#libday8 Wednesday

The third instalment in week long series of Library Day in the Life blog posts for Round 8.   

9.30 – Arrive at work. First tasks are to open boxes of returned tapes which have arrived, go over to the canteen on the office coffee run and eat some breakfast whilst my pc is starting up (it takes a while…)

9.45 – Telephone enquiry about a programme and whether we hold a copy.  Only given minimal information so the research takes a while.  I email back with my findings and information about how to buy a copy of the programme, but I have to check with a colleague first as I’m unsure of this myself.

11ish – Emails, requests, phone calls etc fill the rest of the morning.  I find a few moments to sort out the returns shelves which have once again become full and disorganised because of our high turnover levels.  A delivery of new Emmerdale episodes comes in so I check they have been registered and then move them to shelves in our archive.  Emmerdale is on tv 5 nights a week and we hold multiple tapes for each episode so shelving new tapes for this programme is a main part of my job.  Recent episodes are often requested so it is important to make sure they are shelved promptly.

12.30 – LUNCH! Most days I leave my desk and spend an hour in the canteen catching up with friends from other departments, sometimes playing a game or two of pool or going for a quick walk around the block.

1.30 – My supervisor gives me a big job to do.  We no longer hold the rights to a children’s tv series and all the tapes need to be removed from the archive.  A search using the production number (our main way of finding what we need) reveals a very large amount of tapes.  I teach myself how to export the list of tapes and locations from our asset management database as an Excel spreadsheet (I’d always presumed it must be possible but never needed to know how). Exporting to Excel allowed me to sort the list by shelf location and print to take into the archive.

3.00 – Phone call enquiry about an episode of a programme.  Once again this was a bit complicated and took a bit of digging to find.  The amount of detail  logged about programmes (synopsis, cast lists etc) in the organisations databases  determines how easy something is to find without a specific production number relating to required episode.  For example if someone wants a programme with a guest star but the name of the guest hasn’t been added to any searchable records, the programme will be more difficult to find.

3.30 -Working on the above enquiry was momentarily disrupted to spend time crowded round one of our tape viewing machines. A colleague was checking an episode of Celebrity Stars in their Eyes so we all gathered round for a few moments of laughter.  I like moments like these, a nice perk that reminds you of the materials you work with.  Most of the time I work with tapes without ever seeing what is on them so its nice to get to watch every so often.

4.00 – Bits and pieces of work that I can’t really remember…

6.00 – The day is done. Home time.