I’m thinking about this as I have a ton of stuff to do today (three-day weekend and stuff due when I get back!). I’ve never participated in a “day in the life” posting session (though I love the #libday series! I should get in on that!), so maybe today is the day.

This morning I arrived early to find a package from the National Archives and Records Administration addressed to me. Over the past few months, the government information librarian and I have been shepherding an order for a large batch of data sets on Vietnam that are available through NARA. It’s been a good experience for me as a relatively new data librarian. We broke up one large order into a couple smaller ones, did the dance to get the price quote from NARA, found the fund codes to purchase the files with, consulted with faculty to find out which formats were best, and made decisions about how to deal with paper documentation.

Today I received the second order. I checked over it all to make sure all the requested files for all the separate record groups are included. This is kind of a chore, as the numbers and acronyms used barely follow any kind of logic.

I’m going to give the paper documentation to a library staff member so it can be scanned. I put all the data files on the secure social science data archive server, and I’m going to hand over the original disc of data to the faculty members. Soon, I’ll arrange all the files on the SSDA into record groups and get them cataloged appropriately with their given titles and descriptions. Eventually, I’d like to scan the administrative stuff as well and have it live on our SharePoint instead of on my shelf where it’s currently residing.

After this, I have a patron request to take care of regarding real estate value in the US over time. After that, I have to continue depositing data sets for two different projects (one political science, one environmental) into our pilot institutional repository, work up some use-cases for those, and organize my thoughts for the meeting on it next week.

At some point today I need to wrap-up my thoughts on ALA in some kind of tangible format, and I should do the same for the Summer Institute on Data Curation I was at a few weeks back.

In short, I don’t do much that’s different from what every other librarian does, so maybe you should consider a career in data librarianship, too!