Internship: Summer Weeding Phase 2

This time next week I’ll be preparing for my trip to ALA. The emails and flyers are starting to come more often now, I get at least six emails a day and 5 flyers in my mailbox from solicitors. And everyone is offering an I-pad as a prize to a sweepstakes. I wonder if it’s the same IPad or if every company had the same idea.

Anyways I went to my internship yesterday instead of my usual day. I sat in the most comfortable leather chair ever and started phase 2 of the summer weeding project. I had to check some of the titles that the analysis missed and didn’t match up against another list. It ended up being like 20 or 30 of them so next we just have to process those and then we can start the actual weeding I believe.

We finished the poster for the Diversity Fair Poster Session. I feel really confident that we’ll do well and have a lot of people interested in what we have to say.

Internship: Summer Weeding Phase 1

I just finished the first phase of the summer weeding project that I will be working on at my internship last week. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been running reports from a site called BowkerBookAnalysis*. It allows us to see which books in the library collection are considered core titles and we should keep on the shelves during the actual weeding. Sometimes the website would be rather slow and take a while to bring up a report but it wasn’t to bad most of the time. It will be interesting to see how well it helps us with the actual weeding.

This week I’ll be starting phase 2, next week I’ll have to miss my hours so I can get ready for Washington. Just one more week until ALA.

*I was not paid to mention BowkerBookAnalaysis*

Internship: Processing Donations!

Got to sit in on a staff meeting at my internship. While it was a bit informal and short because everyone was slightly still frazzled due to the end of the semester it was still interesting to sit in and listen on each department share what was going on in their world.

Afterwards I started on one of the first major projects I’ve done for them. Their theatre department was moving due to some renovations happening in their building. They decided to donate their entire departmental library to the Hege Library. It was my job to unpack the books, load them on the shelves, count them and start processing them. There was a total of nine large boxes packed full of plays, books, and even a/v materials. In total almost 1,000 items were donated. The coolest thing I found were among the a/v materials, there were some vinyl records dated from the early 1900’s. One was even autograph by the people who were singing on it. It was a great piece of history.

While I did get a bit sidetracked by some of the awesome old books I managed to get them all unpacked, shelved and counted. Next week I get to attend an actually workshop and learn a new program that will help with the weeding project I’m going to be doing this summer. And I’ll probably finish up the processing.

Internship: Working on the Catalog

My internship started off with finishing the Textbook Search Project. It didn’t take long because I had made great progress the last time. So I was able to finish that one project and send it to my director.

And then I started a second project that is the precursor to a major project I will be starting this summer. It includes working with special collectable books. I’m really excited. The project I did today involved me going through the catalog and looking for certain books that were published by the Limited Edition Club, I had to pull some of these books that hadn’t been pulled yet from the shelves. And then I created a list of every book that was published from this company and send it to the Archivist Librarian.

After lunch my director invited me to attend a webinar with her. From working with her on the interview and the needs assessment I have learned that many people do not like their online catalog. After doing that mini project I can see their grief with it. Before lunch she had me look up some libraries who were using two different catalog software and wanted me to compare and contrast them and tell her what I liked and what I didn’t like. The webinar was on Worldcat Local, which is a service UNCG uses. I looked at both Sirsi’s E-library and Enterprise and I have to say I still like Worldcat Local better. Sirsi’s products were good and they most definitely better than what they have, but neither one has a way for the user to search for the book worldwide and integrate the ILL function to get those books. For anyone doing major research on broad or very narrow subjects that’s essential.

Internship: Tech Services and Archives

Today in my internship I started the day with a mini project to help my director. I’m calling it the Textbook Search Project; I had to collect the prices and titles of textbooks for 100-200 level general courses. They are thinking about added the service to Access Service department where you can check out for in building use only, the textbook assigned by your professor. She’s only looking at the general lower level courses because they tend to have more sections and students taking them and they don’t usually change textbooks every class. So I only started it I couldn’t finish it but I got pretty far on it.

After lunch I met with the head librarian down in Technical Services. Again I got an over view and a small tour of the department. She also talked about her career path and what got her to this point. She’s actually a graduate of UNCG, a fellow alumni ^_^. She told me that it was about a year before she got her first professional job as a librarian from the time she graduated. That kind of has me worried but there’s no reason to start worrying about that now. At any rate I asked her some questions, the most important one being how much cataloging she does in her day to day job. Yes Cataloging is still kicking my butt, lol. After we talked I did another mini project for her. It involved looking at a list of databases and checking to see if the library had access to them in print or online.

