The Maid of La Mancha
I had some advance warning that today was going to be long. I thought it might be interesting to actually document a day in the life of a webmaster. I think many people see it as glamorous, but I've always thought of it as very much a detail-oriented job. A webmaster, if they're doing their job correctly, spends a lot of his/her day chasing down details. Making sure everything's posted, everything's right, everyone's notified and everyone's on the same page.
This is a day in the life of a webmaster who is trying to prepare her library's website for summer reading.
| 6:15 a.m. | Edmund makes the bad-smell face. "You don't much like the smell of toothpaste, do you, Edmund?" Edmund delicately wrinkles his nose, but accepts petting from the hand that isn't wielding the toothbrush. |
| 6:45 a.m. | Time to go. "Bye, Tenz. Be good, kitty." He swishes his tail as I shut the door. |
| 7:15 a.m. | Key card swipe, door unlocks. Welcome back. |
| 7:20 a.m. | First cup of tea. Check email, assess immediate needs, fire up text file containing pressing or outstanding issues. Begin inbox triage. |
| 8:19 a.m. | Look up. Remember I was going to chart my day. Starting work on adding events to the kids' calendar. Hmm, do I need to create short URLs for this particular category of events on the calendar? Who would need these? |
| 8:47 a.m. | "Thanks for signing up for the Vive list. You'll be receiving an automatic acknowledgment from our mailing list software shortly. Thanks for supporting your local library!" |
| 9:30 a.m. | Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Two splendas and half-and-half. Thank goodness. |
| 9:35 a.m. | "Well, I suppose we could start calling ourselves The Maids of La Mancha?"—my supervisor |
| 10:00 a.m. | The deep, thudding realization that in order for this resource to work, we were going to need to call at least all of the elementary schools in Madison County. Uh, how many can there be? Oh dear. That'll teach me to ask. |
| 10:30 a.m. | Hmm, not too many elementary schools have these lists. It's mostly middle school and up. Okay, I guess that means I'm calling most of the middle, junior, and senior high schools in Madison County. Uh, how many can there be? |
| 11:30 a.m. | Still calling. We can definitively say there are a lot. |
| 12:15 p.m. | Still calling. Thankfully, a co-worker has agreed to split the job. Food would be good right about now. |
| 12:30 p.m. | There. We have now called every middle, junior, and senior high school in Madison County. |
| 1:00 p.m. | I keep getting interrupted. Wasn't I going to lunch? |
| 1:25 p.m. | My supervisor seems to have disappeared for the day while I wasn't looking. Good. She wasn't feeling well. But I seem to be off in my own little world. |
| 2:00 p.m. | Feed me. Please. |
| 2:30 p.m. | If I don't go now, I won't go. *vanishes to Taco Bell* |
| 3:00 p.m. | …and I'm back. Did anyone miss me? Jeez, I was only gone thirty minutes! Look at that inbox. |
| 4:00 p.m. | Hey. The teen events are finally keyed in. I think my hands just fell off. Hopefully I'll regrow a new set in a few minutes, because that was just one set. |
| 4:30 p.m. | Well, that gets all the Harry Potter events keyed in. |
| 5:15 p.m. | Clearly, I was mistaken. Those were only the teen events for one branch. Note to self: I need lots of thumbnail images, including ones for summer reading and Harry Potter events. I suppose that means I should get that logo done. Wait, I have to get my design proposal done for the charity dinner. |
| 5:52 p.m. | I think I was supposed to leave here at four. It no longer appears to be four. When did this happen? |
| 5:58 p.m. | Prepare to clock out, only to realize that I can't leave yet. Have they put the signup sheets out? Has anyone told the circulation desk that the reading lists are online now? |
| 6:02 p.m. | No sign of email signup sheets. Hopefully the director of reference will remember. He knew I wasn't likely to attend tonight's event. Hopefully someone will sit at the table. The director of circulation now knows how to access the compiled list of summer reading lists for all students in Madison County. If nothing else, I accomplished this today. |
| 6:03 p.m. | Truly clock out. |
| 6:30 p.m. | Hello, Tenzing. "Don't be misled. They were fed." "Hi, Jeff." *hug* "How was your day?" "Long." |
Tomorrow will be completely different. The project for today was calling all of the libraries/administrations of all schools in my county to get their summer reading lists compiled into one place. To my knowledge, nobody else has done that.
I think tomorrow will be a combination of data entry and graphic design. I could be wrong. Guess I'll have to wake up in the morning and find out.