Internship: Week 13

Big news this week! I've finished the physics LibGuide! Want to see it? Click here. I'm excited because I think I have created a good template to continue working with. I think the guides are engaging and interesting. I have a little more time left here at Rodgers, so I'm hoping to get another completed, if I work really hard. I only have 5 more days left at Rodgers after today. With the holiday next week, I'll only be working Monday and Tuesday, and after that, it's just one more week. I'm actually ahead of schedule on my hours because I've working extra to make up, but I plan on coming in extra so that I can (hopefully) get another guide done.

Besides finishing the guide, I've attended the public presentation portion of an University Libraries interview. The presentation lasted about 20 minutes and questions took about 15; I thought the candidate did very well and I definitely picked up on some good tips for my own job search and interviews (if I ever get one!) Today, University Libraries is sponsoring Capstone International Coffee Hour and I'm helping out and representing Rodgers. It should be a nice outreach opportunity and a chance to interact with some of my colleagues.

Things are really starting to wrap up around here; I've learned so much this semester (more on that and a final evaluation of my time at Rodgers to come in a few weeks). I think my confidence on the reference desk has increased and I am so much more aware of what goes on in an academic library. I'm starting to get really excited/anxious for graduation!

Internship: Weeks 11 and 12

The push towards the end of the semester has begun. Exams will finish in less than a month, and I need to have my internship hours completed by the end of dead week (December 4). Technically, I'm behind, but I've made a strict schedule and I'm sticking to it, so I can get my hours completed and get my course credit.

Even though exams and final projects are approaching, Rodgers has been really quiet. I've sat at the reference desk 5 times over the last two weeks and have maybe answered 2 real reference questions and only a few directional questions. Of course, no library is hopping at 10 in the morning, so that could be why. I think I'm becoming more comfortable with answering questions and thinking through the question and my response carefully, which is definitely an improvement. I just wish I had more questions.

LibGuides is progressing nicely. I expect to have the physics guide completed next week. With some hard work, I could have the mathematics guide done before the semester ends. During a status meeting this week, we discussed the possibility of me staying on for few weeks in December and some time in January. I don't have a job yet (yikes!) and my lease isn't up until January 31, so some extra money and some experience would go a long way in helping me. I hope that we can get something together to make this a reality. I really like it here at Rodgers so I hope that this works out. I've learned a lot, and hopefully, I can continue to do so.

That's about it. It's been pretty quiet around here; I'm sure that will change as we get closer to exams!

Internship: Weeks 9 and 10

This has been an exciting two weeks because I finished the Nursing LibGuide! I was very excited to complete it and launch it. I'm still toying with the idea of conducting a usability test for it and will be bringing that up at the next status meeting next week.

I'm still enjoying my work at the reference desk, especially with my extended hours. I've had several really good question and spent a good deal of time last week on the phone with a biology professor about the availability of a certain journal. I found it difficult to articulate just how contracts work with databases and the journals (and their availability) to a non-librarian; and now that I've had some time to think about it, I think that I could more satisfactorily explain the situation to the patron. I was able to suggest he ILL the particular article, but he didn't care for that idea since he needed the article "yesterday". Why he waited so long to try to access it is beyond me. This is just another example of how people need to realize that the internet, as wonderful and advanced as it is, doesn't always have all the answers.

In other news, UA Libraries have brought in Kindles and they will be available for check-out starting next week. I'm really excited about this; it's a pilot program and we aren't really sure what to expect, but I'm hoping that it will bring more interest to the library and students will take advantage of something new and different. The Rodgers staff met this week to discuss the policies and procedures relating to the use of of the Kindle. We have six regular Kindles and six Kindle DXs available. I'm curious to see which one is going to be more popular or if it even matters. I really like the idea of using e-readers in libraries, but I haven't given much thought as far as academic libraries are concerned. Coming at it from a student prospective, I'm not sure if this is going to be well suited for research purposes; it may be better used as pleasure reading and simply as something cool to do some book browsing through. Look for more information about our success with the Kindle as it happens!

