Two Days in...

Two days in, and I think the most apparent thing to me is this management style is much more hands-off. More so than any other job I've been at, I will need to find my own way. There's no direction here. I knew, on some level, what I would getting into. Solo Librarian in a company whose specialties lie in the true sciences, not library science. I am still trying to figure out how to best handle it. I may have to learn to be a self-starter, finally. The last two days have involved a lot of reading up on the oil and gas industry. I was lent a book on the topic, and spent a large majority of the day reading it. Yesterday, the day was spent going through the files mapped to the various network drives on my computer, figuring out how everything fits. On the one hand, the occasional habit of reading about geophysics will be very handy, on the other... did you know in the oil industry, 'wildcat' and 'fishing' mean very different things?

Wildcat: http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Terms/w/wildcat.aspx
Fishing: http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Terms/f/fishing.aspx
Fascinating.

Other things were done too. I spent a large part of today going back and forth with our salesperson for library databases to try to set up a service to better acquire articles from places like ScienceDirect. And also tweaked the search terms for our email alerts on articles. Going it give it a day or two, and hopefully, meet for a bit with one of the other people in the office to customize the html for the rss field to better return only the items we want.
Today also involved lunch. A few of the geologists (although, really, several people I am working with directly are geologists) invited me out to lunch with them as way to talk more outside the office. Went for Thai food. I ate the leftovers for dinner. It was great getting to know people a little better.
Tomorrow, will involve more going back and forth with the sales rep. More reading. Quite a few people in the office are on a schedule where they work 80 hours every nine days, so hopefully Friday, it will be quiet enough I can lock myself in the actual library (a room, really) and/or the Archives (another room, honestly), and get a feel for what it is in there. I am already quietly researching the benefits to perhaps getting everything into an Institutional Repository online.

Baby steps.