A view from “command central”, the front desk at Western’s Map and Data Centre. Maps are kept in the low-lying cabinets in the foreground, while atlases and globes are positioned along the walls.
Since discovering the Library Day in the Life project a handful of rounds ago, I’ve learned tons about the day-to-day work of library staff in all kinds of settings. Now that I’m blogging regularly, I thought I’d share my contribution as a library assistant and MLIS student at the University of Western Ontario in London, ON (roughly midway between Detroit and Toronto). I’ve worked part-time at Western’s Map and Data Centre since September 2011 and love my job to pieces. Here’s what I was up to on Monday, January 30th 2012.
9:20 – Commute to work. See a student on the bus completing one of our fill-in-the-blanks maps of Canada. Feel good about self, future of geography, etc.
9:30-9:50 – Arrive at the library, chat with our three librarians, log in to computer and desk tracker software, water plants (I am paranoid about killing the plants).
9:50 - Look up call number for book at main library. Learn that I can text myself call numbers from the catalogue. Proceed to do just that.
10:10 – Open the documentation file for a survey we’re loading into Equinox, Western’s homegrown data delivery system. Check to see which fields were incorrectly imported during the automated loading process. Locate a list of wonky derived variables without much additional information, and begin transferring the appropriate snippets of documentation into our database’s “variable source” field. This is all done using a version of InMagic DB/TextWorks.
10:30 – Tea time!
10:40 – Back to desk and the survey.
10:50 – Reference question from a friend at the University of Toronto’s iSchool about how people conceptualize “Northern Ontario”. I pull out some maps of the province to see how it’s portrayed, noting where they decide to split the province into two sides of the map (somewhere near Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury and North Bay). I make a mental note of the few road/overview maps that don’t make use of the split.
11:05 – A borrowed cart is returned. I move the cart to its usual spot in our backroom.
11:10 – Back to the survey!
12:00 – Lunch time. I nibble away at leftover pierogi while our map librarian steps in to take over desk duty. I then dash over to the main library to pick up a book (using the text message received earlier) for an upcoming archival administration essay.
12:30 – I return to the desk and assume control. This is much less dramatic than it sounds.
12:40 – A campus tour drops by! The requisite “here’s a map of the map library” joke is made about the floorplan we have in the entrance. The tour guide notes that our library is “the coolest one” on campus. Feel good about it.
12:45 – More survey!
12:55 – A student stops by the desk to sign out some historic map reproductions of London for a project. We complete a sign-out slip and roll the maps into a plastic carrying tube.
13:00 – Survey! Grumble to self about lousy documentation and poor formatting.
13:10 – Reach the end of the survey. Celebrate by re-heating a mug of cold tea left over from hours ago.
13:05 – Open ArcGIS to resume work on an historical GIS project of Southern Ontario counties. I’ve been georeferencing a 19th century map of Halton County that has been split into sixteen individual images, so the process is taking a long time. Once all of the pieces are aligned properly, I’ll be using the information on the maps to relate the position of each lot to the names of the landowners who settled in the region.
15:00 – Re-file some Ordnance Survey maps and direct a visitor toward Western’s GIS job fair on the ninth floor.
15:30 – Wrap up my latest batch of georeferenced images and call it a day.
And that just about sums up my usual routine. I hope it has given you some insight into front desk work in a unique academic library. Thanks so much for stopping by!
