Library Day in the Life Round 8: Wednesday

So - you know the routine by now - alarm 6.05, husband's packed lunch, defrost bicycle seat, cycle 3 miles, swim 1.5 miles, arrive at work.

Today I'm based in the Lower Camera all day. There are several of us to sort the room out first thing so it doesn't take long - I switch things on and refill the copiers. We do the turnout which takes a while as it always does in term time and there is a very brief respite before 10 boxes of books are delivered. Coffee times come and go and then it is onto the excitement of the day - it is my first session on the online help desk. This was set up last summer and is manned by people in the various different Bodleian libraries across Oxford - our department has just had four people trained, including me, and it's my first go (we will be doing an hour a week on average). I don't actually have high hopes of anything happening at all as the last two hours have not had any enquiries, but after watching the screen for 40 minutes I finally get a question from someone having problems with electronic journal access. After experimenting, I have the same problems and it's not something I can sort out so I take the reader's email address and get in touch with the E Resources team. Unfortunately the reading room and phone gets quite busy while I'm doing this (should have gone to my "off-desk computer") and For the rest of the hour, I answer some emails and forward something about a course that I need to attend to my manager.

Helping a reader on the live help should be the highlight of the day, but it's not quite. Immediately afterwards I have my lunchbreak and go to Specsavers to get some new prescription sunglasses for my holiday in a fortnight's time. While I'm there, I ask the assistant to fix my drooping glasses as they have been annoying me. A ten second fix not only stops them drooping but brings the world back into focus! I had been worrying that my eye sight was deteriorating after only having a new prescription 2 months ago, so now I feel five years younger!

I get back to work and carry on sorting out the problem from yesterday as I have had advice from the systems support. This involves doing some shelf checking (actually one of my team goes and does this), following instructions on the system to make them look like they are in the right place again. Still two mystery items which I can't find, but they were last seen out to another member of the department so I have asked her to look!

Another large delivery of books takes us to tea time - when I get my break I carry on reading Jeanette Winterson's memoir which I'm REALLY enjoying. (If you enjoyed Oranges are not the only fruit, then you should definitely read this as it puts it into context)

My team member has reviewed the workflows and made several helpful suggestions which I incorporate and then I ring my fellow Reading Room Supervisor and ask her to look at them tomorrow when she has some off-desk time. This will give me time to review them when I come in tomorrow lunchtime and then get them to my manager by Friday morning, hopefully earlier than she was expecting!

I am supposed to go for tea at 3.30 but I got distracted by trying to sort out Crockfords Clerical Dictionary. We have a 2006 edition on the shelves in the Lower Camera, and the latest edition is at the Main Enquiry Desk, but now due to come to us. Unfortunately, the system thinks that the whole run is in the stack, and since we changed library systems in July I have no idea what to do. I ring my manager but she's busy and isn't 100% sure either but a brief hint that she gives me enables me to work it out. I manage to create a "temporary location" for this volume (since we'll get next years in due course and send this one to the store) and in the excitement I forget to go to tea. I tell my manager with glee (putting it down to my adjusted specs) and she asks me to write up a procedure that everyone can use. Luckily one of my colleagues agrees to man the fort on his own while the rest of us go for tea at 4.

5pm and I'm off home, still feeling jolly about my eyesight. Decide to make macaroni cheese for my husband and a gluten free chocolate cake for me, hopefully my husband who has cycled to work today will be home faster than when he cycled on Monday - 7.45 pm, if not I shall watch some iplayer. I do have a difficult email to send which is that I was supposed to be running the Brighton Marathon for Mind in April, but a combination of ankle injury over Christmas and iron deficiency anaemia has made it difficult, almost impossible for me to train more than the short runs I've been managing. The anaemia should be treatable and I'm taking iron supplements and should be sorted in three months so I'm confident that I'll be able to give it a go in 2013; it is one of the things on my list of things to do before I'm 30.