Journal entries

Something I had to do in the past at a previous library was e-mail a journal entry to my manager every day, detailing what I had accomplished that day. It was actually a pretty good policy for departmental communication, or would have been had it applied to the entire department and not me exclusively. You see, this had been intended as a punishment for coming back late from lunch one day, a punishment that continued for about two years before my manager got tired of getting so many e-mails from me and finally called it off.

Normally I sent these from the department's e-mail account at work, but there were days where that just wasn't feasible, like when I was away from the public desk at the end of the work day, so I still have some old journal entries that I had sent from my personal e-mail account (I worked there for 11 years before everyone finally got their own personal work accounts). Feeling nostalgic this morning, I thought I'd look back on what I was doing at work 10 years ago...

 Journal entry #58 (3/17/2009)

Mar 17, 2009, 4:49 PM

Did original cataloging of 1 LocDoc serial.
Made another mini-webliography on the financial crisis, incorporating
desktop icons previously saved separately.
Signed up for the next NIDL meeting.
Printed 1 Y doc for cataloging.

"LocDoc" was my shorthand for local documents. "Mini-webliography" was a phrase that never caught on. NIDL is still around and stands for Northeastern Illinois Depository Libraries. "Y doc" means a federal government document with a SuDoc (Superintendent of Documents) classification code that starts with Y (likely a hearing report).

Journal entry #89 (5/5/2009)

Tue, May 5, 2009, 4:57 PM

Deleted/moved files off of C drive.
Barcoded docs (don’t know how many – I forgot to count them!).
Copy cataloged 14 MF.
Finished reading NIDL report.

I had to think for a moment as to why I was getting rid of files, but realized this was right before our move out of the temporary building back into the main building after renovation. Everyone was encouraged to go through their computer files and make sure they had what they needed, since we were getting upgraded computers when we returned to the building.

"MF" stands for microfiche, for anyone too young to have ever used microfiche.

Journal entry #6 (7/9/2009)

Thu, Jul 9, 2009, 4:54 PM

I moved books from the trash cart to the trash.
I tagged 4 shelves of D.
I read your TS meeting notes and caught up on professional e-mail.
I wrote the blurb below for the next Poplar Creek Digest.
I filled out request form for RefSIG meeting to use meeting room 1 on
Sept. 14th.
I got the tally sheet up to 25 – a slower day than yesterday, though
we had an issue with printing out there in the commons that took 4
people to resolve.

Looking for apartment ads?  Back issues of India Review or the Radio
Hill Gazette?  News articles about School District U-46?  You used to
be able to find all these things in the library’s Community File – and
you still can!  The Community File has been moved to the Government
Documents room.  If you need help finding it, just stop by and ask!

I restarted the count on the entries when we returned to the main building. It was in many ways a fresh start, except for old punishments that remained in force.

The absolute worst part of having a government documents collection was that, when you were ready to weed documents out of the collection and no other depository wanted them, you couldn't sell them in your library book sale area because you never owned them (they were on loan to you from the depository program) -- so you had to dispose of the books in the trash.

"D" was Department of Defense. I believe we were tagging shelves that we had shelf read to make sure they had been moved back in correct order.

"RefSIG" was the Reference Special Interest Group, one of the SIG's organized by the DuPage Library System (back when that was a thing). We were eager to host to show off the new building and its cavernous main meeting room (which turned out to have terrible acoustics for meetings).

Ah, for days when 25 questions on the tally sheet was a slow day! I'm lucky when I get 7 at my current job.

I maintained that community file/vertical file for almost 20 years, long after most other library's had abandoned the practice. It wasn't used much, but it was nice to have on occasions, like when I'd be talking to a group of Amvets in the department and I could pull out copies of their own Amvets newsletter to show them.

Journal entry #81 (10/29/2009)

I did original cataloging of 2 LocDoc posters.
  I copy cataloged 10 MF.
  I tried working on my Gov Docs presentation.  Stumped so far for a
  good, very brief overview to start off with.

I'm pretty sure I solved that overview problem.