11/14/07

Time: 9 am to 1 pm
Hours: 4

I finally finished looking through all the yearbooks today. It took me the full three hours, but I finished! From 12-1 I sat at the reference desk, which was a treat. It was nice to be there when the library was busy. There was a steady flow of people coming by with questions. I instructed a student on how to use the Library website to search for books in the library. We learned the materials he needed were on reserve so I informed him where he had to go to be able to use them. I told at least 3 more people where they needed to go to find what they needed. Overall, I feel it was a productive day.

11/13/07

Time: 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Hours: 2

ref desk
book shifting

11/10/07

Time: 10 am to 3 pm
Hours: 5

Today was a nice relaxing day at the library. I was able to finish up the PA statutes (updating the lose pages) so there are no more of them - until the next set is mailed in. I did some more shelf reading in the Reference section - re shelving PA government documents and encyclopedias. I was actually able to help Claire with finding materials for a student.

11/6/07

Time: 8:50 am to 12:30 pm
Hours: 3 and 30 minutes

I got through a great deal of the yearbooks today, which made me very happy. The next time I come in for Sue, I should have gotten through them all. For a half hour I worked on preparing more of the papers for the bindery for a change of pace.

11/03/07

Time: 10 to 2:30 pm
Hours: 4 and 30 minutes

Though Saturdays at the library are very quiet, there were a few people who came to the Reference desk to ask questions. However that was more towards the afternoon. In the morning, I worked on shelf reading and cleaning up in the Reference and government documents section. I also got through a great deal of the Pennsylvania statute sheets. Before I left for the day, Ruth helped me begin a search process for a student. I hope I can have a chance to do that more often.

11/02/07

Time: 9 am to 12 pm
Hours: 3

I did some more yearbook scanning this morning for an hour before I went downstairs to Technical Services to do more book repair. There were only three books for us to work on today. I got to do the full process at least once. I got started on one and unfortunately I couldn't finish it because the lable needed to be flattened and dried before it could be reattached, but from that step to finish I got to do twice. I fixed binding, but only got to witness pages being replaced into books. I wish there could have been more for me to do, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. After the book repair, I still had some time before 12 so I returned to Archives to go through more yearbooks. I'd like to focus on that more heavily if I can because Sue said the shelving was ordered. I don't know when they'll arrive, but I have a feeling before I'll get done with all of these Keystonias!

11/01/07

Time: 9-12 & 4:30-7:30
Hours: 6

Sue had me return to the Act 101 books today. She wanted a list so I made a spreadsheet of them all in order by title. I also included the authors and publication date. Sue wants to later check if the books match the current editions available in the book store.

Mending

Time: 10 am to 12 pm
Hours: 2

Today I went to Technical Services and I got to learn about and take part in mending some books. I was instructed by a student worker named Ashley who had been working there since last fall. She already had a couple of jobs started and nothing really new to show me from the start so she explained the process of fixing bindings. After watching her work on a few, I was able to try it myself on some books they were going to get rid of. Of course I wasn't as fast as Ashley because this was my first time doing any mending, but I wanted be careful - just like I was working on a book that was going back onto the shelves.

She also showed me how to reattach covers and insert lose pages back into the book. I'll be going back to do some more mending on Friday so hopefully I get to do some more hands on work.

10/29/07

Time: 9 am to 12 pm
Hours: 3

I spent more time skimming year books for any writing. It's going a little faster now because fewer of the books have markings in them. I had another job to help break the monotony, but my brain felt a little like mush because I'm not doing any thinking. I feel a bit like a secretary right now. The new job I was given dealt with getting files ready for binding. This will be another on going task because there were a few boxes of files. I have to go through them, remove staples and paper clips and make sure they're in proper order. It's one of those things you can get lost in doing, almost feeling mesmerized and having finished a task without realizing what you did. It's a little soothing in a way to not have a very complex job, but yet at the same time it is also disappointing because i feel like I'm not being stimulated intellectually.

I really dislike that I can only work in Archives when Sue is there. It would be great for me to get extra time in doing the projects on the weekends or evenings, but I'm not allowed in the room unless she's in the library or nearby. I understand the reason and I respect it. But I'm allowed not to like it! :)

current total hours = 60 and 15 minutes

Act 101 Books

Time: 9 am to 12 pm
Hours: 3

Act 101 books had been sent to technical services, so today I unpacked them, alphabetized them by title, and stamped 'Kutztown University' on the page edges. Most of the books were text books or Praxis exam preparation guides. I didn't have the chance to ask Sue any questions about it today because she had a busy morning, but I'll have to remember to do that. I remember her saying more would eventually be arriving so I'm certain I'll be unpacking those as well. I liked this job today because i felt more like a librarian than when I'm looking through the yearbooks.

