January 29, 2010 By 2 Comments

A Day in the Life With Lori Reed – Friday

Friday is a day I normally spend catching up. I try to empty my inbox and make sure any projects from the week that can be completed are wrapped up. I also use Fridays to update training records and look over the schedule for the following week’s classes–send out reminders, rosters, etc. This Friday is no different except that we are expecting snow in Charlotte which is cause for some excitement and a little concern. A few years ago we had a major ice storm and lost power at home for 2-weeks. In fact I distinctly remember going to work to stay warm and seeing people come to the library to charge their laptops and cell phones. The snow begins to fall outside my office around 4pm. I leave around 4:30pm and it takes over an hour to get to my son’s school where he is anxiously awaiting my arrival.

I took random photos throughout the week to capture moments to share with you. For best results after clicking play, click the full screen icon in the bottom right corner, then click Show Info in the upper right corner to view my captions for each photos.

Thanks for spending the week with me, and I look forward to the next Library Day in the Life week!

Filed under: Library Day in the Life
January 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A Day in the Life With Lori Reed – Thursday

7:00am

Should have gotten up earlier but so needed the sleep. Rush to get self ready. Make son’s breakfast and lunch. Feed the cat and the fish. Hold Miss 2 as much as I can during all of this so she won’t scream. Today is dress up as your future career day at school and Mr. 5 says he wants to be a doctor. It makes sense now, and I smile at the thought for a few minutes. He wears a dress shirt with cords, and I let him wear my grandmother’s stethoscope to school. He looks remarkably handsome.

7:45am

We all leave at the same time which seems to help with the tears. I have only dropped my daughter off at daycare a handful of times. I just can’t do it. Can’t handle the tears and the guilt. The kids don’t cry like that when Dad drops them off. It’s a mommy thing. :) Luckily my son is very social and loves school. He just waves bye as I drop him off and is ready to play with his friends.

More phone calls on the way to work.

8:30am

Arrive at work. Meet with our safety and security director about security training for our staff. Head down to my office to schedule the last classes for my 2010 plan. Schedule rooms, add to PeopleSoft and other calendars. Finally! It took a week but it is done.

10:30am

I am facilitating customer service training this afternoon at a new branch that is opening to replace a much smaller library. I update the handouts and slide deck then print handouts and a roster. While I’m in the system I update the attendance for orientation held the day before.

11:30am

A quick run through email. I am failing at inbox 0 this week. Life happens. It’s funny because I can go for months without doing any training and this week I am doing three sessions. The one constant with training is that you have to be flexible.

12:00pm

Training starts in an hour. Pack up my laptop, markers, handouts, roster, camera, and massive flip chart pad. Manage to get everything to my car in one trip. More fast food for lunch.

12:45pm

In the room and ready to set up. Love the new library smell!

1:00pm

Action!

4:45pm

We wrap up the session. I love doing customer service training. It’s some of the most important training we offer. I always try to incorporate in what I wish I’d have known when I started 10-years ago. Most important–don’t take things personally.

5:00pm

Pack up and head to my son’s school to pick him up. He’s playing doctor with the other kids and showing them how the stethoscope works. Look for photos on tomorrow’s post!

5:30pm

We are home. Son sets off to playing, and I turn on the computer to catch up with any urgent emails I missed during training. While checking email I hear the ping of Google chat and it is one of the Emerging Leaders I met at ALA Midwinter asking me about her project. We chat for about 30-minutes about options for what her group wants to accomplish. They could use Yahoo Pipes, RSS feeds, a wiki. I thank her for letting me offer my contributions to her group and she says, “Your experience and activism with ALA is what they want us to aspire too.” It’s flattering and a perfect example of why I love what I do and keep doing it.

6:30pm

Husband and daughter are home. Time for dinner and family time.

8:00pm

Exhausted and head to bed early with both kids. We try to watch a movie in bed but all fall asleep within minutes.

Filed under: Library Day in the Life
January 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A Day in the Life With Lori Reed – Wednesday

7:00am

My husband is taking a furlough day today so I sleep an extra hour since he will drop both kids off at their school. Almost out the door when the 2-year-old begins her screaming fit of “Mommy don’t go.” Today it’s harder than normal because I have been so busy this week and have not had much time for family. It’s a sad fact of juggling work, school, and other activities that some weeks family gets less time.

8:00am

Out the door and try to maximize my commute time by making some phone calls to wrap up loose work projects. Sometimes the phone is much more efficient than email. Check my Blackberry for email at red lights on the way to work. A member of the HR Department is out today so I will need to fill in at new employee orientation. Make mental plans to rearrange my schedule.

8:30am

Quick check of email then time to prepare documents for a meeting.

