Friday
Spent the day in Children's. Trained a couple of 8th grade volunteers how to register children in the summer reading club and how the prize levels work. Figures it was the busiest morning so far! Learning about summer reading clubs was one of my goals, so all this has been a good thing. I like that WLPL allows the children to chose a number of books or a number of hours read as their goal. Seventh graders can chose to participate in the Children's or the Adult - there is no YA Summer Reading Club. Am told there just isn't enough interest. The prizes aren't as nearly as good for the adults - but they only have to read ONE book to get into the drawing!! Children's has prizes at:
5 books or 2 1/2 hours
10 books or 5 hrs.
15 books or 7 1/2 hrs
Final goal - minimum 20 books or 10 hours -by July 31
Once you reach your final goal you also get in drawings for prizes:
1st place: choice of bike (2), Nook Color
2nd place: complete set of HB Harry Potter books
3rd place: telescope, + 3 other things - can't remember what
4th place: 100 different items!!
Shelved for the first time in Children's - a very complicated process. These book are all shelved in different places:
JE FIC white label - shelves
JE FIC purple label - shelves
JEPB (paper backs-blue label) - bins- alpha by author first letter only
Board books - bins - random
J BAS - shelves by windows
Favorite authors/character such as Curious George or Dr. Seuss- by bin
NEW books - blue dot - outward facing display
J FIC
J FIC Dickey Collection - Award winners
J YH nominees & winners
J Dear America & Am. Girl
Series - top shelf of shelf section
J NF
Sunday
Worked upstairs- by myself! - at the reference desk. Pulled ILL books, printed their tickets, and shelved for delivery or pick up. Looked up a double-sided cart of donated books to see whether the library already owned them or not. Typed up a couple of small projects that I came up with - list of YA book recommendations - WLPL no longer has a YA librarian due to budget cuts (was only a 10hr/wk position) and a dystopian list to go along with the Lafayette-West Lafayette One Great Read - which is M.T. Anderson's Feed. And helped patrons, of course!
Monday
Changed some YA graphic novel spine labels from 741.5 to GN. I think the books were checked out when they did the rest of them. I noticed they're still 741.5 in the children's room though. (I changed ours at school to GN a couple of years ago after attending a session by Robin Young at the ILF conference.) Because there were only a half dozen, had to use a typewriter to make the labels - yikes! Haven't used a typewriter in 15-20 yrs.
Also deleted weeded copies and their records (if West Side had the only copy)from the Evergreen catalog. I'm hoping the process is similar on my system at school. I weeded the nonfiction this year- 000-899s, but I haven't taken them out of the system yet 'cause I didn't know how. Nothing like learning as you go! (Or putting off because you don't know how - didn't really have the time either though.) Then had to mark the books - a W over the bar code and mark out the WLPL stamp on front endleaf, title page, and page 19 in black marker. Surprised that there isn't a "discarded" stamp; anyone could use a black marker.....
The last couple of hours, I got to work on my other pet project - YA resource links for books, writing, music, homework, etc.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Day 4
OK, according to Linda, the Evergreen consortium is made up of 90 small/medium libraries. I checked out the website and it says it is made up of "public, school and institutional libraries located throughout Indiana" but I didn's see any schools or institutions (colleges?) on the list. Also "Patrons of member libraries can use their Evergreen Indiana library card to view the catalogs and borrow materials from the other member libraries." I tried to post this as a comment under day one but couldn't get it to work.
Today I helped with another outreach program - this time to the Purdue Village Daycare. I pulled books and went along for the read-aloud. The rest of the day, I worked in Children's. I finished ther NF project and the spider craft preparation, did some shelf reading, and worked the SRC table. Got to sit & talk with the Children's director for a while- which was nice. She told me about how far in advance she plans and preps for the craft programs and how she keeps a notebook with comments about what to change for the next year. We also talked some about the teen reading program & how hard it is to get teens to come in and participate in programs. They've had 3 Teen Librarians (only 10 hours/wk) over the last few years. Apparently the last one didn't do much so when budget cuts had to be made, the position was eliminated.
