My Library World

At CADL, I've been busy gaining lots of experience by working the desk: circulation, readers' advisory, reference questions, and basic tech support. With the positive comes the negative: I've been lied to about library fines, experienced manipulation firsthand, and witnessed conniption fits (complete with colorful language) over a document not printing. It's all part of working with the public...

I enjoy my time the most when I am on-desk in the children's department! I love seeing the wonder and excitement on their little faces when they walk into the collection. Just hearing adults read to children gives me a bit more faith in humanity...

SRP game day at CADL

I've also been able to try my hand at two YA displays -- A Game of Thrones Read-Alikes for Teens (clean reads, of course) and MLA's Thumbs Up! Award. At the end of this month, I'll be replacing the AGoT display with a Printz Award display.

My weeding projects have also been on-going. Currently, I am working my way through the 747s...

Checking circ stats...

In other library-related news:
The pink Chuckle roses were a huge hit and had lots of patrons asking about them...

I've also been volunteering at a small, rural public library and working at digitizing a scrapbook of obituaries a local genealogist collected over the years. OCR is new to me and I am learning a great deal through this experience!

Experimenting with OCR...

  ...and I love library coffee...

A Fair Assessment

From the epigraph in chapter 4 of Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science (Wildemuth, 2009): 

"To describe is to draw a picture of what happened, or of how things are proceeding, or of what a situation or a person or an event is like. Description is concerned with making complicated things understandable." --Keith Punch (1998)

This afternoon, I start my practicum at Caro Area District Library under the supervision of Library Director Marcia Dievendorf. To say that I am excited is an understatement and to mention that I am nervous is a fair assessment. For my practicum class, I am required to keep a blog (embedded within Blackboard) to record my candid thoughts, observations, and reflections. I plan on doing a watered-down version here that will just capture my experiences without reporting any sensitive or confidential information.

In other bookish news, yesterday afternoon, I picked up materials from Sandusky District Library for the upcoming book discussion groups that I am leading for The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I've been squeezing in a chapter here and there in between my readings for LIS 7996 so that the story will be fresh in my mind. I should probably record my thoughts and a few of my favorite passages here...

Projects!

A week ago, I finished and submitted my final for LIS 6530 and later in the week watched the last lecture. So what have I been up to? Rebuilding the tractor registry for the Thumb Two-Cylinder Club -- while I am working from a print copy, the actual digital database was accidentally lost when my predecessor's hard drive was formatted. (I am currently on page 8 out of 12.)

When my eyes feel like I've dumped sand in them, I switch gears and work on an annotated bibliography of Holocaust literature for tweens and teens -- which I hope to publish in the near future.

Project soundtrack: Juno (Music from the Motion Picture)