9:30am

Attend a meeting with the senior managers over library experiences (public service). Give an update on our learning curriculum. Present plans for self-paced training to begin in April and live, online training to begin in October. Feel satisfied with the work I put into the business case. Calculated the number of training sessions attended by our staff last year and multiplied that by average travel time to and from training and then multiplied by average hourly wage. Even moving half of that training online yields a substantial savings in lost time for travel and more importantly saves lost opportunity — time staff could spend on something productive.

10:30am

My presentation is over. Back to my office to look over materials for orientation. Need to see who is registered, print out a roster, and review slide deck. Receive confirmation for two more training rooms. So close to being done. I also need to update attendance records for previous day’s training session. Reschedule meetings planned for the afternoon. Respond to several emails regarding Learning Round Table board stuff.

1:00pm

Did not allow myself enough time for a decent lunch. Fast food drive thru and then off to orientation.

1:30pm

Arrive early enough to make sure room is set up and chat with orientation team. Talk to a fellow team member about plans to convert orientation to an online format.

2:00pm

Orientation begins. Hiring freeze has recently lifted so small group but so happy to have them. I always learn something at orientation and this time I learn some library history that I did not know. I give a short presentation on library policy, procedures, benefits, ALA Code of Ethics, and staff development opportunities.

4:00pm

Orientation is over. Help pack up and visit for a few minutes with branch staff.

4:30pm

Off to pick up my son from school. Today is wear your favorite jersey day and there are lots of Carolina Panthers and Pittsburgh Steelers jerseys. The first words out of his mouth are, “Mommy do you feel better today?” He is the sweetest kid in the world. He remembers that I’ve had a headache every night since Sunday. I lie and say that I do. On the drive home I wonder what he will be when he grows up. I’ve never met a person with a bigger heart except maybe one person. Part of me thinks he might want to be a teacher.

5:30pm

Home. Husband had furlough day and caught up on sleep so the house is still a mess. These days I don’t really care as long as everyone is healthy and happy. He takes our son to pick up our daughter and to buy groceries. I have about an hour of quiet time to myself so I…get online and work on my blog post for ALA Learning.

7:00pm

Kids are home. Husband cooks dinner. We watch some cartoons and relax on the couch with the kids fighting over who will sit in my lap.

8:00pm

Kids and husband go to bed. I am back on the computer to finish my blog post, write this blog post, and work on assignments for school.

10:00pm

I go to bed on time for the first time this week!

Filed under: Library Day in the Life
January 27, 2010 By 7 Comments

Library Trainer is Moving to LoriReed.com

For the past two years I’ve been blogging at LibraryTrainer.com. The name fit when I started the site. It’s catchy, short, easy to remember, but in the back of my mind I’ve always been aware that I do a lot more than “just training.”

Over the past year I’ve transitioned from thinking and working about “training” to focusing more on the end result–performance and answering the question of how do we improve the services and the quality of service we provide to our customers. Sometimes training is the answer but more often it’s not. Training is only a small part of a solution in performance consulting.

I’ve also recently become the managing editor of ALA Learning, the official blog of the Learning Round Table of the American Library Association. When Peter Bromberg first asked me to take over the helm, I wondered how I would keep up with contributing to two training blogs. But I’ve found that being a part of a group blog, especially this group, is very rewarding. Seriously how can one go wrong when working with this crew? The quality and depth of content is far more than any one person could provide without making it a full time job.

So with ALA Learning under way and with performance consulting in mind, I’ve decided to take a leap of faith and move my content to LoriReed.com where I will continue to write about topics relevant to libraries about training but with a much broader focus. I’m also planning to write more about a topic very close to my heart–work/life balance and the trials and tribulations of being a working mom with a successful career. Don’t worry, I’m not about to become a mommy blogger! No tales of dirty diapers or moonsand to give you nightmares. I’m planning to focus more on the answer to the question that I get asked more than any other–how do you do it all?

There is a rumor that you can’t have it all. I disagree! You can have it all but you have to be very focused on what is you want and why. You also have to accept the fact that sometimes you can’t have it all at once. Life really is a marathon and not a sprint. I remind myself of that every day.

I hope you will follow me over to LoriReed.com. This is a great week for the transition since it is also Round 4 of the Library Day in the Life project created by Bobbi Newman. Therefore I take back the promise of no moonsand stories. You might see a few of those this week. :)

If you are a LibraryTrainer subscriber, please update your feed to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/lorireed.

If you prefer an email subscription click here.

Thanks to everyone who has followed Library Trainer for the past two years. It’s having readers like you, who provide comments and interaction from the faceblogotwittofriendfeedosphere, that make blogging a fun and satisfying endeavor.

