A Monday in the life
Following Jessamyn and my former classmate Amanda, a Monday in the life of a Digital Repository Services Librarian…
Hop off the bus. Pick up a copy of the city daily, which is 10% news, 40% froth, and 50% ads, but contains “Pearls Before Swine” which makes everything worthwhile. In the door, up the stairs; oh, look, I’m first in again. (Heck, I’d come in earlier if it were politically practical. I’m a shameless early bird.) Thread through some twisty-little-passages to the one door to our area that has a number-code lock. Drop bag in cube, fire up Trogool the iMac, go unlock other doors and turn lights on.
(In passing, I practically own the word “Trogool” on Google, which is sad and wrong. It’s Lord Dunsany, people! Look it up!)
Log in to Trogool. Fire up iCal, email, Adium (oh, hush, I’m not slacking; my boss asked me to be available on IM, since we’re in different buildings now), and web browser. Nothing for today in iCal. Deal with email, not forgetting to notify colleague that her article got a nice accolade in the latest Cites & Insights because we all like to hear these things. Scan through the work Bloglines account (which is separate from the home Bloglines account for all the obvious reasons), grab some stuff off Open Access News and Catalogablog to read later.
Another colleague stops by. A problem that came up two months ago and kinda got buried in committee is rearing its head again. Sigh. Email boss; I have no more authority to resolve it now than I did two months ago. Fire up iTunes to keep from ruminating on problem. Boss returns cordial email that boils down to “whiskey tango foxtrot, now?” Explain, revising email four times so as not to sound like whiny idiot. Send email. Realize email sounds like whiny idiot anyway, just slightly less of one. Sigh again; nobody’s perfect, least of all me. Turn up the volume on iTunes, switch away from New Age to salsa collection.
Half an hour until scheduled repository-server maintenance. (I’m trying to be consistent about this, get people used to the idea that server goes down Monday mornings and generally not elsewhen.) FTP latest updates to staging server, ant update, kill staging server, resurrect staging server. Curse JSP for requiring a Tomcat restart just to fix minor stuff like this (seriously, that’s a major drawback in my book; I’d kill to do live updates, the way I can on the blog). New pages showing up, check. Revised navigation works as intended, check. Bitstream description on one-bitstream item works, check. Print preview—hey, where’s my new print stylesheet? Swear under breath.
Oh. Duh. Forgot to put a link to it in the header JSP; I’d tested it on a fake standalone page. Fix, reupload, ant update, kill server, resurrect server, wait wait wait because Tomcat/JBoss takes for-frickin’-ever to restart itself, print preview—there, that’s more like it. Not sure why the new right-hand nav links are the wrong color, but that’s not a deal-breaker. (Turns out to be browser-cached CSS, so no problem.)
Upload everything to repository server at 9:30 sharp, ant update, kill server, resurrect server. Notice one more simple fix. Sigh, fix it, reupload, ant update, kill server, resurrect server. Everything looks good. Edit top-page news to reflect completed maintenance and schedule another for next week. Notice that lists on some pages look weird. Huh. Not sure how that happened. Sigh… and leave it for next maintenance; they don’t look that bad.
Email from boss: he’s on the case. Whew. Back to New Age on iTunes. Skim the daily rag (baby giant panda!) and read through the articles I’d saved, in celebration. Next big open-access conference—is in Australia. The one after that, the UK. Lots of good stuff in Berlin and Geneva, too. Another reminder how backward the United States is (aside from DSpace itself). We have just got to stop dinking around over here; they’re eating our lunch, people!
Checking the to-do backlog, it’s time to write the little squib about the repository for the library newsletter. Duly write little squib. Run it past boss, get prompt OK with one minor and sensible correction. Make correction, forward squib to newsletter editor. Cross squib off to-do list. Remind self for umpteenth time to buy dry-erase board for to-do list; for some reason I don’t pay good enough attention to to-do lists maintained on Trogool.
To-do backlog also includes followup with some people who control rights to some material I want for the repository. Send polite followup emails. Get prompt acceptance back from one person! Yay! More stuff! Email the news to a student who needs to know; answer the question in his reply.
Ponder somewhat longer article for local teaching journal about the connection between open access/self-archiving and the availability of scholarly materials for classroom use. Dig into the mess that the AAP is stirring up at the University of California at San Diego; search Library Lit and Info Sci database for the latest on electronic reserves, which turns out not to be much. Save a few cites anyway. Email campus copyright officer to ask what we ourselves are doing to stay out of similar sticky situations, hoping to get a read on whether local faculty have found themselves balked yet. (Hey, I have to strike where I find hot irons.)
Also ponder workshop for JCDL, since the Librarian LazyWeb kindly sent me slides and reports from previous successful submissions. Receive tentative recommendation of “somebody who might want to do this with you;” respond enthusiastically.
Time to work on something technical, for a change. Dive into DSpace code looking for bits and pieces relating to the bitstream description question. Conclude that yes, it’s possible to kill the silly ticky-box, but it’s somewhat complicated and not a priority just at present, though a meeting on Wednesday morning may change that.
Boss drops by. Problem is being addressed; please handle this small piece of it. Sure thing, and thanks! Handle small piece.
Further research into DSpace code, this time toward the eventual goal of an image-viewer plugin (don’t even ask), swallows up the rest of the day. Lots of cursing-under-breath and consultation of Large Shelf o’ (mostly O’Reilly) Computer Books. (One of these days I need to buy myself the Tomcat book, and the wolf book wouldn’t be a bad idea either.)
Just as I’m getting ready to pack up and go, overhear a conversation about web-app usability. Hey, I got stuff on that. Grab out Rosenfeld and Morville and pass it to the colleague who needs it, making mental note to mention Alan Cooper at first opportunity. Rush out the door so as not to miss bus home.
Realize I forgot to return the library DVDs I’d meant to return. Drat. Well, tomorrow is a Tuesday. I’ll be back.