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 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
January 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A Day in the Life With Lori Reed – Monday

I am so glad that Bobbi Newman started this Library Day in the Life meme. I was part of the first round in 2008 and was amazed at the response I got to combining my work/home lives into my posts. I’m continuing that for this round.

6:00am

Why oh why does 6:00am seem so early. Until this month I had been getting up at 7:00am for years and years. At 6:00am it’s still dark and I don’t want to be awake. But my two kids have to be at two different schools and it takes a much longer time to get a 2-year-old dressed and ready to go in the mornings than it did when she was a baby. I fix my hair and makeup while the kids watch TV in bed. My 5-year-old son asks why I do this and I respond to look pretty. He melts my heart with his response of, “But mom you’ve been pretty for years.”

7:30am

My son and I are out the door and I take him to school. He’s in Kindergarten and it’s a teacher work day so I have to walk him inside to sign him in for the enrichment program that our school system provides for after school and teacher workdays.

8:00am

I arrive at work. Make a pot of hot tea. Open my email and immediately begin processing. During the last round of Library Day in the Life I posted about my frustration with email and Kevin Crenshaw commented about a solution. I followed up with Kevin and he offered me a free trial of his product with training and we have been in contact ever since. When I have more time I’m planning another series of posts about the training and process I went through to get my email problems under control. Kevin is a great person to follow on Twitter. His profile says that he is the father of 10 children! If anyone knows about time management, it’s someone with 10 children!

9:00am

I begin the arduous task of scheduling training for our staff for the 2010 calendar year. This takes up more hours of the day then I want to remember. There is so much that goes into planning and scheduling over 50 training sessions. For example:

  • I am lucky enough to work with a team of about 20 staff who facilitate staff training in addition to their normal jobs. Each of their individual schedules has to be taken into consideration. Who works what night? Who has days off during the week because of working a weekend? Who is taking vacation when?
  • We don’t want to schedule training when other large meetings or events are taking place. Anytime staff are out of the building it affects the ability of other staff to go to training.
  • We don’t want to schedule training on election days because many locations double as a polling place or early voting location. Parking can be an issue, and we are much busier on these days.
  • We don’t want to schedule training during summer reading because our libraries and staff are busy, busy, busy! The same goes for school holidays, teacher workdays, etc. I have a big master calendar with all of these dates written in.
  • Some training requires very large rooms. For instance, Non-Violent Crisis Intervention requires a room large enough for classroom space and physical maneuvers as well.
  • Other training requires computer labs or other specialized resources found only at certain libraries.
  • We have 23 libraries spread across a large geographic area so each class needs to have sessions offered at different libraries across the county. We wouldn’t want to have all sessions for one class in one geographic area.
  • Lastly we don’t want to have any two training sessions happen at the same time. This makes it very difficult to fill both classes and thus does not properly utilize our most valuable resource–our staff’s time.

2:00pm

Take a break from planning to call the ALA Learning Round Table President Pat Carterette. We talk about the name change for the round table and where we are in the process of getting a new logo. I share the designs I received from our graphic artist and we pick two to move forward with.

I follow up with the artist to give her feedback on the 8 logos she sent us. Tell her the final two we selected and give a few suggestions for refining them.

2:30pm

Phone call with one of our librarians who facilitates Readers Advisory training for staff. Have a discussion about how to move forward with converting this training to self-paced training. Refer her to some additional resources that may help.

3:00pm

Meet with our director of research, innovation, and strategy about implementing Web Ex as a tool for synchronous learning. Discuss the pros and cons of online training and meetings and how to balance the need for bandwidth for staff training with the need for bandwidth for our customers using the Internet in our libraries.

4:00pm

Back to scheduling training.

4:45pm

The alarm goes off on my phone. It’s my 15-minute warning to wrap things up so I can leave in time to pick my son up from school.

5:30pm

I rush out the door because I got tied up on the phone trying to reserve rooms for training. I realize that I even forgot to have lunch today. In the car I call Sandra Smith from the Denver Public Library. She is one of the people I am interviewing for the book I am coauthoring about leadership for trainers. We catch up and make plans for our next interview.

5:59pm

Rush into the school since at 6:00pm I start getting billed $1 a minute for being late. My son greets me by shouting “MOMMMEEEEEEEE” from across the room and runs to give me a hug so tight I can hardly breathe. It takes my breath away (literally) and puts a much needed smile on my face. He immediately tells me all about his field trip to ImaginOn which happens to be a library a block from where I work, and I feel a pang of guilt that I could not get away for even a few moments to say hi to him and his class while they were visiting.

6:15pm

We arrive home, and I have a massive headache. My son turns the TV on and I immediately begin unpacking my laptop so I can keep working. Now that I have most of the training scheduled I need to create a calendar we can publish for staff. Today is the deadline to have this project done and it’s my job to get this done no matter how long it takes.

7:00pm

My husband gets home with our daughter and she also screams “MOMMMEEEEEEEE” as soon as she sees me at the computer. There is no point in trying to work until I give her some attention. So I step away from the computer to spend some quality time holding her.

7:30pm

My husband tells me to go take a bath and some medicine for my headache. I do this and am thankful that he is home and feeding the kids.

8:00pm

My husband bathes the kids, reads stories to them, and puts them to bed. Again I remind myself of how lucky I am. I finish the training calendar then begin looking at what I missed today on Twitter and my other social networks. I also work on the final touches for my new site. I realize that it is Library Day in the Life Week from the trends on Twitter. I’m excited because this ties into everything I am doing this week with my own site as well as ALA Learning. But at the same time I realize that this week will also sh0w how unbalanced my life is right now. I spent less than an hour with my kids today and between my real job, social networking, and my web site I will have spent 16 hours on the computer today.

12:00am

I am still on the computer and chatting with Marianne Lenox. I realize what time it is and have to abruptly end the chat with Marianne who I hope understands. Then it’s off to bed with my mind racing about what’s left to do tomorrow.

So that’s my Monday. :) How was yours?

Filed under: Library Day in the Life
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