My contribution to the ‘Day in the life’ time capsule at the LIHG newsletter:

I start work at about 10:00. This might seem late to the skylarks among you, but I owe it to my natural body clock: it prefers me to start late and to finish late.

The NHS Scotland eLibrary runs from an office in the leafy West End of Glasgow. Just fifteen minutes away from my flat, I walk to work every morning.

I say hello to the other librarians and make coffee while my computer starts up.

The morning is usually spent doing ‘reactive’ tasks: responding to email from my bosses, agents, users with enquiries, partner organisations. There are usually about 60 messages in my inbox and my task for the morning is to reduce that number to zero.

After lunch, I get my best work done. This is when my body clock allows higher functions to kick in: I write journal articles, catalogue resources sometimes, design promotional materials (printed materials, e-fliers and websites), manage the department’s training and outreach plan, attend meetings and train users. I manage my tasks with a rolling ‘to-do list’. During these hours, I never procrastinate and the afternoons are fruitful.

I don’t train as much as I used to. When I first started here two years ago, I would do about three training sessions a week. I got to see a lot of Scotland this way. More often than not, my appointments would be in Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen but I would frequently visit towns in the borders and highlands.

These days, I coordinate the department’s training initiatives rather than deliver the sessions myself. This means I am now largely office based: a mixed blessing. Life can get a little stale beneath fluorescent lights but I do not miss having to start work in the middle of the night to get to an 8am training session in Dunblane or Bonnybridge.

On Monday and Wednesday, I finish at 4:45 so that I can walk through the park to my evening job at Glasgow University Library. Here, I manage a small team of four Library Assistants and five shelvers and run the Lending and Enquiries desks until 8pm. The demands of two jobs occasionally clash but this can generally be avoided with time management.

On Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, I work until about 7pm. In the evenings, I have dinner with friends followed by live music or theatre. My days usually end by talking to my girlfriend (who lives in Montreal) or by reading Philip K. Dick novels late into the night.