Day 17 & 18

Day 17

Today I attended the YMCA Family Health fair with Chirs and Yvonne. The theme was Dr. Seuss and BCPL’s info booth provided children with the opportunity to spin a wheel that offered partial Dr. Seuss titles. The children go to guess and received either a Dr. Seuss bookmark or sticker. It was fun helping them guess these titles. I had trouble remembering some of them so it was a learning experience for me as well. I also got a feel for the Nashville community and many of the library’s patrons attended the event.

Day 18

Today Yvonne provided me with the opportunity to place a potential order for business reference related materials that need to be replaced with more current editions. This required creating a new “cart” to place items in before they are ordered. I also learned that many of these reference materials were available through vendors at ALA conventions for much lower prices. This practice may not occur anymore though.

I also had the opportunity to help a patron, who is becoming a foster-parent, find materials for her course work. This was a challenge because some of the books the library did not have or were lost. I ended up giving a recommendation for Janet Fitch’s White Oleander, a novel that deals with a young woman losing her mother to prison and her experience in the foster system.

Day 15 & 16

Day 15

Spent a lot of the day covering a large amount of books that had just been cataloged. Even though libraries have different methods of preparing their items for circulation, it is good to know methods of protection and preservation of materials.

Day 16

Today was spent finishing up the cataloging project. Had a problem with the indexes and the composite indexes as far as how they should be labeled and entered into the Follet system. The 2 composite indexes had their cover pages switched. Their alphabetical sequencing had been switched. This was fixed, as advised by Chris, by white out. These materials are not bound by cover, but have a spiral binding and their value isn’t high. This should suffice for the patronage.

Article: “Read-Alouds: Choosing the Right Book”

Braxton, Barbara. “Read-Alouds: Choosing the Right Book.” Teacher Librarian. 34(3): 2007.

Gives advice for choosing good materials to present to young people. You should pick books that you like and enjoy, otherwise the children you are reading to will know it and lose interest as well. Younger children enjoy rhyme and repetition and like the anthropomorphism of animals acting and doing like humans do. Illustrations are paticularly important for young children. It helps them with understanding the setting of the story. Librarians should pick books with illustrations that are easy for all the children in the group to see. The stories should also be short enough to hold their interest. Older children will enjoy more serialized stories. They want to read about real animals. They particularly enjoy fantasies and adventure with humor mixed in. They are more aware of authors and genres in the middle grades. They also have a longer attention span. Consider reading historical fiction. The article also provides a handy list of resources for picking appropriate material.

Day 13 & 14

Day 13

Today I observed the pre-school story time program given Chris Bollis, the children’s librarian. This was a valentine storytime to make up for last week’s canceled session due to the weather closing schools. (When school is closed, Chris cancels storytime sessions.) I was able to help out with the craft that the children were assigned. They made little heart flowers and placed them into “flower pots” which were little plastic cups. Some children had trouble getting their hearts to stick to the pipe cleaner stems. I helped them to get more glue from the glue stick on to the paper heart flower petals. I helped with clean up after the program was over. Chris says if I choose I can do my own storytime. Not sure if this will be doable, but will give it some thought.

I also worked some more on the booklist I was assigned last week. I have no definite deadline for this but would most likely be able to finish it next week.

Day 14

Spent a good deal of the afternoon with the Family Studies, finishing up labels and cataloging to the S’s. Made sure to make notes as Yvonne has advised me to do as far as the cataloging decisions I have made.

Day 11 & 12

Day 11

Today was another slow day due to the snow and ice storm the previous day. Many patrons who had lost their power came to the library to use the internet and  spend some time since they were either home from school or work and had no power.

 Day 12

Chris gave me an assignment to create a list of children’s picture books that deal with specifically heavy issues, especially gender roles. Apparently many early childhood education majors have been looking for them and she would like to have a list on hand. Spent most of the afternoon on this assignment and found a few titles in the children’s collection. Another issue I looked into was bereavement. Most of the titles I found had to do with the death of pets and sometimes grandparents. This should be a valuable exercise should I work in a children’s department in the future.

Article – “History Is Its Own Reward Back Home in Indiana”

Pierce, Jennifer Burek. “History Is Its Own Reward Back Home in Indiana.” 34. (2003) 46-48.

