a scholarship with work placement. They don't paid. Like, the payment is the scholarship off their tuition. So, like, I can have as many

graduate fellows as I want. It doesn't come out of my budget. So I go, give me so many graduate fellows. And then I don't have to worry about paying a student worker, right? Which that was hard last year when I actually did hire some student workers, which meant I had to reject some student workers, like some people who applied. I didn't like doing that. I didn't like doing that at all. That's not a thing I liked about this job.

And I don't want to do it anymore. So that's the thing I learned about myself. At least you can do it quickly. Yeah. Which other people don't do. It takes forever to get a rejection email, but not if you apply to a job in my department. If I'm handling it, I will let you know the moment someone accepts an offer,

I'm emailing everyone else we interviewed and going, someone accepted it. Yeah. I'm not emailing you six months later. Same. Yeah. I mean, like, as student workers, as soon as I made decisions, I was like, hey, sorry. Yeah. And I sent those emails out myself, right?

Yeah. I mean, it gives them, oh, you don't trust HR to do it. No, no, no. Like, I sent the emails out myself. I was like, hey. So that's sort of like what my day looked like today. As I was leaving, I was like, hey, student worker, I need you to do this while I'm gone, finish up doing this, make sure this, this, this is this. Because luckily I had one of my returning student workers working with one of the new ones until closing after I was gone.

And so, like, I was like, hold down the fort. I trust you. I give them my cell phone number and I have told my supervisor that I do this. really shouldn't give student workers your phone number. But like if something immediate happens, I'm not putting teams on my phone. Are you fucking kidding me? If there's like an emergency or if they have an immediate question or if they're like sick or running late or something, they just like shoot me a text and they can't talk to me otherwise, like that's fine. Sometimes like one will be running late and I'll shoot a text like, hey, are you okay? Are you coming to work? Question mark. Are you

dead. Oh, crap. I forgot I was working today. You know, that kind of stuff happens all the time. And I was like, am I allowed to do that? My previous supervisor was like, technically no, but we all do. So, like, that's another thing. So that's like sort of what my week, so far, like some extremes have looked like now that I, now that the students are back on campus and now that my student workers are in the library. Over the summer, when there was nobody here, including none of my student workers, and it was me by myself. It was a lot of like, I don't have my budget yet. I can't make a decision.

Oh, no, my brain is fried for moving. I can't catalog anything I'm supposed to. Nothing's getting done. Cool. The summer went by, and I don't remember what happened. Yeah, did that answer your question? I think we covered a good episode. Some professional development.

Yeah. So an important thing about this job is not just that I'm a solo librarian now. It's also that I'm a music librarian now. Dear listeners, I do not have a music degree. And most music librarian jobs, you need to have at least a bachelor's in music, either performance or musicology, if not a graduate degree, right? You need to know a lot about music to work in a music library. you need to know the quirks about searching for scores to work in a music library. It's finicky.

It's fussy. Even if I'm relying on the expertise of faculty for collection development and stuff, of like, hey, I don't dick about jazz. What do we need? Even with that, it's like, I need to know how I might search for something in a catalog. Right. I need to know that kind of thing. Luckily, when I was a student worker, I worked in a music library.

And, like, I play like, five instruments. And I actually know a lot about music and I know music theory and, you know, all sorts of shit. So they hired me knowing I didn't have a music degree, but obviously knew a lot about music. But because of that, like, I am like, what the fuck do music librarians do? Because they wouldn't let me take the music library in class in grad school. So a lot of my professional development has been just like talking with other music librarians and being like, hey, what do I need to know? part of my job negotiation for my job offer when they wouldn't boost my salary up anymore was pay for my membership in the Music Library Association for five years. So each year for five years, my membership to MLA comes right out of the library budget.

There's a line item for it. And I get guaranteed $500 of professional development every year for a couple of years, which I used last year to have. help pay for me going, or for this year, you know, back in February March, to help pay for me to go to the Music Library Association annual conference where I, I went to so many sessions and I took so many notes and I talked to so many librarians and was like honest about what my situation was and like not knowing. And like it was my first time going. And so I signed up for the mentor program. I got like a conference mentor and everything. Like I did the whole shebang. I was such a nerd about it, right? I felt like when I was fresh out of grad school, you know, because I was technically like a new career kind of thing, right? And I learned a lot, and it was really great, and there's still a lot that I'm following up on and getting ideas about.

