Preservation Week: Sometimes You Get Doughnuts

It’s Preservation Week! This week, we are looking at the daily life of a conservation department and the work we each do in support of the library and its mission. Yesterday we saw Mary in repairing a book with very cool end papers.

As a department head my job is to make sure we have the budgetary and human resources that we need to do our work, advocate for my staff and department, and make sure our priorities fit into the strategic direction of the library. To that end, I attend a lot of meetings.

Technical Services department head meeting.

Duke Libraries has a culture of collaboration, so we do a lot of talking with each other. My standing meetings include departmental and individual staff meetings; Technical Services Department Head meetings; meetings with my supervisor; the monthly all-library staff meeting; the Multi-spectral Imaging team meeting; quarterly division meetings; and meetings with other department heads outside of Technical Services usually over lunch or coffee. Then there are special meetings that are called around projects or initiatives, budget setting, and other administrative duties. Then there are the meetings that happen on the fly at the bus stop, in the hallway, or in the cafe line.

By attending these meetings I am gathering the information I need for the department to be successful, I’m building relationships across the library, and I am also finding out what is happening in other departments that might impact our workflow. I know for some people all these meetings sounds like torture, but I rather enjoy getting together with colleagues to think about our collaborative future. And sometimes you get doughnuts.