Date: June 2, 2015
Time: 10am - 5pm
Hours Completed: 7 (15 total)
Administration:
This morning I meet with library director to discuss how my internship was going so far and to go over my objectives in more detail. The library is recently hiring a library assistant and we talked about the process of hiring a new employee: posting a job description, going through job applications, the interview process, and selecting candidates. Nine people had applied for the job and the director and administrative assistant are interviewing four applicants. I was scheduled to observe two interviews today, but the first person never showed up. The second applicant was a previous bank worker. She had never worked in a library before, but had customer service experience and was very enthusiastic about working in a library.
Reference Desk:
I spend the rest of the morning shadowing the library director and working at the reference desk. I learned about the local history collection and how to direct patrons to information about genealogy questions. We also talked about serving problem patrons and enforcing library policies. Some of the policies were on the library website, but not all of them. The library does not usually have a lot of problems with patrons, but a frequent issues involves library cards. Patrons are required to have a library card to check out items at all times and are not allowed to use their driver's license or ID. This is sometimes a problem with children who tend to lose their cards a lot. Another problem that the library tends to have is communicating with the school systems. Many of the class projects require children to come to the public library to find resources and the library is usually not notified ahead of time. Parents will come the day the project is assigned and check out all of the books on a topic and then there are no items left for other students. The youth services librarian has tried to contact the school district's teachers about this - it has helped a little, but many teachers still do not contact the library ahead of time.
This morning I meet with library director to discuss how my internship was going so far and to go over my objectives in more detail. The library is recently hiring a library assistant and we talked about the process of hiring a new employee: posting a job description, going through job applications, the interview process, and selecting candidates. Nine people had applied for the job and the director and administrative assistant are interviewing four applicants. I was scheduled to observe two interviews today, but the first person never showed up. The second applicant was a previous bank worker. She had never worked in a library before, but had customer service experience and was very enthusiastic about working in a library.
Reference Desk:
I spend the rest of the morning shadowing the library director and working at the reference desk. I learned about the local history collection and how to direct patrons to information about genealogy questions. We also talked about serving problem patrons and enforcing library policies. Some of the policies were on the library website, but not all of them. The library does not usually have a lot of problems with patrons, but a frequent issues involves library cards. Patrons are required to have a library card to check out items at all times and are not allowed to use their driver's license or ID. This is sometimes a problem with children who tend to lose their cards a lot. Another problem that the library tends to have is communicating with the school systems. Many of the class projects require children to come to the public library to find resources and the library is usually not notified ahead of time. Parents will come the day the project is assigned and check out all of the books on a topic and then there are no items left for other students. The youth services librarian has tried to contact the school district's teachers about this - it has helped a little, but many teachers still do not contact the library ahead of time.
Children's Desk:
I also meet with youth services librarian again. We talked about how to plan age and community appropriate programs for children. The library has not had a lot of luck with programs for teens and adults and does not offer a lot of program outside of the summer reading program events for these age groups. Program for children that run all year include children's storytime and "Read to Rover" where children signup to read to trained service dogs. These two programs are very sucessful. The youth service librarian spends a lot of time on school visits to promote the summer reading program. It was very interesting to talk to her about serving patrons in the community in comparison to the library I work at which is much smaller and has a more rural population. While Germantown has a very involved Parks & Recreation department and school system, my library has very limited options for children's program outside of the programs that our library offers. I think it is important to have a balance between offering programs and keeping up with the other duties of a youth services librarian including collection development, outreach, and cataloging.
I also meet with youth services librarian again. We talked about how to plan age and community appropriate programs for children. The library has not had a lot of luck with programs for teens and adults and does not offer a lot of program outside of the summer reading program events for these age groups. Program for children that run all year include children's storytime and "Read to Rover" where children signup to read to trained service dogs. These two programs are very sucessful. The youth service librarian spends a lot of time on school visits to promote the summer reading program. It was very interesting to talk to her about serving patrons in the community in comparison to the library I work at which is much smaller and has a more rural population. While Germantown has a very involved Parks & Recreation department and school system, my library has very limited options for children's program outside of the programs that our library offers. I think it is important to have a balance between offering programs and keeping up with the other duties of a youth services librarian including collection development, outreach, and cataloging.
Processing/Cataloging:
I spend the rest of my time processing children's books. I learned how to cover books and also talked to a library assistant that I was working with about labeling books and organizing them into categories and sub-categories.
I spend the rest of my time processing children's books. I learned how to cover books and also talked to a library assistant that I was working with about labeling books and organizing them into categories and sub-categories.
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