Thursday

Hours: 6 and 15 minutes


8:45-12
Archives
yearbooks and shelving rare books

4:30-7:30
Reference
Shelving in Reference
Cutting more paper
Updating government binders

10/22/07

Time: 9-12:30
Hours: 3 and 30 minutes

Slips and yearbooks

Spent most of my time doing the yearbooks.. takes longer than the sorting. But I finished the slips today.

I'm beginning to dislike the yearbook task. The smell coming off of them is bothering my allergies and giving me headaches. I don't know if its just dust... mold... or simply musty old age, but it really inflames my sinuses. It feels like it's taking forever, longer than it should. But I also need to be careful. I don't want to harm any of the books. Some of them already have damage from age. I don't want to cause any new damages.

Friday

Time: 9-12:30
Hours: 3 and 30 minutes

Slips & yearbooks

I'm surprised by the amount of yearbooks there are. Some of the years have more than 10 copies. I don't know why they need so many, but from what I understand a lot of them get donated. I sorted slips for about an hour and then the rest of my time i spent scanning the yearbooks.

10/18/07

Time: 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM
Hours: 2

I spent another evening at the Reference desk with Claire and Ruth. Thursdays are a lot slower than earlier in the week so it was a little boring. Claire, however, gave me a useful job. She said that I wouldn't know how important it was. What she meant was cutting up scrap paper. Oh I definitely understood how those small squares of scrap paper are useful. What would you do without them to write call numbers down for the people you're assisting? I know how much easier it makes it to have scrap paper ready to write notes on while doing a search. I do it all the time. SO overall, it wasn't a very exciting night, but they were happy to have a stock of scrap paper at the ready.

Yearbooks

Time: 9 AM to 12:15 PM
Hours: 3 and 15 minutes

I really enjoyed myself today. The archival room will be getting new (higher) shelving to make more room for materials, mainly more room for the Dornish collection. I'm amazed at the amount of books he collected over the years. It makes me think about my own book collection, how at this point I really need to stop buying books because I have no more room for them. Yet that still might not stop me.

After I finished with the Dornish collection, Sue gave me two more jobs that I could alternate between so I wouldn't get too bored. One of them was to sort book slips into different categories. The slips had the title, a brief summary and the Dewey and Library of Congress classifications on them. Most of them ended up in the fine arts category.

My other job coincides with getting ready for the new shelves. My task was to look through all the old Keystonia yearbooks and mark the ones that had writing in them or weren't in pristine condition. The first yearbook was from 1912. I loved to see how different the campus was then compared to now. I found it fascinating and thought that working in Archives wouldn't be a bad thing at all. I like history so this was a stimulating task for me.

Dornish Collection Overflow

Time: 9 AM to 12 PM & 5 PM to 8 PM
Hours: 6

Morning
I gave both Sue and Ruth my printed schedule of when I plan to be at the Library and other possible activities. To create the calender, I used Google calender. I'd been aware of the tool, but never had real cause to use it before. I found it very useful and easy to use. I love that it pops up a notification when something you scheduled is about to start. What a great little reminder.

I worked for Sue this morning. I finished the task she had set for the Dornish Collection overflow: Take two separate alphabets and condense them into one. There were also a couple more piles to be added into the collection. Putting the books in order was not a problem, but I had trouble with some of the small pop-up books. The book ends kept sliding whenever I tried to move the books or add more in. I added another book end between the pop-ups and the other books to keep them from falling over and it worked perfectly.

Evening
I spent a half hour updating the loose leaf binders while I waited for Claire to finish with a class. After she returned, we took up our station at the reference desk. When we weren't assisting any students, we were talking about graduate schools and Master programs in Library Science. In the free moments I went onto the ALA website and looked up accredited colleges with MLS programs. Night time at the library is obviously slower than the day, but there is still enough activity to keep you alert. I get the feeling from people who come to ask for help in finding information didn't even bother to look on their own first. That may not be a bad thing neccissarily, but it's nice to know people can come to the library with enough knowledge to find what they need. If they don't, however, that's what the workers in the library are there for - to be the bridge you need.