After my time in Tech Services I went upstairs to meet with the Archivist Librarian, who by luck will be my professor come this fall. She gave me a tour of the libraries special collection and their Society of Friend’s Historical Collection which focuses on just historical documents related to Quaker History. They have wonderful items, not just books but actual artifacts, clothing, hats, furniture, you name it and it’s probably up in there.

Internship: Instructional Observation

Today at my internship I did some observation of the Instructional Reference Librarian. Although I have experience in working in both academic and public libraries and was a teacher assistant for a year, I think that’s were my weakness lies. Instruction. I think my confidence is low when it comes to passing on the knowledge that I know. I truly believe that not everyone is a teacher at heart, it takes a special sort of person to be able to pass on knowledge in a way that anyone can retain it and build upon it. That’s one thing I will never forget about from my dad, he was just that kind of person.

Today’s observation was very educational. To be able to sit back and watch someone do something they are obviously enjoy and are rather good at was a treat.

Here are some of the main ideas/themes I picked up:

• Use illustrations to tie in the research and topic of assignments, this also shows the audience that you have some basic knowledge of the assignment.
• “Remember the big picture when looking for the details.”
• Insert information about the library services.
• Give tips (if a particular service might have a negative about it give tips to counterweight that negative.)
• Go through different catalogs accessible to the students
• Ask lots of questions not just for confirmation (i.e. “Everyone get that?”)
• Go through types of sources.
• Walk around the room – meant to get the class involved (which is rather hard when they have a computer in front of them.)
• Walk through the process of narrowing the results found

He also touched on evaluating sources and tools found on the library webpage meant to help with research and citing sources found. He focus mostly on their inter-library loan service (iLLiad) and the new citing tool they are advocating, Zotero. I have used iLLiad before but Zotero was new to me, I’m going to set some time aside to play around with it.

After he was done I sat down and asked him some quick questions that I had came up with doing the lesson, such as how much preparation time does he devote to each class and how much input do the professors put in. He was real nice and I hope I can work with him in actually doing an instructional class.

Updates

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed for a position at a public library near me. Well I got it ^_^. I’m now the Administrative Support Assistant at my local library.

My internship is going well, I haven’t been able to do a lot of hours because my director has been kind of busy these last few weeks. But after spring break ends on Sunday I think I’m going to be more committed to getting my hours in and learning what I can from that. I mean it’s being offered to me why waste it?

Classes are going well too, I have a group in my LIS 650, we are all different people and so it’s been interesting whenever we meet to say the least. I miss my LIS 615 group they were awesome peeps.

Internship: Reference Overview

Today at my internship I met with the department head of reference. It was me and another scholar. Basically we sat with her and talked about the reference department and what entailed being an reference librarian. She was really nice and answered all of our questions.

Afterwards we all went to lunch and just talked about ourselves. It was a great day and opportunity to talk one on one with a practicing professional in the area that I have some interest in. Also it was great to catch up with a fellow scholar, she’s been out of the country due to family needs and has been taking online courses. She’s such an interesting person and I love talking with her.

My Poor Blog

I’ve been so neglecting my blogs, I’ve been so sidetracked with school and trying to figure out what I’m going to do. But I promise to get back in the grove of updating this.

Updates!

School

As a recap I’m taking Library Administration and Management, Organizing Library Collections (cataloging), Information Services and Sources (reference). At this point I’m most excited about reference. I love my professor, he’s super awesome. And basically he’s teaching me how to do better research. The nerd in me squeals with joy. Management…well I’m sure it’ll come in handy one day…the professor is great so far. The readings are horribly boring though. Cataloging…well let’s just say I have a hard time seeing myself as a cataloger right now.

In Reference we have a major project, a bibliography project to be exact, it’s supposed to take up the whole term. Basically we find a topic that interests us and create a bibliography for a imaginary patron who has the same level of interest in the topic as you and they are doing heavy duty research. I’ve chosen to do the Fae; Mythical Creatures. I’ll probably start doing some preliminary research this weekend.

Internship

We were originally suppose to start our internships as part of the fellowship back in October but that never happened. So I didn’t actually start my internship until a couple of weeks a go. They placed me at my preferred library, Hege Library at Guilford College. I really like this library, from the outside of course because I’ve only met with my director once so I don’t know all the inner details yet. But it’s a library and an art gallery, two of my loves in one building how great is that. The Library Director is my supervisor and she’s young and just started in August. The plan is for me to visit as many departments as I can. As well as going to meetings, and doing projects for the departments. It’s all aimed at giving me experience in different areas.

Life

I have to start looking for a part time job.  I’ve heard pros and cons of working as a para-professional while getting my degree.

I think that’s really it for now. Laters!