Library Day in the Life #7 part 3

I started writing this post on Friday to record my final day of the Library Day in the Life project, but for one reason or another I never got round to posting it.  Even though the project has finished now (for this round) I thought I might as well go ahead and post it any way.

Today I manage to get in relatively early, as it’s just gone 8.30 when I arrive.  I bring the morning’s papers up to the library with me, and sit down and go through the local ones for any mention of the museum.  We cut out and paste into scrapbooks every newspaper cutting we find from the local papers regarding the museum.  Our scrapbooks go right back to the formation of the museum, and make for fascinating reading, although some of the early ones are practically falling to pieces these days.

After that I set about weeding the main library new books and journals displays.  All new books and journals are displayed for a period in the main library, and for many staff they are the first place they head to when they visit us.  I tend to weed the books once the shelves get full, so how often I do that tends to depend on how much new stock we have coming in.  Occasionally we make exceptions for books that we think lots of people are going to want to see, and they get to stay on longer.

I nip down to the main hall coffee shop to grab a takeaway coffee, I don’t really have time to take a full break this morning.  When I get back up I start going through the morning’s post.  This is not one of my regular jobs, but rather something I do when my colleague is away.  I end up getting side-tracked by Plastiquarian, the journal of the Plastics Historical Society (more interesting than it sounds), and in particular by a photo of Ekco’s Novaware by David Harman Powell, tableware that was designed in the 1960s.

Also amongst the post were a few journals for the Cambrian Archaeological Association.   In addition to our own library collections we also house the libraries of the Cambrian Archaeological Association and the Cardiff Naturalists Society.

After lunch I package up some museum publications to send to the copyright libraries.  The museum is obliged to send out copies of all its publications to the 6 legal deposit libraries; the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Library of Trinity College, Dublin and the National Library of Wales.  The publication I am sending out today is the new companion guide to the Museum's art galleries, in both English and Welsh.

The end of the day comes around before I know it, and it's a mad rush to get things finished off before I'm back in again next week.