Let's go for a ride - Nicole's Minitex day

Nicole Masika works in Resource Sharing at Minitex. In this article, she shares a typical work day.

The ride part starts before I even get to work, as I am a bicycle commuter most months of the year. After unpacking my bags and checking calendars and email to be sure I am not needed elsewhere, my day begins at Andersen Library with "typing": requesting materials from member libraries. Recently, I have been given dual monitors and a standing work station which improve my efficiency.

After a couple hours of searching for everything from popular TV shows, to novels, to scholarly works, to that hot new diet book, it's time to switch gears and take campus requests to be retrieved on East Bank. On all but the coldest days, I ride my bike across the Washington Avenue Bridge to our office in Walter Library. 

With the help of student employees, I then retrieve items from the Architecture, Journalism, Math and Walter Library Collections.  There is often something interesting to look at in the Architecture Library.

Some of the items get checked out and shipped as loans, and some have articles we need to scan. Students do the bulk of the scanning, while I work on more complex requests, such as audio-visual items from Walter's Smart Learning Commons or requests that have incorrect citations.

Though we have a bit of territory to cover, we don't have the kind of request volume Wilson library does.  So we are usually able to wrap it up by mid-afternoon, and then I head back across the river to Andersen.

Once back at Andersen, my default task is more referral typing. However, if that is caught up and the Referral Processing Area needs help, you might find me there. This is where we ship and return items from our member libraries that were requested via the referral typing process. Both tasks allow me to see a variety of titles. The best ones find their way into my weekly social media post because sharing is fun, and it's what we do.