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!

Final Week

This is my final week doing my practicum with the Laurel-Jones County Library. Last week I read to the tots and provided a craft for them to create. Things went really well. I did a little ad libbing and had great participation, especially from the first group (day care) of kids. Jill said the things that I need to work on will come more naturally with time.

I got a little taste of cataloging when I went to technical services and watched one of the employees proofing DVDs. I did not get a chance to try my hand at it, but I got a look at how to do it.

Today, I helped Jessine with the magazines. She began by entering the issues of the magazines into the computer. She put stops on the magazines that will not circulate. She put barcodes and activated the magazines that will circulate. We switched out the old magazines for the newly processed ones on the magazine rack. The one's that were not going to be available for checkout were placed on the free rack. She also taught me how she processes new books.

Collection Development

http://www.baker-taylor.com/I got to work on some weeding for the library. I looked at the circulation logs for certain books and determined if they were MUSTIE and if they had circulated enough within a five year time period.

Today Jill explained how the library orders books. She began by having me read the article by Christie that was in the Laurel Leader Call (Sunday). She wrote about how the books go from receiving to the shelves and urged patrons to be patient when expecting books from their favorite authors and best seller lists. I read the Collection Development Policy of the Laurel-Jones County Library.

I was told that the distributor for the library is Baker and Taylor. They use standing orders for fiction and children's series books. The program is called Automatically Yours. The librarian selects which books on the master list to get. They must make sure books and audios are not duplicated. Jill had me check Polaris to check for duplicates. I only found one. Together, we filled the order online and printed a list for the acquisitions department.

Today, I brought my brand new copy of my book, Phenomenally Me to Ms. Carolyn and Mrs. Breland. They had me sign it and filled out a purchase order form for it. They purchased my copy from me and will cut me a check. I was impressed with the speed of which they began processing it. When it gets finished processing, we will put a plastic cover on it to keep it nice as long as possible. I am excited!

Jill gave me a procedure of package receiving and processing to look over. We will discuss this next week. I am glad to be learning about new things, but it seems like I had to wait till the end to get to this point. Collection development was the thing I was most interested in learning about from the beginning.

Jill also told me how she prepares the brochures on collection holdings in the library. She is changing how they do the brochures so that there are sub-genres included. This is designed to help the patrons better find something suited to their tastes. Alot to take in all at once.

Next week I will do my presentation of the Night to totally tots. I will be reading three books that I got from the curriculum materials center. I plan on practicing my delivery prior to that day.

Week after Summer Reading

The week after the Summer Reading Program ended, I resumed my work in the Reference section. I shifted the rest of the books. I made a cheat sheet for determining when files for internet usage would be pulled. When minors reach the age of 18, their files are pulled. I began creating my craft for my totally tots reading project. I decided the kids would create a night sky that can be hung on a door. It has a moon, foil and construction paper stars and is tied with yarn.

I can't wait to learn about other aspects of the library this month. I did not work Monday, due to the holiday. Jill was not at work today, so I just did the projects that we had been working on.

End of Summer Reading Program

Whew! Summer Reading is over. It culminated with a fun day for the kids that included prizes for reading throughout the month, a large blow up water slide, cookies, and bean bag toss. I was placed in charge of the grand prize for reading- which was choice of a brand new book. When we went outside, I was placed in charge of the bean bag toss. I had two girls helping me run this station. While Kerri was getting wet on the slide, I was giving prizes to those who won the bean bag toss. A problem came up when a huge gust of wind sent most things on my cart flying into the bushes. When people had finished helping me gather my things, I noticed that parents included- had helped themselves to the prizes. I reorganized the cart and continued with the tosses. But I had kids lying about winning and just trying to help themselves to the prizes. This was very disconcerting. Through the experience I learned that you have to be really strict with kids on rules. It was getting out of hand mainly because if no one was behind them, I allowed kids to continue to try to take turns at making the bean bags. We had a consolation prize, but the kids were getting confused by my helpers as to whether or not they were recieving a prize from the cart or a prize from the consolation treasure chest. The main thing to keep in mind is that the kids were there to have fun. So, I tried not to read too much into it.

The following day, we had an outdoor, water day for the tots. We had colored construction paper and paint brushes dipped in a water bowl that the kids could paint on. They also had a table where they mixed dyes to make different colors to use on their paintings. There were also two kiddie pools. Most of the kids belonged to a day care. The day was successful and I helped move chairs and tables.

Repairs

Yesterday I helped move books from one shelf to another, our continued project from last month. Then I went upstairs with Kari to learn how to do some repairs. We melted glue for spinal repairs, glued separated pages together, and made plastic covers. I was somewhat familiar with the covers and gluing from when I worked in the USM preservation department. She has a lot of work on her hands and she is the only person who does repairs in the library. I think I would really like to work in repairs or preservation/conservation. You get to spend a lot of meditative time and not so much team work is necessary.