Catching Up...

          I don't know how I missed this, but I completely forgot to put in the weekly reflections. However, I've written a paragraph or more for almost every day so I think it's okay if I keep this brief (if I even can).

          Week 1:

          I was very excited about my internship. It was so strange to be going to the library instead of school though. I learned a lot about what the tech department does and how much work actually goes into get a book ready to be on the library shelf. I got to work at storytime. I also learned about library conferences. Before I did this, I didn't even know they had those... although it makes sense now that I think about it. Of course, I put back books as well. It's not difficult but you have to know where they go in the library and how some things work (for example, you alphabetize by author, then book title, and so on). Everything was relaxed but interesting. So far, the internship was great.

          Week 2:

          In week 2, I learned about how the library decides what's new or not. When I was changing books from "new" to regular, it was new if it appeared on the shelves in the last 6 months. It's important for a library to stay on top of this stuff or patrons will want to know where the new books are, and they won't be satisfied with the library. I also found out a little bit about the labelling system used at Pequot. There are different stickers, for example, that show what kind of book you're dealing with so patrons can see it at a glance... like the "mystery" sticker for mysteries. Finally, I learned some things on their computer system - such as the global edit. It edits items in the system so you can just scan a bunch instead of having to edit each one individually.

          Week 3:

          I tackled audio books in week 3 and learned to check how often a book has circulated. I had fun watching the tech librarians assemble their new office chairs (the instructions said, "BEHOLD!" at the end so it was pretty funny). Plus, I helped "train" a new staff member with tech stuff and saw a lot of cool books. On Thursday, I got to shadow Marianne and see the cataloguing side of things. I don't know how she does it, but with some training I understand it's not hard... just tedious. I also saw a Shakespeare for kids program that day. It was very cute. And on Friday, I helped people set up for the library's potluck.

          Week 4:

          I can't believe it's the last week of internship! I helped out a lot with summer reading this week because it's getting close to summer (obviously). I moved some books to a new location to make room for prizes, brought some prizes up to a cabinet, and decorated a prize box. I've managed to read a few books during my internship, which I find really nice since I haven't had time to read lately. I'd read during lunch sometimes, and once in a while I had to wait for someone to finish cataloguing so I could have some work. That didn't happen too often though. I'd always be busy stickering and covering or shelving. The work of a small library is never done.

THE END!

Thursday - My actual last day

          Today is actually my last day of internship because I have all the hours done. I can't believe it! I don't even know what to say. It's been just a wonderful experience for me. Here's are some things about today:

         

• I saw plans for the Pequot's addition. It looks really nice. The children's section is going to be made bigger as well as the parking lot.
• I stickered and shelved a bit. Sitara is working on a database, which I thought was interesting... something to do with entering in teacher's information about books.
• I also helped Susan, the children's librarian, decorate a box for the summer reading prizes. Basically, it was like wrapping it up to make it look nice. It was very cute, reflecting the theme of this year's summer reading: One world, many stories. I think that's a very cool theme that they can have a lot of fun with.
• And yeah, there you have it. My life at the Pequot Library.

Wednesday... Past Halfway...

          Today was a gorgeous day. I enjoyed it on my lunch break when I went to Spic and Span, a lovely little sandwich shop in Southport. That's really not the point of this entry, but it was the first thing I thought of. I finished stickering all the boxes of books we currently have and covered some. I helped make room by taking boxes of donations to the book sorting room. They have a room for all the books they get where they put them into different categories for the book sale. Yeah, Pequot has a HUGE book sale in July. It's actually a big deal. They prepare for it year-round and people come from all over the place. I think that's because we sell good antique books or something like that. What else? The Baker and Taylor (a company we order books from) people were here to look through the accounts and processes. That's all I know about that though. Sitara was working on entering data into a database, which I thought could be boring (many things could be) but useful to know. Oh! And there was debate on labels. We have "mystery" labels and "fantasy" labels and such that go on the books so people can easily see the genre. I heard Marianne and Vicki, the tech librarians, discuss the pros and cons of using so many labels and which ones to use and how to classify certain books. It was interesting.

