05.27.08
A sense of accomplishment
Have you ever had something, whether it was a simple task or a big project, hanging over your head for what seems like forever? Finding the time to do it just doesn’t happen and each day that goes by means you’re that much farther behind in getting it done. Maybe it’s something with a deadline or a sense of timeliness and not doing it just makes it worse. You know other people are waiting for you to do it, yet it just isn’t getting done despite your best efforts to squeeze it into your busy schedule.
Well today I finished compiling several months’ worth of cataloging statistics. Big deal, right? It wasn’t so much the compiling that was hard– it was figuring out a new way to compile them, making sure that method was accurate, redesigning our statistical reports, and coming up with new instructions so that I could (hopefully) delegate the task to someone else in the future. It was a major project, to be sure! Compiling my department’s monthly cataloging statistics used to be so easy that I had it down to where it took just an hour or two to do (yeah, we hand-counted EVERYTHING we did in our department!). But a consultant came along last fall and was convinced I could get the same numbers out of our automated system. He said we should stop counting so much by hand and stop counting EVERYTHING we did. Easier said than done, I say.
After months of creating lists of data and trying to figure out where the system counts things differently than we humans count things, I’ve finally cracked the code. I’m actually looking forward to next week, when I can use my new method to compile the May statistics, hopefully within the first week of June. Then I can put my energies towards coming up with new statistical counts that reflect some of the new things we’re doing, such as getting shelf-ready books from vendors.
No matter what, I can’t forget the feeling of calm and the sense of accomplishment I felt when I posted the last report on our staff intranet and sent an email to my department announcing the reports were available. Feeling caught up (even in just this one small area) was a great way to end the day and a wonderful way to start the week.
03.15.08
Unplanned events
If you’re wondering what happened to me this week, I’m okay. One of my employees had a medical emergency on Tuesday and had to leave work. She hasn’t been able to return to work yet and I’ve spent the rest of the week helping her and her family deal with the situation. I also went to an out-of-town workshop on Friday to hear about digitization projects in Indiana. The combination of events, both planned and unplanned, left me exhausted. If it hadn’t been for the Adderall XR, I don’t know that I could have focused on what was important during such a stressful week. I managed to keep materials moving through the department, have staff fill in for the missing employee, and pay attention during an all-day workshop at the end of the week.
My original plans for the week were to write up my employee’s performance appraisals now that I had organized their folders. I usually hate doing performance appraisals but I was actually looking forward to doing them now that I had a place to put them. My other plan for the week was to compile last month’s statistics, before bibliographic and item records were withdrawn from the system. Yes, it’s a sad fact that in a public library, much of our new stuff is stolen before it ever gets to circulate. It’s amazing how things like cookbooks just walk out the door the same month they arrived in the system, never to be seen again. The week was proof that no matter how much I plan my week, no plan is foolproof or guaranteed.
02.04.08
Statistics
Gaaah! I just spent the whole day compiling several months’ worth of statistics for August-December of last year. That’s a lot of numbers for a person who doesn’t like ‘em. I’m not sure if it’s worse to have piles of numbers or piles of books and papers. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have let them pile up to begin with. But there’s been so much to do since last fall, I felt compiling statistics was the least of my worries.
I will admit that a marathon session of statistical compilation gave me some good ideas on how to revise our departmental statistics. One thing’s for sure– we keep track of way too many things! For example, we could stop counting corrections and transfers of attached records. We can stop manually counting cataloging and added copies statistics. I can get those numbers from creating lists and compiling reports in Millennium and Excel. But I still want to keep track of hours spent on work activities, so supervisors can have an idea of where their employees spend their time.
I feel confident I’ll get a handle on these squirrelly numbers soon enough and wrestle them under control. I can’t wait to tell staff what they can stop counting.
While I was immersed in numbers today, trucks of vendor shelf-ready books appeared outside my office. I could feel them staring me down, especially the one with holds. Sigh… there are never enough hours in the day to do it all…
