Advice for the New Systems Librarian – Building Relationships, Part 2 Previous articles in this series: Building Relationships, Helpful Resources, A Day in the Life I am at the two-year mark of being in my role as systems librarian at Jacksonville University, and I continue to love what I do. I am working on larger-scale projects and continuing to learn new things every week. There has not been a challenge or new skill to learn yet that I have been afraid of. My first post in this series highlighted groups and departments that may be helpful in learning your new role. Now that I’m a little more seasoned, I have had the opportunity to work with even more departments and individuals at my institution on various projects. Some of these departments may be unique to me, but I would imagine you would find counterparts where you work. The Academic Technology…
Tag: systems librarian
Advice for the New Systems Librarian – A Day in the Life
On this third installment of my series aimed at new systems librarians (if you missed the first two posts, you can read them here and here), I thought it would be fun to provide a “day in the life” of one of my days. (At this writing, I have been in my role as systems librarian for 18 months). It is the summer semester, so the library is a little quieter. A quieter library means more opportunity to tackle the big and small tasks. 8:00 – 9:00 a.m.: I settle into my office and check e-mails. I check my work e-mail and our systems e-mail. A database issue came up, and I am thankful someone pointed it out to me. Off-campus users could not access the database, so I test and confirm this is true, and then I contact the database vendor. 9:15 – 10:00 a.m.: I receive a call…
I’m a Librarian. Of tech, not books.
When someone finds out I’m a librarian, they automatically think I know everything there is to know about, well, books. The thing is, I don’t. I got into libraries because of the technology. My career in libraries started with the take off, a supposed library replacement, of ebooks. Factor in the Google “scare” and librar*s were going to be done forever. Librar*s were frantic to debunk that they were no longer going to be useful, insert perfect time and opportunity to join libraries and technology. I am a Systems Librarian and the most common and loaded question I get from non-librarians is (in 2 parts), “What does that mean? and What do you do?” Usually this resorts to a very simple response: I maintain the system the library sits on, the one that gives you access to the collection from your computer in the comfort of your home. This tool,…