So there's that, and luckily the New England Music Library Association, like our branch, is really strong and active. And you can throw a, like, you can't throw a rock in Boston without hitting a music library, luckily. So there's a lot of, like, for me to be a new music library, and I'm in the right place to do it, because there's just so many people that I can talk to. I can, like, walk across the street and be in Harvard and be like, hey, Harvard, music librarian, who I know. You know, I'm friends with some of the librarians at New England Conservatory. I'm friends with the people at BU. Like, it's great. And then my library, like, for more library director things,

Like my library is part of the Massachusetts library system, which has a professional development library, that if you are a member library of the system, you can check out books from this professional development library. You can also get free consultation, where you like, hey, I would like training or consultation or whatever. and the Massachusetts library system send someone from their office to your fucking library and helps you and asks you what you need. They check in with you every year

and they come interview you and everything and like, you're like, hey, if you need a training or a consultation, let us know. And they offer webinars all the time and like they offer grants for like learning another language. So I've already gone to a lot of webinars

and I've had the like person come to visit wants to like check in on me. I've got some books checked out about library management and about supervising students and like I have those checked out. So that's good. And I also had my library joined the Fenway Library organization, which is here in Boston, mainly because of like shared purchasing power, but they also have member interest groups around controlled digital lending, as well as some other things. And they offer webinars and meetings and everything around these topics. And so just meeting other librarians and having these discussions and seeing what resources are out there has been really helpful to me. And I'm glad that I'm in the admin

position that I am where I can be like, hi, we're going to join the Finway Library Organization. And here's why, here's how much it costs. And the people who don't know library stuff, but control the budget go, that makes sense, cool and say yes. So then I just get to like, be like, we're joining this, we're doing this, we're doing this. I'm doing this. And like, I get to make all these decisions which then help my professional development while also getting other benefits on top of it. So that's nice. I'm also friends with Callan, who is also a solo librarian slash library director at an equally small college in the Boston area. And so when I first got this job, she and I would talk a lot and even hung out a little bit one time.

She did this, like, there's this, like, new library director summit thing, and she got her work to pay for it. I don't know if I still qualify for it. And then I would have to look at the budget, but you basically get paired with, like, a mentor for a year kind of thing. So it's something I've considered. But that was, like, a nice resource to have that she was, like, in the area and a similar kind of solo librarian slash library director. Nice. We covered everything. I was looking to see if they still make those accidental librarian books and if they made one from music librarians, but I don't see one.

There is an essay in Music Reference Services Quarterly from 2020, but I don't think they still make those adventures of, or the accidental librarian books. Yeah, I was the music liaison at UNH for a little while, but that was mainly collection of element where they would be like, hey, buy us this book, and I would go, cool. hey person who buys the books. We're getting this book. Cool, thanks. Honestly, like the biggest difference in being a music librarian to other kinds of librarians so far as like the fucking pamphlet binding

and like how fucking fussy searching for scores is. Which I already luckily knew because when I worked at a music library as a student, that was like working at the desk. It was a thing we were taught how to do. It was like, here is the way that you search

for scores. Here's the questions to ask if people looking for things. Because like, even with a CD, this recording has this conductor, and they want that one. They don't want other recordings with other conductors. So like, that kind of thing. I already knew that. So that wasn't a shock or a new thing to get used to. I already knew that. But that I would say is just like the biggest difference about being a music librarian over other subjects maybe. They do have the accidental library manager. I don't know how old these

are. 2005. These are all pretty old. They should update them because I got one when I was a health services, allied health liaison. So I needed to learn like health databases and stuff. And that was a good like basically got me through every situation I needed. Liaison doesn't need no much. Yeah. And like luckily the conservatory I'm at doesn't do a lot of musicology or research, nor does it like grant DMAs.

And so there's not a lot of people doing research and like faculty don't even like have to. write or do research or anything. It's like mostly performance, so I'm mainly helping people find sheet music. Every once in my, he'll get the vocal pedagogy folks being like, I have to research a thing. And then I have to help them research a thing. But for the most part, it's, hey, can you get me the score? Yes, I can. Okay. Cool, cool. Link for the discords and the description. If people would find it fun for me to maybe do some, like, streaming myself doing some, some pamphlet binding sometime. That could be fun.

Yeah, if you need to learn how to do that. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Jay. You welcome. Good night.