May 26, 2015 (8 total)

Date: May 26, 2015

Time: 10am - 6pm

Hours Completed: 8 (8 total)

Introduction:
Today was the first day at my internship at the Germantown Community Library in Germantown, WI.  The library serves a population of over 32,000 residents.  During my internship I will be focusing on public library administration, children's programming, and processing and cataloging of library material.

I meet with the library director, Roberta Olson, was given a tour of library, and meet with library staff.  Roberta and I discussed my objectives for the internship and talked in greater detail about what I would be doing and the types of projects that I would be working on.

Administration:
We also spend sometime discussing the basic duties of a library director.  We talked about how she created the daily, weekly, and monthly staff schedule and also the different schedules for the circulation desk, reference desk, and children's desk.  She gave me samples of the different schedules to use as a reference.  Coming from a much smaller library, it was really interesting to see how a larger library handles scheduling of staff members.  After observing how the library is run, I thought it was very beneficial to have designated staff members at each desk during different times of the day.  It allows for coverage at each desk and for staff to have equal amounts of time working at the desk and completing their individual tasks.

Staff Schedules

Roberta also talked to me about more specific duties that she has as a library director such as meeting with the library board, going to system director's meetings, and working with the Friends of the Library organization.  She showed me the packets that she makes up each month for library board members and the statistics that she gives them each week.  Roberta also shared with me the history of the Mid-Wisconsin Federated Library System that includes libraries in Washington, Dodge, and Jefferson counties.  There has been a lot of recent uncertainly with the system and it was very beneficial to hear more about it from someone that has been involved in the system for many years.

Children's Desk:
I also meet briefly with youth services librarian Stephanie.  She showed me information about the summer reading program and we talked about different aspects of the program including scheduling performers and programs, making the library appeal to different age groups, partnerships with local schools, promotion, and giving out prizes for completing reading logs.  I really liked how the summer reading schedule seemed very organized.  Programs were held on two different days of the week and students could turn their reading logs in until the end of August.  The program include a fair amount of activities, but didn't seem to take too much extra staff time and resources.  She shared with me how she has learned to balance difference aspects of her job since there is only one full-time librarian that works in the children's department.

Processing/Cataloging:
Towards the end of the day, I meet with Jeninie, the adult services librarian that selects and cataloges the adult fiction section at the library.  She showed me the resources that she uses for ordering material such as Book Page, Booklist, and Library Journal, We also discussed the lease program from Baker and Taylor, book lists that she has created for patrons to use, and reader's advisory (especially when answering questions about fiction recommendations from patrons).  She seemed very well-read and up-to-date on all of the newest and popular fiction titles.  I found it really neat to see how her personal interests played a part in her selection of fiction materials for the library.  She also stressed the importance of knowing your patrons and getting a feel for the types of books that they like to read.