Filed under: Personal
January 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A Day in the Life With Lori Reed – Tuesday

6:00am

There is no time to hit the snooze button today. I have a class on customer service starting in two hours. I have no idea what traffic might be like, if the room will be set up, or any other number of variables. Normally I would not schedule training to start at 8am but I try to have at least 1-2 sessions a year of this class early in the morning so that our staff who work behind the scenes in the middle of the night delivering books to branches don’t have to adjust their circadian rhythm too much in order to attend. It’s a trainer’s job to put the learners needs first and sometimes that means getting up really early. I’ve even done sessions at 7am.

7:00am

I planned to be out the door before the kids woke up. No such luck there. I spend a few minutes holding my 2-year-old daughter and she screams as I walk out the door, “Mommy don’t go.” Having been through this many times before I’m able to leave with only a small feeling of guilt.

7:30am

I arrive at the library and realize that I only have 30-minutes until start time. It’s a pet peeve of mine to start a class late especially when most of the attendees have also gotten up early to park, walk a few blocks, and be ready to start on time. The room is set up and the door is open for me. Hurray! I don’t have to search for a key. The room was used the night before so I could not check the set up ahead of time. Like always our maintenance staff did a great job and ahead of schedule. I notice that there is not a flip chart stand and flip charting is a crucial part of this session. I run upstairs to borrow one. I also hunt down an AV cart that has a projector and PC. I unplug the PC and hook up my laptop. Better to use the computer I am familiar with. Handouts and roster were printed the day before. I am ready to go!

8:00am

Nearly everyone has arrived on time and we are ready to go. From 8am-noon we have some great discussions about customer service including: who are our competitors, what do libraries do well, what do our competitors do well, what could libraries do better, tying our mission and vision in with customer service, how to say no, body language, tone of voice, words used, how to create an engaging environment, how to handle complaints, who are our customers, what are their needs, role playing, and small group discussions. Four hours seems like a lot, but we need it. This is a great session that requires lots of audience interaction. It’s one of my favorite workshops to facilitate.

12:00pm

Step out with a colleague/friend to pick up lunch. Come back to eat in the office and talk about an upcoming project we are collaborating on.

12:45pm

Back in my office to wrap up scheduling training for 2010. I can’t seem to reach the people I need to talk to get this project done. I have most of the training scheduled and the rest will have to be listed as TBD. I begin inputting the 50+ sessions into PeopleSoft so staff can register for the sessions. It takes a while to enter this many courses and also cross reference various calendars to make sure there are absolutely no mistakes. The worse thing that can happen is training is listed as one day but a room was reserved for a different day or a trainer has it listed as a different day. You don’t want 10 or 20 or 30 people to show up for training and not have a space or trainer available.

2:00pm

I sign in to the George and Joan InfoPeople webinar on collaboration but I have a headache. Download the slides and know that the webinar will be in itunes tomorrow morning. Back to entering courses.

3:00pm

Courses entered now it’s time to put them in a Word document that can be sent out to staff. I use the previous schedule as a template and do a lot of copy and pasting. Then it’s time to double check the Word document against the sessions in PeopleSoft against the sessions on my calendar. The last thing to do it enter the dates again on our Intranet calendar but that will have to wait.

4:00pm

I think about changing some of the wording regarding required training for part-time staff. This takes some thought, writing, and revisions. Another hour gone.

5:00pm

I have to leave on time today. My husband is working till 7pm so I have to pick up both kids. Start driving to my son’s school and call my colleague Paul to discuss the book we are writing together.

5:30pm

Arrive at my son’s school. Greeted with the normal hugs and kisses. Head out to pick my daughter up from daycare.

6:00pm

Pick up my daughter. I only pick her up once a week so she squeals with excitement when she sees me. Talk to her teachers and some of the other parents. My son sees his friends who were here with him last year for preschool. He gives them lots of hugs too.

6:30pm

We are home and headache is worse. Take something for it. Make a snack for the kids and put on a movie. We all sit down together to watch Clifford’s Really Big Movie.

7:30pm

Husband comes home and fixes dinner. Have I mentioned how lucky I am? Spend some more time with the kids until bedtime.

8:00pm

Back to the computer to write up these posts, write up the post for Library Trainer about moving to the new site, catch up on personal email, social networks, and school. I’m taking 6 hours of courses this semester Writing for PR and Pop Culture. I hate the way Blackboard discussion groups are laid out on the screen and wish someone would improve the collaboration within Blackboard. Been waiting for a week for a response from a professor about an assignment that I need special approval for. Can’t call because office hours are limited and conflict with my training schedule at work. Reading tweets by mstephens7 about using Twitter for his classes and wish he were my professor.

12:00am

Everything done. Posts scheduled for 11am tomorrow. Hurray. Time for bed!

Filed under: Library Day in the Life
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