Pierce discusses the workings of the Allen County Public Library’s Genealogy Department. Discusses the staff of the department and collection development methods. The department is ranked number 3 in tourist attractions in Fort Wayne, IN. The department has many methods of developing its collection, which is given as much financial consideration as other departments in the library, which is rare. Allen County also receives unpublished work by family researchers which are copied and bound; one is placed in the library and the other is given as a gift to the donor. The library asks for and receives thousands of gifts per year. Discusses the staff of the department

Article: “Competencies for Librarians Serving Children in Public Libraries”

Association for Library Service to Children. “Competencies for Librarians Serving Children in Public Libraries.” Journal of Youth Services in Libraries. 14 (2) Winter 2001.

This revised statement outlines and explains the services, competencies and skills librarians should have and maintain in providing library services for young people. The article first describes the committee members’ efforts in redrafting this statement. The competencies are divided into Knowledge of Client Group, Administrative and Management Skills, Communication Skills, Materials and Collection Development, Programming Skills, Advocacy, Public Relations, and Networking Skills and Professionalism and Professional Development. These competencies service as guidelines not only for libraries but also for professional development as a whole. Youth librarians would do well to hold themselves and their libraries to these standards.

Day 9 & 10

Day 9

Today I did a good deal of cataloging for the family studies. I managed to get most of the second shelf done in the afternoon. Today was a relatively quite day, being that Brown County schools were closed because of the snow. This meant that there were fewer returns and less books to reshelve.

Day 10

Yvonne asked if I would like to join her and Chris on a trip to INCOLSA to pick up some items she had bid on. The program [find out name] that had until recently lent out audio/visual and other materials temporarily to Indiana libraries has terminated its service and has auctioned off its remainig materials. Yvonne had bid for a few bookshelves, some book carts and other office and craft/decoration materials. With the help of some of the INCOLSA workers we loaded up Yvonne’s husband’s pick up with these materials. This trip provided us an opportunity to talk shop about things that may have not come up before at BCPL. Yvonne suggests that I write down questions while I’m cataloguing in order to help others who may continue or add to the project to understand decisions I’ve made. Also Yvonne discusses the library’s focus on patron needs coming first and being the basis for the decisions that are made. She says this is the reason why libraries tend to differ in their procedures regarding technology and circulation. We also talked about opportunites that visting the ALA convention can provide.

Days 7 & 8

Day 7 – January 31st

Today I placed tags on most of the Family Studies I’ve been cataloging. Last week, Yvonne asked that we do the labels a bit differently and change the way we’ve structured the call numbers. Instead of 929.[] REE, I’m entering 929.[] and the first 3 letters of the subject’s name, instead of the compilers’, which is always the same. The first 2o or so had been done the previous way, so I had to carefully remove the labels I’d place. Glad we caught this in time.

Spent most of the rest of the day working behind the circulation desk. Helped a patron find information on Buerger’s disease. She’d seen many spellings and I believe we found the correct one to use for google, since we finally found information about the disease. Also, we could not find it in the medical dictionary from 2002 in the reference section. I’m pleased I was able to help.

Talked to Yvonne about creating a booklist for the library. She suggested I talk to Zoe and Christ to get their opinions about what subjects patrons might find interest in. We talked about knitting books, fiction and non fiction and maybe Christian fiction. Need to propose this more to Yvonne. Not quite sure what’s needed.

Day 8

Learned how to cover and laminate newly acquired monographs. This was actually much more enjoyable than I would have expected. I particularly thought laminated was going to be a pain while watching Lucy do it but once I did it a couple times on my own, I really enjoyed myself. Overall, this was a pretty laid back afternoon. Suggested The World’s Fastest Indian to a patron. A film that I’d recently been forced to watch by my parents, which I ended up enjoying. Hopefully they enjoyed it.

Days 6 & 7

Day 6 (Wednesday, January 24)

Today was spent mostly cataloging more of the genealogy collection. The laptop I’ve been designated connected to the the bcpl network after a little tinkering. I spent most of the afternoon entering the information for the sets of personal/family papers. This was not too difficult a task when using the barcode scanner that hooked up through a usb port.

Day 7 (Friday, January 26)

Spent most of the afternoon working with patrons and shelving materials. Getting used to organizing with the Dewey System, which was something I was unfamiliar with when I worked as a shelver at Bracken Library at Ball State. Also I’m getting more comfortable with the workings behind the circulation desk. Hoping that next week will offer the opportunity to speak with Yvonne or Chris about other projects.