Brandywine December through January

December 29th (Sat) / 10 - 5 / 7 hours
January 3rd (Thur) / 12 - 5 / 5 hours
January 5th (Sat) /10 - 5 / 7 hours
January 26th (Sat) / 10 - 3:30 / 5.5 hours

I began to worry a little bit when I felt like I was constantly shelving in January. I didn’t want to be treated as just another volunteer. I was feeling disappointed that I wasn’t doing more professional activities. I did understand the fact I wasn’t staff and they were in dire need to have items shelved however. They also hired Brian so there was another staff member to help take care of necessities. So I decided to hold off on saying anything until I felt it had gone too far. Fortunately once the shelving back up had greatly dwindled, I was back to doing things I thought were more useful to the learning process. I found them helpful as the sort of things that need to be done, but I know they had me do them because they were the kind of tasks they normally couldn’t get to right away. Such things included minor repairs like torn pages in children’s books and becoming more familiar with the circulation system. I learned how to find items in the system, put items on hold for patrons, what procedure to follow if someone doesn’t have their card (or if someone comes to pick up a hold for a family member) and take care of fines. I’ve also taken the holdings list and pulled the items from the shelves.

Brita left her position as assistant director mid January (which made me sad because I loved how independent she made me feel in my tasks) and Lynn moved from circulation to take her place. Her move was known well ahead of time so Lynn was in training for a few weeks and her move into the job was smooth.

I went through the process of signing up a new patron for a library card and creating an Inter library loan record. I only did each once so I know I’d like to see it again (or at least write down the steps) so I can remember to do it.

The children’s librarian, Charlotte has story times on Wednesday mornings and lapsits on Thursday mornings. I really enjoyed sitting in on a lapsit because the kids there were adorable. I also loved seeing how she presented stories and educational material to the parents and their children. She usually has a theme during the half hour sitting (music and sounds, air planes, animals, etc) and reads 2 or three short books and incorporates songs, finger plays and movement. One of the songs she did was Jingle Bells and she passed around these small toys called shaky eggs which make a rattling sound. It was obvious they were a normal part of the lapsits because the parents and children especially were happy to use them. She uses a lot of repetition within the sit and every week. The parents knew the songs (but she still had visuals up with the words to be followed along) and though the children were to young to speak, I could tell they recognized them. A few could follow along with hand motions. I loved how Charlotte could seamlessly explain the importance of what she was doing helped the learning process in early literacy. After seeing her do it almost effortlessly, the process didn’t appear to be hard at all. She has a process and fell into a flow that worked well for her.

After Christmas was over I helped to take down decorations and pack them away. We took down all the holiday books on display and I got to create a new book display about Martin Luther King Jr. I included adult, teen and children level biographies and non-fiction materials, as well as books on the civil-rights movement and diversity. After Martin Luther King Jr day was over, I got to do another small display until they thought of a new theme. I collected books about winter and winter sports.

Grand total hours: 37

Brandywine Day 2

Thursday, Dec 27
10-3:30
5.5 hours

Because of the time I was at the library (close to and after the holidays) they didn’t have a lot of volunteers coming in. They usually depend heavily on their volunteers to do the shelving so they can take care of everything else - like holds, helping patrons, circulation, calls, and helping patrons. Because there was a small staff at the time and little time for them to do shelving, they asked if I would do that. Because there was a lot of back up on the carts (at least 3 full ones and a lot of returns were coming in steadily), I spent a lot of my time shelving over the next few days. It really felt like I didn’t get ahead and my lower back isn’t very strong (because of a childhood injury) so I had to go slower when the constant up and down strained my muscles. I alternated between shelving and checking in returned items.

Grand total hours : 12.5

Brandywine

Saturday, December 22
10 am to 5 pm
7 hours

On my first day at the Brandywine community library, I arrived a little early and met with Brita, the assistant librarian. She was glad to have me on a Saturday because normally there is only one person working in the library that day. She gave me a tour of the collection, explaining where certain items were shelved any exceptions there might be (like children’s and young adult non fiction items were with all the adult materials). It was a busy day for the both of us of course because everything was new to me. The first thing we did was go through the items in the drop box. I checked items in and got items ready to go to other locations if they were on hold or were from another library in the county system.

I also learned how to use CafeZ. It’s a program on the main circulation computer that control the computer stations. After you scan a patron’s card to make sure they have signed an internet agreement, you start a session for the numbered computer that they’d like to use. You can input the amount of time they’d like to have, the default time being an hour, before the session ends and the computer becomes locked. It’s a newer system. They used to have a sign up sheet. The computer program better monitors how often and for how long the computers are used.

Another thing I got to do was call patrons who had items on hold. I also got to sit at the circ desk and check out patrons when they were leaving.

I really enjoyed working with Brita because she understood that I had a grasp on how things worked and what had to be done. She also knew that the point of my internship was to learn professional activities and have a chance to do a lot of different activities. It felt like she was treating me as an equal while I was learning their way about things.