Today was my last day at the library. I’ve been horrible about updating this blog (and never actually started my reading list), but this experience has been fantastic. It really solidified my choice of career. Everyone at Heights were so nice and helpful. I’m not a person that immediately feels comfortable in new situations, but […]
Even when I scale back to weekly updates, I’m a lazy blogger. Chapter 15 Last Monday, I spent an hour on the floor talking with Megan, the Adult librarian in charge of local history. Currently, she and some volunteers are scanning and organizing pictures of all of the library’s branches – some date back to […]
I’m shifting over to weekly updates, for the sake of longer posts and convenience. Chapter 12: Last Monday, I was back at UH again for a children’s program called Timewarp Archaeology. There were activities for the six inhabited continents (sorry, Antarctica). The kids crawled through a ‘time machine’ to enter the room. I helped select books […]
Luckily I have a trusty Google Calendar to remind me what I’ve done so I can write blog posts later. 5/30 – Chapter 9: Jen and I went to Foundation Center training. The Foundation Center is an organization that helps individuals and non-profit groups find grants (that is, free money). In addition to the organization’s […]
Shadowed on the floor and in AV with Jen, then discussed programming and readers’ advisory with Carole. Programming can be either active or passive. Active programming is formal programs, where people come into the library specifically for the program. Passive programming takes the form of book lists, displays and other signs around the library, which […]
Forgot to post an update on Friday. It was a pretty standard day: combination of AV, phones and floor. Today, I talked to two librarians about their specific areas and shadowed the ASD director. One specific area was Outreach. ‘Outreach’ is twofold: providing books and audiobooks to assisted living and nursing homes in the area […]
I shadowed all three facets of Adult Services today – on the floor, on phones and in the AV room. Being on the floor is what everyone thinks about when they hear ‘reference librarian’: waiting for patrons’ questions behind a desk. Our hour on the floor was pretty slow – most of the patrons today […]
I finally met my supervisor! She’s going be a great person to work with. Jen is in charge of fiction selection, so we went over that process. Fiction selection involves standing orders for popular authors as well as selecting books based on reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Kirkus. We also discussed the maintenance of […]
The title of this particular blog post comes from a comment from today. Technically, my internship at the library is an “apprenticeship”. When I told that to one of the ASD people today, he thought it sounded like I was a wizard’s apprentice. And thus, “Library Wizard Apprentice” was born. Anyway, orientation is finally done. […]
More orientation today. We covered intellectual freedom, harassment in the workplace, and customer service. I got a name tag too! Harassment in the workplace and customer service are pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll discuss intellectual freedom below, as it’s a topic I find interesting. Intellectual freedom essentially means that library patrons should have access to whatever […]