
I can haz reading?
Yesterday, I was an intern and a graduate student. Today, I’m a librarian and a graduate student. Okay, so I’m probably always a million things at once, but who’s counting anyway? Today was really out there, let’s see if I can recap all of the things I did. First off, when I woke up this morning I walked out to my cat reading a book! He’s so smart. If only he could recap. He’s reading Frederic Jameson’s Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, by the way.
8:00 am – Get to work and check email. Turns out my director would like me to help her with her presentation for an adjunct faculty conference next month. I had submitted my own proposal, but I never heard back. Now I’m helping my boss with hers, although I’m not sure what she has in mind. New motto for the year, “Roll with it!”
9:00 am – Look over the presentation for tomorrow’s Education library instruction session. They’re working on a scientific inquiry project and so they’re coming in to learn about how to search library databases. It’s a one-shot instruction session, which can be limiting – also, I don’t know anything about their topic. Like I said earlier, “roll with it!” and “fake it til you make it!”
10:00 am – Start my virtual chat reference shift. I spent about 20 mins with another student in Amherst, helping her find resources on medical assisting. Virtual reference is hit or miss in my experience. Sometimes, the student disconnects before we’ve even started the reference interview. Today was a success and she was able to find enough info to get started on her research project. Win!
11:00 am to 12:30 pm – Eat lunch and finish ordering some books from Amazon. I had a cart full of books that other librarians had requested so I needed to finally get that in. We don’t always buy from Amazon, it just so happens that some of these books are older so I can’t get them through our usual, and kind of unreliable (ahem) vendor.
12:30 to 3:00 pm – Reference desk shift! These desk shifts vary from day to day. I helped several people with the scanner that is on the copy machine. Usually I don’t have to help as many people with that. Reference librarians have to do it all, help people print and answer research questions.
I helped one student who came in with a question that totally stumped me!
He came in wanting journal articles on the history of the $2. Turns out, I had a hard time getting the type of info that he wanted. Historical info exists on the web, but I had no luck finding anything in our databases. We also struck out on books in the collection. Finally, I had to get his email and ask if I could get back to him later that afternoon. Turns out, the public library down the street has several books on the history of U.S. currency so I gave him that info, as well as stuff from the U.S. Treasury page. Bonus points for people who can find some good info on the $2 that’s not a shady web page.
Another student came in asking for a particular fiction title. She’s been in almost every day asking for it. Who ever took out our one copy still hasn’t returned it. I finally asked her where she lived and found a public library very close to her house. They had 5 copies of the book she’s been looking for. She was really grateful for the info and was going to head there to get the book. I work at an academic library located near a large public library. We don’t really carry a lot of fiction, so it makes sense to advertise their collection to our students.
3:00pm to 4:30pm – Started talking with the other librarian about making displays for Black History Month. She already started gathering the books. Our campus just opened a brand new building, so we had a faculty member come and take many of our books related to Black History. This means the books that would be perfect for OUR display are gone. That’s ok though, we work with what we have. I also found a treasure trove for displays. Apparently, a former librarian at my work used to be in charge of displays and had a cabinet full of supplies but no one told me about it. Good to know!
4:30 pm to 6:00 pm – Drive to school, traffic is crazy because Super Bowl is in my city this year. Ahh! Yes, I’m really scared. Things are going to get crazy.
6:00 to 9:00 pm – I have my Education of Info Users class. We talked about active learning and critical thinking. Yay! All important things to bring into info lit sessions. I’m still working on my classroom pizazz. This class generated enough brain food for future posts, so I’m going to save it until then. I will say this now: if you’re in library school, I encourage you to go to different libraries, outside your interests. I work in an academic library, all my jobs have been academic, but I go to public libraries and I pay attention to what they’re doing. Pay attention, and you can learn a lot.
Well, this was a really long post! See how much my days can vary?