10/15/07

Time: 9-12
Hours: 3

Another morning at the reference desk. I directed a few people towards the areas in the Library they needed to go to find different sections. I felt like I was useful today.

Cleaning and Shelving

Time: 5 Pm to 8 PM
Hours: 3

I had hoped to spend my time organizing the Dornish collection, but I wasn't allowed into the room. I was told Sue had not left a message that I was working with her. I was dissapointed, but I decided to do some of the tasks Claire had said I could do when I was looking for work. I'll be helping her weed the government documents so part of my duties are to clean the shelves so when materials are moved, they can be shifted immediately.

I went to the government's document section and cleaned off the empty shelves and straightened the materials there. Some of the shelves were in terrible dissaray. Some were even hard to tidy because there was too much damage from sitting lopsided on the shelves for so long. The dust irritated my eyes. It looked like it had been forever since anyone had dusted. I also tried to clean off some of the books, but the dust had seemed to stain them. I was sneezing a lot. I was really bored while I did this. Cleaning isn't my favorite thing to do, for my self OR a library. Though I don't like it, I'm a stickler for book care and I like to see clean shelves with the books setting straight!

I also reshelved items from the orange shelving stations. Most of those were dictionaries. Sure, it was a boring job because dusting and reshelving isn't the most exciting part of being a librarian, but I think I got a lot done.

Scanning Workshop

Time: 11 AM to 3 PM
Hours: 4

Today I attended an educational workshop about scanning. I was surprised at how much I learned. I hadn't expected to be introduced to that many new things, but I was wrong. Besides me, there were two older gentleman that were professors.

First we went through how to scan a text document and create a PDF out of it. Then we learned how to take a paper document, scan it, and use a program to make editable in electronic form again. This would be useful for documents created before the time of computers or for printed materials that the original electronic media was lost. Will also explained what resolution settings would be ideal for the type of item you are scanning.

Next we scanned a picture into Adobe Photo shop. Will explained the different settings for resolution and image quality. He also noted that image size was important to keep any eye on, otherwise we could crash or slow down a computer. He showed us how to reduce an image size, as well as resize it.

Finally we learned how to scan slides and stick them into a Power point presentation.

I liked the workshop because I learned a lot of little things about image sizing I'd been curious about, but never had a chance to figure out on my own. The tips for photo shop were especially helpful since I'd always been confused on how to properly reduce an image size. Now I know it has to do with the screen quality, not how big the actual image is in pixels.

After the workshop, I returned upstairs to the Reference department. I started to clean some shelves and move sections of materials that Claire had already weeded. As I was working, people kept coming through and it was a little inconvenient. I decided to continue this particular task at a time later in the evening when the Library wasn't so busy. I sat with Clair for a little bit and observed while she helped a student find information. I was particularly interested in the process today because the OPAC was down for updating. It should have been up hours ago, staff was exclaiming. I wanted to see how she helped students without their usual resource available to them. She used WordCat, which listed the materials owned by Kutztown University.

At 2:00 PM, I was allowed to attend a Reference meeting. In attendance were Claire, Ruth and Krista. They were discussing how to update the reference area of the Library website, and even asked my input about titles for the sections. Their meeting was very casual, but they kept on topic. They all agreed, however, that having some silliness and humor is what keeps the job interesting and fun. Unfortunately I had to leave early for class, but I was still glad to be part of the event.

10/10/07

Time: 9-12:30
Hours: 3 and 30 minutes

9-10 A Splendid Friend Indeed
Sponsered by the Louisa Gonser Library, author Suzanne Bloom came to campus to read her book 'A Splendid Friend Indead.' It was awesome to see her interacting with the young kids who came for the story. She was enthusiastic, friendly, and easy going. For Splendid Friend, she did multiple voice for the characters which everyone really enjoyed. Her added inflection made it all the more enjoyable because simply reading it wouldn't give the same kind of depth. However the words were spoken by the characters rather than a narrative, so her way was better than simply reading it allowed.

She read another story: A Bus For Us. She made this one very interactive by having the children count how many people were in the pictures and asking them to guess what kind of vehicle would be driving by next. She also read the sequel to "Splendid Friend" which I don't believe is published yet. After that, she did a drawing demonstration which she then gave to the children to keep in their classroom.

I was glad to have had a chance to observe an author presenting to young children. I've only seen them for older ages and I intend to work as a children's librarian one day. It was a wonderful learning experience for me.

