This account was written for the MidAtlantic News Research Conference on July 18-19, 1997.
Sperry Krueger Resource Manager News Research Department The News & Observer Publishing Co. Background: My name is Sperry Krueger and my title is Resource Manager. I've been at The N&O for 4 years (2 and 1/2 as a researcher in our Durham bureau and 1 and 1/2 in my current position). I received my MLIS from USC in 1993. I report to the director of News Research, Teresa Leonard. I supervise one full-time employee and three part-time employees. 8:30 a.m. -- Arrived at office. Immediately continued yesterday's unfinished task of organizing reprints and special sections. For the past few years, they've been put in a file drawer with no organization. We recently purchased a newspaper hanging file cabinet to organize them -- the top row will hold up to 15 copies of each reprint/section. (These are copies "for the taking" -- anyone who wants one can have one -- but we also keep two copies of each in our permanent collection.) The bottom row holds a few copies of the N&O for the past few weeks. Patricia, a part-timer in charge of our electronic "ready reference" collection, helped me with the organizing task. We're also cleaning up the vertical files where we keep "permanent" copies of these sections. We made new folders for the "permanent" copies and I will put them in the electronic catalog this afteroon. 11:15 a.m. -- checked email and phone messages. 11:30 a.m. -- Went out to pick up chicken from KFC for baby shower for database researcher David Raynor. David and his wife are expecting a little girl next week. 1:15 p.m. -- back at desk. checked email and phone messages. opened mail. Began writing this diary. 1:30 p.m. -- got a call from David Taylor at Wake County Information Processing department. We've worked out a deal with Wake County to have them FTP the deed transfers to us every week. David called to tell me they're changing the file structure to accomodate some requests from other companies. This is the second change in three weeks and means I'll have to spend at least an hour or two on Thursday rewriting the foxpro program that merges the two databases from them and spits out a text file to print in the paper. He's going to fax me a copy of the new record layout so he needs my fax number. After I got off the phone with him, I sent an email to Patricia letting her know about the problem and telling her not to do the file until we change the program. 1:45 p.m. -- Began cataloging "permanent" copies of sections/reprints for the vertical files. This catalog is searchable on our intranet so these will now finally be "findable". 4:00 p.m. -- Reporter who chairs the newsroom diversity committee asked for help composing a message telling the newsroom about the web forum we have for discussing diversity issues and other newsroom topics. Worked on this message and then on the forum set-up. 4:30 p.m. -- Back to reprints. I talked to Teresa and we decided that we don't really need to keep reprints from other newspapers (unless they're NC papers). We usually pick up these reprints at IRE and other conferences, but don't want to put them in the collection. I made a list of them and sent a message to the newsroom telling them that they're up for grabs. 4:45 p.m. -- Bill (one of our investigative reporters who happens to be my husband) came back and asked for help transferring a file I asked him for. The file is an inventory of all the 990's he's requested from the IRS. Yesterday, he'd asked us to take responsibility for organizing a bunch of 990's (tax forms for tax-exempt organizations) he'd gotten for some NC organizations. Teresa and I had talked about it this morning and decided to put them in the catalog. I should be able to manipulate his spreadsheet to flow right into the catalog database. 5:00 p.m. -- Checked voice mail again. There's a call from the executive editor's assistant asking if I could give a tour to a new part-time, temporary graphics employee tomorrow. She'll be here at 11. Since the new employee won't be here long, I'll probably keep the tour to 15 or 20 minutes. Our tours for new employees are usually an hour or two long and we do both a physical tour and a virtual tour of our intranet. In addition to the tour, we've recently started doing a full day of training with most new newsroom employees. 5:15 p.m. -- Clean up the mess I've made today and leave around 5:30. Tomorrow I will finish cataloging, find room for everything I've cataloged in the vertical files, and try to clean up my desk so it won't be a mess for the tour on Friday night. I don't really have "typical days". Some days I'm a acquisitions librarian and work on ordering books and magazines all day. Some days I'm a webmaster and work on improving the NeRD Page resources. Some days I'm a technical services librarian and process new stuff. Some days I'm a cataloger. Some days I'm a programmer and write foxpro programs or genera/web programs to access databases. Some days I work on SLA stuff (I've just become the Director of Education for the News Division.) Every day is a bit different. Just sprinkle little bits of research here and there and you probably get the picture! Sperry |===========================================================| | Sperry Krueger skrueger@nando.com | | Resource Manager phone: 919-829-4886 | | News Research Department fax: 919-829-8916 | | The News & Observer Publishing Co. | |===========================================================|
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