Children's Art Festival

Last week the museum held it's annual Art Festival for children. It was a really great time. They had various craft booths such as beading, watercolor over oil pastels, and a mural. I worked one of the craft tables. "Funny Jumping Frogs!" We helped the kids choose a favorite color of paper, a light green or dark green frog, and helped them glue googly eyes, a red curly tongue, and fold the frog to where he was hopping off the page. Most of the kids and parents came up asking, "now what do we do, here?" So, we just took them through the steps. We let them work from which ever end they wanted. The kids had fun coloring their frogs and backgrounds with oil pastels. I really had a great time working this booth for three hours. We did hundreds of frogs! But it was a nice weather day and not too exhausting. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with kids. I would say things like, "are you ready to make your frog jump?" and "that's clever" as well as, "would you like me to do it, or would you like to glue it?" Some of the kids were more independent than others, and some more detail oriented than others. Others, still were more creative and did things like create mutant frogs, with space ships in the background. Others did patterns that reveled tie-dye, and abstract art. I got a message from the public library about 30 minutes away from me that told me that were interested in having me volunteer in their children's department, especially for the summer. I am enthused about this. I am devising a way to get there and saving up my money for the mandatory background check. They refund the money after your first 10 hours at the library. I am also interested in joining the Friends of the Library at my local library which meets once a month. I am thinking about it, but we'll see. Thanks for taking the time out to read this blog. I hope I have many more exciting things to share with you.

My Personal Research

As of current, I am now trying to engage in some form of personal research to stay informed on my field. One thing I intend to do for sure next month, is to become a member of ALA. I have been wanting to for a while, but haven't set aside the necessary funds yet. I have to decide which specialization I want to go with. What I am doing today, consists of exploring Magnolia through my public library access and selecting two book journals that will be of use to me in discovering what is new in the book industry. I have selected Library Journal and Booklist. This ought to keep me current in my field so that when or if I get a library position I desire, I will know how to use these selection tools to my advantage. A typical subscription to these magazine may be from 157 to 200 some odd dollars. Money I can save by going to the "Professional Development Collection" of Ebsco host. I haven't taken the time to sit down and actually read any of this yet. Hopefully I can come up with a schedule that will help me divvy up my time daily for this activity. Another thing I am doing is requesting books at my public library through ILL so I can check them out before purchasing them. Included were lots of books on programming for public libraries and outreach. I also plan to order from Amazon some books that were actually only a couple of cents. If I order up to $25 dollars worth of books, the shipping is free! Currently, my public library personnel states that there is not much volunteer work available. The Children's Librarian told me she will let me know as it approaches, if she will need any assistance for the Summer Reading Program. It seems so difficult to get a position, even as a volunteer somewhere these days. And everyone wants you to be a student at the University in order to get on. I have now been out of school for two years. And have no job.

New Library: Lauren Rogers Museum of Art Library

A month ago I began working at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art's Library and Archives department with Brianna Barnard. To date, I have been involved in a number of projects there. First, I selected a specified number of archived postcards to preserve. A project that took 5 hours to complete. Next, I filed art mailings from various sources in the vertical file system by artist. After completing this, I embarked on a project that involved recording the date and title of old newspaper holdings in the library on an excel spreadsheet. The newspapers were very brittle and it took care to handle these. The purpose of this project is to later, discover which of our newspapers have been preserved in microfilm at the Department of Mississippi Archives. Our next endeavor, will be to separate out those newspapers that have yet to be microfilmed and attempting to keep them in a condition that will be conducive to transferring them to microfilm. I shelved a few books. And am now writing Annotated Bibliographies for the European Art Books so that they can be conformed to our new classification system for books of the same artist to be together on the shelves. This requires, at times, splitting up series of books that may have at one time been in a set. The Bibliography will also assist with the process of checking cataloging files for accuracy. The library uses Dublin Core and Past Perfect Museum Software both of which I will need to get acquainted with. At present, I am reading Metadata, a textbook for schemes relating to Dublin Core, etc. All this being said, I am enjoying my new position as volunteer library assistant and hope that this opens doors for me in the future!