June 22, 2015

This is the third time I have tried to blog about this day. The day started with a short meeting with Ms. Vickers. We went over my list of assignments for the internship, as we look these over we keep revising because of time restraints. Because of the library instruction class, I have not been able to complete the internship orientation so now this is a priority besides reference. So later this morning I will meet with Yolanda Crosby, Circulation Manager to go over the intern handbook. I also have a book truck with weeded books to go through and pick books to remain in the collection. After getting the marching orders of the day, I headed back to the reference desk. In a little while, I had four students  from my previous library instruction class asking for help with citations for their speech resources. Sometimes I am having trouble deciding how much I need to do for these students, you want to be helpful but you also have to step back so the students can learn to find this information on their own. So again trying to instruct, we used the MLA Handbook and Purdue OWL to get the citations done. Another thing that bothers me, these students tend to wait until the day the assignment is due to do the work. To me, waiting just invites mistakes because you are so worried about getting the assignment done. Many of these students are the first to go to college in their families. I try to share insight on how to get assignments done, so you have time to take a break from the assignment then come back with fresh eyes and find the places that need tweaking. I am glad to help but if I do everything how will the student learn to do these things on their own. Around 12:30, all the students left for speech class. I went to the circulation desk and began to go over the internship handbook with Yolanda. The Voyager Library program is the system used by University System of Georgia, I am familiar with SirsiDynix, so this is a new program to learn. Being familiar with OCLC, because of previous experience in tech services at MSU, means I will have more time to devote to learning the Voyager program. We went over the circulation module of the system. We looked at inter-library loan and I borrowed a book from the Waycross campus of SGSC.

June 23, 2015

This morning, I went through the book truck of weeded books. Of course many of the books are out dated but I did find a couple that I felt would still be good to keep in the collection. Ms. Vickers and I went over my choices and she agreed if there was no other books (newer) on the subject. Ms. Vickers then gave me a stack of books to look at and see if I could determine why she felt they should remain in the collection. Several were easy to make a determination about but there were several that she had to tell me why we were keeping them in the collection. I am finding that sometimes it is hard to determine the usefulness of some books. It is interesting to talk with another librarian and discuss the selection of those books. I have been doing some ongoing collection development by going through the CHOICES magazine that reviews books for academic libraries. I am marking the books reviewed as highly recommended for lower undergraduates or general audiences. So far I have been through 2 of the 4 magazines. Again it is interesting to look at these reviews. I know that when Ms. Vickers gets money in her library budget she will go back through the magazines and determine how to spend her money on the recommended books. This makes me feel like I will have some responsibility over some resources picked for this library.

June 24, 2015

The book I requested from Waycross is here. It is a book about Barbie. It was a resource for one of my library instruction students, after talking with the student I decided to borrow it and see about the history of the Barbie doll. It is funny how by helping a student, I found some interesting reading material. But before I could take my book from the library, I had to discharge it from ILL and charge it to my library card. Yolanda will have to show me that process several more times before I get it down pat.
Today I had five students from library instruction class come in for help revising their citation pages. Using the Purdue OWL, MLA Handbook and a page from their instructor, everyone got their citations corrected. One student had a resource that we had some problem deciding how to cite. It was a chapter from an online report on a website. It took a few minutes, but after looking I figured out the name of the whole document and we cited it. It is very rewarding to help a student like that, when they just absolutely do not know what to do. (At first, I did not know how to approach the citation but after studying it for a few minutes it occurred to me how to find the whole document.) I am finding that the public parts of librarianship can be fun and rewarding.