Internship: Weeks 7 and 8

It's been pretty quiet around here despite midterms. I'm loving working at the reference desk and am going to be increasing my time on Mondays from 1 hour to 2. I think working 3 hours a week on the reference desk is really good. I like working out there with the students and patrons. It gives me a chance to interact. I was going crazy; feeling like I was trapped in my office.

Other than working at the desk and trying to be as helpful as possible, I've been working on the LibGuides project. It's very time-consuming and I'm having some problems, but I'm going to a meeting about it next week, so hopefully I can get some of the kinks ironed out.

While I don't particularly enjoy working on this project, I do think it's a useful skill. It's given me something to put on my resume and it will be an interesting point to bring up during interviews. LibGuides is a nice product, and I love that I have been entrusted with such a large responsibility.

Internship: Weeks 5 and 6

I've been working at this internship for 6 weeks now and I've learned a ton about the way academic libraries function. Everything works pretty much the way I always thought it did and it matches up with my experience in the reading room for the most part, just on a larger scale. Something I never really realized, though, is how very little library-related work librarians actually do. Or at least what I consider library-related work.

These past two weeks my time at Rodgers has been dedicated to working on the LibGuides project. I've began my work on it, and it's incredibly time consuming; much more than I ever would have imagined. While it is something I'm doing for the library, to me, it doesn't feel like it. I never thought that a librarian's job would be filled with meetings and planning more than collection development, working with students, teach instruction sessions, etc. I think some of has to do with the fact that Rodgers only has 3 full time librarians, but I also think this is an important lesson for me to learn before I get out in the real world. Librarianship is not always about working in the library. Sometimes external issues have to be dealt with so the library can function the way we need it to.

In other news, I've started working on the reference desk! I will be working 2 hours a week, on Mondays and Tuesdays. I'm very excited about this opportunity and looking forward to improving my skills.

Internship: Weeks 3 and 4

I didn't blog about my internship last week, because it's been pretty slow. I've spending a lot of time working on the LibGuides project that I posted about a few weeks ago. It's going well; today I presented my research to the other librarians and we talked about what we liked about the various institutions that use LibGuides. Over the next few weeks, we will probably begin to piece together what we want in our version.

The only other thing of interest I did was last week I had a crash course on working the circulation desk. I enjoyed that and I really need to work up the courage to ask if I can work the desk regularly. I'm sure it's not any different than working the desk in the Reading Room, but it would nice to practice using Voyager since the only circulation system I'm really comfortable with is Athena (which they don't update anymore, so no one uses it).

Because this was accreditation week, my schedule has been completely thrown off. I'm ready for things to get back to normal and so I can get some more hours, because I feel like I'm falling behind.

Internship: Week 2

It's been a pretty interesting week at Rodgers. I'm still getting acquainted with the way everything works, but I'm hoping that next week I can really take off running. Probably the most exciting thing I did this week was sit in on an interview. We are currently in the process of hiring a temporary, full-time paraprofessional position, and a part-time (non-temporary) staff position. I had never been part of the group that actually does the interviewing, so I was thrilled when they allowed me to observe an interview for the full-time temporary position. I learned a great deal about the kinds of questions that are important to ask, and the qualities that make for a good paraprofessional. I was also really pleased when my opinion was taken seriously. I'm really enjoying working here because they treat me like an adult and a professional, not like a student.

Rodgers is exploring the idea of implementing LibGuides as a way for students to have better access to information needed for research. If you are unfamiliar with LibGuides, it's a content manager software system. Basically it allows you to create a web page with a series of tabs such as "databases", "books", "websites", etc so you can gain access to information on one subject easily. These are similar to subject guides in that they offer content releated to one subject, but the information is presented in a much better fashion. They also present the opportunity to provide library education and information literacy without looking messy or junking up a simple webpage. The university has just purchased access to them, and we've been working out the logistics of using the software. The best part of all of this, is that this is going to be my project! I will be heading up the attempt to create and upload these LibGuides to the Rodgers website and slowly begin filtering out the paper subject guides. I'm hoping I won't have too much trouble and that this will be a success.

