One aspect to my job is maintaining contacts with other libraries. In some cases, this is as simple as keeping our ILL accounts up to date. Since stepping into this role, I have set up accounts with three additional academic libraries, and updated our log-on information for an existing account. Other days, like today, it is emailing the Librarian at a private K-12 school because, somehow, the universe has decreed they are the ONLY library to have a copy of that EXACT thesis you are trying to locate, and you are hoping they have an electronic copy they can send you. (They do. They will email it to you on Monday.)
There are the days I email our Document Delivery Service and ask them for a few hundred dollars worth of articles, and others, like today, I screenshot an entire article so as to not have to pay the download fees.
There are days I am finding 30+ articles, and others 1 or 2 or none. Days, like yesterday, I spend an hour on the phone with EBSCO, both maintaining our relationship, but also tweaking the alerts we have set up to find articles. Days where I am calling this professional organization or that professional organization because their journal archives only go as far back as 1990 line, and I really need one from the 1960s.
It is all about personal and professional connections.
(Also, I definitely just got a crash course in how a drill works, and it is fascinating. Like, seriously, 100%, fascinating.)
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