I sign out at the information desk. For some reason, there wasn't anyone working the desk and on my way out, a man walked up, so I asked if I could help. He was looking for a "series of novels that came out fairly recently and were best sellers." He didn't know titles or authors- I took a stab at the Stieg Larsson trilogy and that was it! Well, didn't remember at the time how to spell Larsson and spelled it Larson; then tried the title -Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but figured out later that I spelled tattoo wrong (tatoo), so decided to take him to the mystery section and, thank goodness, we found an honor copy (paperback - no checkout); all the hardbacks were out. Suggested he put holds on the others. I was a little flustered about not being able to get the results I needed on the catalog......
A topic that's been on my mind-
I subscribe to the edWeb listserve and there was a lot of talk about filtering/censorship of Internet sites/tools at the ends of the school year- especially ones that have potential use in the classroom. A comment was made by Rita Oates- a former tech ed director that we shouldn't be focusing on mass market tools but on what schools ARE using. Here's the link to the post: http://www.edweb.net/.59bf7d40/0. Anyway, she says we should use educational social networks instead of Facebook, GlogsterEDU instead of Glogster, etc. Well, GLogster EDU costs money that schools don't have. It seems to me the EDU versions should be free and the "mass market" versions should have the fee. As for Facebook, she says that students don't want teachers coming into their social space with assignments but that isn't how most teachers would use it. They create a course/library/guidance. etc. page and students join in. Also, Facebook is where the students are. They are not going to join some social learning network; that isn't cool. I don't think it's good that Facebook captures data on users and resells it to advertisers though. She mentions some networks that I wsan't aware of and plan to check out and definitely gives some food for thought.
Today I helped with another outreach program - this time to the Purdue Village Daycare. I pulled books and went along for the read-aloud. The rest of the day, I worked in Children's. I finished ther NF project and the spider craft preparation, did some shelf reading, and worked the SRC table. Got to sit & talk with the Children's director for a while- which was nice. She told me about how far in advance she plans and preps for the craft programs and how she keeps a notebook with comments about what to change for the next year. We also talked some about the teen reading program & how hard it is to get teens to come in and participate in programs. They've had 3 Teen Librarians (only 10 hours/wk) over the last few years. Apparently the last one didn't do much so when budget cuts had to be made, the position was eliminated.
I sign out at the information desk. For some reason, there wasn't anyone working the desk and on my way out, a man walked up, so I asked if I could help. He was looking for a "series of novels that came out fairly recently and were best sellers." He didn't know titles or authors- I took a stab at the Stieg Larsson trilogy and that was it! Well, didn't remember at the time how to spell Larsson and spelled it Larson; then tried the title -Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but figured out later that I spelled tattoo wrong (tatoo), so decided to take him to the mystery section and, thank goodness, we found an honor copy (paperback - no checkout); all the hardbacks were out. Suggested he put holds on the others. I was a little flustered about not being able to get the results I needed on the catalog......
A topic that's been on my mind-
I subscribe to the edWeb listserve and there was a lot of talk about filtering/censorship of Internet sites/tools at the ends of the school year- especially ones that have potential use in the classroom. A comment was made by Rita Oates- a former tech ed director that we shouldn't be focusing on mass market tools but on what schools ARE using. Here's the link to the post: http://www.edweb.net/.59bf7d40/0. Anyway, she says we should use educational social networks instead of Facebook, GlogsterEDU instead of Glogster, etc. Well, GLogster EDU costs money that schools don't have. It seems to me the EDU versions should be free and the "mass market" versions should have the fee. As for Facebook, she says that students don't want teachers coming into their social space with assignments but that isn't how most teachers would use it. They create a course/library/guidance. etc. page and students join in. Also, Facebook is where the students are. They are not going to join some social learning network; that isn't cool. I don't think it's good that Facebook captures data on users and resells it to advertisers though. She mentions some networks that I wsan't aware of and plan to check out and definitely gives some food for thought.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Days 2 & 3
Tuesday I worked all day in the Children's Department- cut out craft pieces to make a spider hat to go with the Anasazi story later this month, started trying to determine the location of a list of Juv NF books- on the shelf or in storage (basement); by necessity did quite a bit of shelf reading as I went through the list, "manned" the SRC table- signed up new participants as well as gave out prizes. Children's is a busy place- especially 10-12 (story time 10:30) and after 4:00 - activites every day. It's a LOT of work to get everything set up - stories, demos, crafts, etc. And you must be creative - which I am not! They are also having a Scholastic Book Fair a week from Monday. Now that's something that I have experience in! Will get to train the staff on the registers and help set up. YAY!
