A Day in the Life of a Librarian

Yesterday I participated in FLA's Virtual Job Shadowing by tweeting throughout the day about what I was doing. The idea was for library school students and others interested in the profession to get an up close view of how we actually spend our days. If you use Twitter, search for #libjobshadowFL and you can see all the tweets form all the librarians who participated

Normally I don't tweet. I had to set up an account on Twitter (rollinsmiller) to participate. I have never really seen the point of Twitter. I have a few things to say, but not enough to tweet frequently and if I something to say it usually can't be expressed in 140 characters or less, which is why I have this blog. I also can't keep up with all the news and information coming at me from e-mail, professional journals, books, blogs, my colleagues, and the traditional media so adding another rapid fire channel for communication just stresses me out.

But the experience was interesting in another way. I rarely have to reflect on my work while I am actually working, except during reviews. So it was interesting to pause every few minutes and think about what I was doing and then try to express it in 140 characters or less. It made the day seem somehow more purposeful. It was also interesting to see other participants tweets and how varied (and yet how similar) our experiences were. All in all a worthwhile experience, I wonder what the students thought of it.