August 18, 2015 (112 total)

Date: August 18, 2015

Time: 10am - 6pm

Hours Completed: 8 (112 total)

Administration:
Today I spend the first couple of hours with the library director at the Reference Desk.  We went over some additional administration tasks such as preparing and adjusting the budget and went over more details on how the library operates on the system level.  There are a lot of changes going on with the library system, the Mid-Wisconsin Federated Library System, and it was a good chance to touch base on the many details, politics, and history of what has been going on over the past several years.

Reference Desk:
I was also able to help some patrons on more 'typical' reference questions instead of assisting with the usual printing/computer questions and placing items on hold.  I had two questions concerning the history of the Village of Germantown and the surrounding areas and I was able to become more familiar how to locate this type of information.  Roberta went through the local documents that we have behind the reference desk with me and also additional sources and places to look for documents that the library does not currently have on file.

Processing/Cataloging:
I spent the majority of the afternoon with Janine, the adult fiction librarian, reviewing processing of adult fiction.  I processed the new books for the week and put them on the shelf towards the end of my shift.  I also took off the new books from October of last year and processed them to be placed in the general fiction collection.  New books usually stay in the new book area for about six months, but they have been staying on longer in the sections at the beginning of the alphabet due to the lack of room in these areas.

This gave me a good chance to take a better look at both the new book and fiction area of the library and see how the books are organized.  We discussed some concerns with the lack of room in both areas and on potential solutions that she is working on with the library director to allow more room  for material.  Some of these solutions included weeding the print reference collection and separately shelving the Christmas and/or story collection books, expanding book shelves, and placing the books that are still important to the fiction collection, but are very old or not checked out frequently in an achieve area of the library. Unfortunately, these are mostly temporarily solutions that would only last about six months to a year, but it gave me a more realistic idea of the problems that medium-sized public libraries face - even if they are relatively well funded.