Also helped pull books for Outreach tomorrow - 25 assorted large print(mix of romance and mystery), 10 mystery, 10 general fiction. I had to make a concerted effort not to just pull books that I liked.
Pretty much just shadowing several people this week. Today (Wed.) I went on outreach to two different nursing homes - independent living in the morning and assisted living in the afternoon. Residents request books plus we bring an assortment of others for them to choose from - usually newer copyrights. (books have a "new" sticker on the spine) The indepedent living home had a resident who checked in the books being returned; she has lived there 22 years! One of the ladies in the afternoon was 93 and she had a huge stack of books:-) I would love this job because you get to know the patrons more intimately. The only thing I wouldn't like is backing the library van down the steep narrow driveway into the single bay garage - brick wall on one side and cement posts on the other! Or when a patron died......
I thought I would spend the last couple of hours of the day on the computer deleting more weeded titles from the catalog, but I was having "authorization" issues. I had already had to ask my supervisor for the password and didn't want to bother her again as I knew she was working on a report, so I decided to go down to Children's and continue working on the Juv NF project instead. Got though most of the list. Guess at some point I'll be checking the basement shelves for the copies I didn't find.
Also helped pull books for Outreach tomorrow - 25 assorted large print(mix of romance and mystery), 10 mystery, 10 general fiction. I had to make a concerted effort not to just pull books that I liked.
Pretty much just shadowing several people this week. Today (Wed.) I went on outreach to two different nursing homes - independent living in the morning and assisted living in the afternoon. Residents request books plus we bring an assortment of others for them to choose from - usually newer copyrights. (books have a "new" sticker on the spine) The indepedent living home had a resident who checked in the books being returned; she has lived there 22 years! One of the ladies in the afternoon was 93 and she had a huge stack of books:-) I would love this job because you get to know the patrons more intimately. The only thing I wouldn't like is backing the library van down the steep narrow driveway into the single bay garage - brick wall on one side and cement posts on the other! Or when a patron died......
I thought I would spend the last couple of hours of the day on the computer deleting more weeded titles from the catalog, but I was having "authorization" issues. I had already had to ask my supervisor for the password and didn't want to bother her again as I knew she was working on a report, so I decided to go down to Children's and continue working on the Juv NF project instead. Got though most of the list. Guess at some point I'll be checking the basement shelves for the copies I didn't find.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Day 1
Today was the first day of my internship at the West Lafayette Public Library. West Lafayette is across the river from Lafayette and is referred to by the locals as the "West Side," hence my blog title - which my mom came up with, by the way. I've been trying to come up with something creative for 3 days, and I ask her for ideas tonight and "boom" - she comes right up with this! Oh well....
Got a tour of the building, met a lot of employees and volunteers, and set my schedule for the next couple of weeks. Did a lot of shadowing plus got to: pull ILLS, delete copies of weeded books from the online catalog, and weed and reorganize the YA magazines.
A few thoughts:
Got a tour of the building, met a lot of employees and volunteers, and set my schedule for the next couple of weeks. Did a lot of shadowing plus got to: pull ILLS, delete copies of weeded books from the online catalog, and weed and reorganize the YA magazines.
A few thoughts:
- I am amazed by the number of volunteers that work on a daily basis
- WLPL uses Evergreen Indiana - I wonder why Tippecanoe County Public Library/Lafayette doesn't
- Children's Summer Reading program already has 400 participants signed up. I think Pam said they had a total of 900 last year. WOW!
- Was surprised by the number of donated books, etc. that come in on a daily basis (Most used for their book sales)
- Lots & lots of programs!
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