10-12
Sue had me finish writing up my goals for the internship. Once I finished I tried to print it in multiple places but I ultimately ended up emailing the document to both Sue and Ruth. My next task was to condense two alphabetized sets of overflow from the Dornish collection. Because the collection is usually kept behind glass, I felt honored to be allowed to work with the books.

12-12:30
I was finally able to ask Claire when would be a good time for us to work together. We sorted out our final schedule. I also made Ruth aware of the tasks I'd completed so far.

10/09/07

Time: 9 am to 1 pm
Hours: 4

Today I was introduced to Sue Czerny in the Access Services (aka circulation) department. She walked me around, showing me the different areas that they were responsible for. She explained what they provide to the library: Library Loans, Archive room, hire student workers, circulation, reserves. The biggest thing they provide is customer service to the patrons. After the tour, Sue had me create a finale schedule of the times I was going to be coming into the library to work, as well as goals I wanted to accomplish during the semester. Doing the schedule and goals took a lot longer than I would have expected them to.

I also spent more time planning and talking with Ruth. When I'm not going to be working with Sue, it would be a good idea for me to get DAYTIME observation in at the Reference desk. It'll help me have more hands on experience with the databases and the reference interview. I took extensive notes on some of the following topics:
What you do as a professional
Programming
Management
Available jobs to Bachelors in LS

10/05/07

Time: 10 AM to 1 PM
Hours: 3

A woman named Lisa was job shadowing in Reference this morning, so there was a lot of discussion. We talked about what type of person fits in the different types of libraries (Public, Academic, School.) Ruth explained how you need to love your community and you are there to serve and provide outreach. There was also a lot of discussion about the needs of different types of libraries. Ruth asked me to give my input on the education side because I had started out in the K-12 certification. The other big focus of the day was the online data bases. We talked about the different kinds KU subscribed to and how they direct students to use them whenever they can.

10/04/07

Time: 5 PM to 7:15 PM
Hours: 2 & 15 minutes

Tonight I was given an in depth tour of the reference area. As we did so, Claire explained more about the weeding project she wants me to help her with. She talked about which materials she wanted to pull from the government documents. We discussed the different types of documents that were useful to the students on campus and why they needed them. Those were the type of materials we would keep because they actually do get used. I asked her what happens to the documents when they get pulled and she said that they (likes to have 2, put on a list for people who may want/need them somewhere else). She also explained what she would like me to do on my own. When I have the time, she wants me to start shifting the documents to the empty shelves (where items had already been weeded). She also wants me to clean the dust off of the surfaces of the shelves.

After walking around the reference department, we returned to the reference desk. Claire and Ruth had me start on updating the Pennsylvania Statutes loose leaf collection. This is another task both of them agreed that I can work on when I have the time.

Reference Desk Observation

Time: 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Hours: 3

Today I observed at the Reference desk with Ruth and Sylvia. Most of the questions that they answered were quick - either "where can I find...?" (usually a certain department of the Library) or "I need a book on this topic." The interviews were done in under 5 minutes and the students were on their way again.

Ruth and I sat down together to further discuss what particular projects I could work on. She suggested I work with Sue and even Claire. With Sue I'd be doing some Archival work and scanning. With Claire, I'd be helping her clean out government documents as well as assist her research for the History of the Rohrbach Library. She and I also worked on scheduling my hours for the semester. We didn't go very far into the month because she wanted me to wait until Sue could let me know when she was available for me to work with her. I didn't like the idea of waiting because getting all the time in would really be a crunch, but I understood why she wanted to wait.

Things I learned Today
You can do inter library loans with Ebscoe Articles if your library does not subscribe to a certain database. I did not know that, but I think that is very useful!

One of the most important parts of a Reference Interview is to find out how a topic will be used. In other words, is it for a paper, and what kind of paper? Essay, research, etc. Is it for a project or presentation? Knowing this information will help direct you to what sort of resources that will be useful to the patron.

If you lend materials to other libraries through the Access PA Database, your library earns money.

First Meeting

Time: 10 AM to 11 AM
Hours: 1

I met with Ruth Perkins today for the first time to discuss what I wish to learn from my field experience. We also talked about the possibility of some of my experience being gained through attending events and meetings at the Louisa Gonser Library. We talked about what departments I could possibly work in. She will have me focus on Reference and Access Services because unfortunately the other departments would be unable to accomodate me this semester.