Next week, I start meeting with various staff members to explore their job and duties. I'm excited about the prospect of learning more about the way Rodgers is run. I'm also hoping to spend more time on the reference desk. I would love the chance to "fly solo" by the end of the semester. Since reference is where I would like to eventually wind up, I would love to use this internship as an opportunity to gain some experience.

So far things are going really well. I'm excited about the opportunity to work with the LibGuides and I hope that they turn out to be successful. I think this is definitely turning out to be an excellent place for me to gain some valuable academic library experience.

Internship: Week 1

Monday I started my internship at Rogers Science and Engineering Library. It looks like it's going to be a great opportunity for me to learn a ton about life as an academic librarian. My internship host is fabulous and I know she is going to be an incredible mentor. This week was rather calm since it was my first week, but there are few things I wanted to share.

First, the most exciting thing for me is that I get my own office! I know that seems silly and immature, but I've never had a job that requires me to have an office and I never (in my wildest dreams) imagined that the staff at Rogers would be so incredible as to give me my own office. I've brought in a few things to make it homey and I feel so much more professional! I don't really feel like a student sitting in there, but a librarian with lots of important work to do. :)

Second, Rogers offers a digital tour via a Sony Walkman. The tour can also be accessed online here if you are curious about where I work. I took the tour on Monday and learned a lot about the library, but what it really made me do was think. Mostly about how I wished the main library on campus had something like this and that students would take advantage of it. Look for a feature blog post on my ideas about tours, both digital and in-person.

Third, I spent some quality time learning the various databases used by science, engineering, nursing, and math students. I knew very little about them, so I made myself a cheat sheet so I can quickly learn how to access and search them when I'm sitting on the reference desk. I explored the databases through the subject guides available near the reference desk. I've seen subject guides around libraries before, but never used them. I found it to be extremely helpful, and started thinking about makings some for the reading room and the communication databases/books/websites.

Fourth, today I went to a meeting about the new collection development software UA Libraries is using. Blackwell is the company and Collection Manager is the software; they have been using the system for a while, but it has been recently upgraded and someone was there to explain how to use the new features. It was amazing to get to sit in on something like this, and I'm really looking forward to being able to do it again. I learned a lot of collection development in a class I took and it was interesting to see how it gets applied outside the classroom.

So far, I'm enjoying my internship, and I'm looking forward to participating in some projects and learning more about what goes on in a branch library.

Changes Coming...

Now that school has started my life is suddenly a million times busier. I'm still working in the reading room, but only 10 hours a week. I'm a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) for an online DE class and I help out a few professors a few times a week. I'm taking two SLIS classes, Public Libraries and History of Libraries, as well as a French class to help me prepare just in case I decide to go after my Ph.D. I'm also auditing a history class just for fun. Wow, I sound busy, don't I? While being this busy is definitely a change, the biggest change is that I've also started an internship. I work 10 hours a week at Rogers Science and Engineering Library. It's mainly a reference internship, but I'm hoping to learn a lot about working in a branch library on a major university campus. At UA, Rogers houses all the science and engineering texts, as well as books on nursing, mathematics, and computer science. Its a good size space and has lots of nifty features.

With life changes, come changes to the blog. I've been posting pretty frequently, and I hope to try and blog at least twice a week. However, due to my ridiculous schedule, I might blog less (or I might even blog more! We'll see...). My internship requires me to keep a log of my daily activities at my internship site, so I've decided to do that here. I will have a weekly feature, probably posted on Fridays, about what I've done during the past week. If you would like to only read posts about my internship, click the "internship" tag at the bottom of this post and that will bring up everything I've written about working at Rogers.

Other changes...I've noticed that all the good blogs (or at least the blogs I read) have pictures, so I'm thinking of adding pictures (like I did today!) to try and spice things up. Let me know if you like the pictures and/or there is anything you would like to see more/less of.

If you've started back to school, I hope things are going well for you. If you're not in school, I hope life is treating you well!