Tuesday... Getting Closer...

          I'm trying to think if there's anything noteworthy for Tuesday. Nothing I can think of at the moment, but one of the cool things about working at the library is seeing all the books. So while I might sometimes be doing old, repetitive tasks... I'm always seeing new books. Some of them look really interesting and I write down their titles. Others are extremely strange or something I know will circulate a lot (many people will check it out) but isn't personally my style. If I have a day where I mostly need to cover and sticker the books (since there are a lot of them and it takes longer than you'd think) once in a while I'll read a book while I'm doing it. My hands know what to do from memory so I can read at the same time. I've read three books (since I don't do it all the time). One of them was "The Hunger Games", which I'm so glad I finally had time for. I've been wanting to read it for a long time.

Last Monday of Internship!

          I can't even believe it's the last week of internship. It went by so quickly! Today, the most interesting thing was getting ready for the summer reading program. I had to move a whole section of books (board-books) to a different area of the library (moving them from a large container to actual shelves). Then, I had to clean out a large cabinet and fill it with books that were to be prizes in the summer. I went downstairs to get the books and there were so many of them. I couldn't even finish. I was a little more than halfway through when I luckily checked my phone for the time. It was 5:05 and I normally leave at 5:00 to catch the train. I told everyone I had to go and practically ran out of there. I guess time flies when you're having fun... or in the middle of carrying a ton of books.

Friday, Friday, Gotta Get Down On Friday

          Friday had a lot of tech and shelving work. However, I did help out Kai (the auditorium coordinator) and Susan (children's librarian) with organizing for the potluck. Pequot has one every year I think and it seems like a lot of fun. For example, they had chalk for the children to draw on their walkway and hula hoops to play with and a badminton net. Plus, there was obviously lots of food. I helped set up - decorated with some flowers, washed off the drink dispensers, and more.

          Also, I met another new staff member (or at least new to me). His name is Nabid and he's actually a senior in high school like me. Next year he'll be going to UConn for biomedical engineering. I was pretty impressed. He helped out a lot and we actually did pretty much everything that needed to be done. So we had a little work straightening up a display (books to be sold) and making it look nice. But then, something that's happened occasionally when I worked happened for the first time on my internship. We had to shelf-read. This is one of the strangest things I've ever done for a job, but I realize why it's necessary. It can just be so boring sometimes. Shelf reading is essentially what it says... we just look along the shelves. We do this to see if any books are out of order or completely in the wrong place or whatever else can go wrong. I just find it odd that walking around looking at books for a mistake is a job that needs to be done. Yet, then again, sometimes I find a lot of things wrong. So I guess that's why it's important.

Shadowing on Thursday

          Today I got to shadow Marianne. It was very interesting. I finally got to see, in detail, what she does. I always had a vague idea - a mysterious thing called "cataloguing" - but finally I got to learn firsthand. There's a whole system in SIRSI that she uses & basically she denotes how to find the book in our library. She used to have a scanner for barcodes but now she puts them in manually (except she's very adept at it from practice so it doesn't actually take long and she doesn't need to look at the keys). A lot of the time, other libraries already have a book in the system. So if their information matches ours we can just use that, and if not, we usually just need to make minor changes. Sometimes, our library is the first to put a book in the catalogue. Marianne marks down every time this happens for reference. Finally, I saw actually creating information for a book. I don't think I understood it all - you had to search online and import things and make sure there was enough information - but it was still cool to learn about.

          PS- Oh! I also sat in on a program the library was offering for children. It was Shakespeare for kids and was quite cool actually. A lady came in a explained the plot of "Much Ado About Nothing" using paper plate puppets. After it, I really wanted to read the play. She engaged the children as well at times, making them act out scenes. It was a fun and enjoyable program.