AALL Review: Working Smart: Innovative Ways to Do More With Your Day... reported by Michele A. Lucero
Librarians are often faced with challenges of doing more with less. It seems there is not enough time to get it all done efficiently and effectively.
Julia E. Hughes of Barley Snyder LLC presented tools and tips to help be more innovative with daily tasks. This program was developed out of a survey of solo librarians. The results of the survey expressed by solo librarians were that they wish they had more time and could find things that took less time, giving them more time to concentrate on more important projects.
In just 30-minutes, Hughes provided tips for seven keys areas to working smart:
- Do things in batches
Create piles of items to help save time. Do a particular action in a row. For example, if a librarian needs to drop off items at accounting, save them until there is a pile. - Know your software
What version is it? Does the librarian know what options are available? Are there keyboard shortcuts? How do you use printer defaults and save defaults? - Generic system “stuff”
It is easy to place important items into the Start Menu. Learn how to organize those files and folders. Have you ever wondered how to see applications side-by-side? One can split a screen up to six ways. - E-mail/Calendar
Learn to use rules, they are quick and easy to set up. How about a generic “library” e-mail address? Funnel out e-mail from internal users into separate folders or get notification only on internal e-mails. Learn to save e-mail as a calendar item, even color code. For seminar announcements, make it a meeting invitation to keep track of attendees and place directly in a folder. - Text entry
Use text replacement or auto correct. Have a rubber stamp date in the application. - Research
Monitor changes via RSS feeds, Watchthatpage or Justia. Use NetSnippets to capture and eSnips to upload and share. - Accounting
Scan paid bills into DMS using naming conventions.
Hughes provided the following link to all the resources, samples, and downloads she presented: http://sites.google.com/site/e5workingsmart/. Let us all as librarians learn how to work smarter, work more efficiently, and work more effectively with the tools we have and save time!
Michele A. Lucero is a Manager, Librarian Relations at West, a Thomson Reuters business.