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.

Wednesdays, Chairs, and More

          I worked in the tech department a lot today. They needed some covering and stickering done. I think 13 boxes came in from their orders. So I did a lot of that. One thing I love when I'm there though is that I get to see so many books and sometimes books that have just come out. It's great to see all the titles. I found one called "The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth" interesting. Others made me laugh, like silly ones about the troubles of the 5th grade, and I remember there was one in which I enjoyed the pun ("Only the Good Spy Young"). Sitara was here again today so I showed her some more stuff. Basically, I taught her how to cover and we did some shelving together. She catches on quickly so a lot of the time she knew where things went already but I did help her with some books. Everything gets done even faster now that she's started working here. It's good for the library. Oh! And I just had to mention that the two tech librarians got new chairs today. They were really cool and looked extremely comfortable. It was funny because they put them together and the directions even said at the end, "BEHOLD! Your chair is finished." I mentally applauded the direction-makers for their sense of humor (intentional or not).

And Another Tuesday...

          I got to learn more about the SIRSI system today. That was interesting. I did the global edit again and now I did it by myself. I knew where to go in the program and what to click. Then, I learned a new task in which I checked the circulation of the book. I would scan the book's barcode and I could look up how many times the book was checked out. Some libraries give out receipts when checking out books but we strictly use the "date due" slips so sometimes the number of stamps on the slips (every time the book is checked out the date gets stamped on the slip) didn't match up. Since the librarians would often look at how many stamps were on the "date due" slip as a reference to see how often the book was checked out, I had to put more stamps on the slips if they didn't have as many as they were supposed to. I also helped Marianne, the teen librarian, weed out (take out older books) young adult books from the "new young adult" section.

Gleeful Monday

          Today was a new tech thing: CDs (more accurately, audiobooks on CD). A lot of work goes into making audio books presentable... maybe even more than with books. We get the orders and we have to open them and write Pequot Library on every CD with Sharpie. Sometimes there can be as many as 21 CDs for really long books so occasionally it takes a while. There used to be stickers that went on the CDs, but sometimes they got caught when people went to play them so now we just write with permanent marker. I have to place a label lock (a clear sticker) over the spine label (sticker that describes the book in a way such as giving the first 3 letters of the author's name). Then I have to cut up the box the audiobook comes in and place the front, back, and side into our CD containers. Finally, I place all the CDs in CD sleeves and put them inside the container. And voila! An audiobook is done.

          In other news, I heard a story about a patron who came in today and started spraying bug spray all over. Apparently, he declared that the library had a bug infestation and he couldn't handle it. I have no idea what I would have done in that situation. Dealing with people upstairs can sometimes be such a hassle. While annoying, it wouldn't have been so bad but you can't just do that. If you have a problem, tell the librarians or go to another library. It was especially disturbing because some of the things he sprayed were restored - such as leather chairs and wooden tables - so the spray could have damaged them.

          On a happier note though, we have a new part-time staff member. She is Leslie's daughter, Sitara. She was very nice and a great help. I was "training" her in a sense, although it was a little funny because she's older than me (same age, but already finished her freshman year in college). However, we even know someone in common - my friend from Amity who's in Sitara's year at Vassar.

Fridays and Nancy Drew

          I'll be honest. Friday was A LOT of shelving work. I don't understand how there can always be so many books to put away. I get done with one cart and there's a new one waiting. I guess it's mostly because it's a small library. There's not always a person just to do shelving so sometimes it gets backed up. I'm glad I can help out with it though. They really need that done so it's nice to know that it's vital to the running of the library. I know where pretty much everything is located now, so it's good I learned that. Shelving itself isn't too hard though.

          On a different point, something pretty cool happened today. At least, I thought it was cool. Vicki, one of the tech librarians, found an original Nancy Drew book. Apparently it's very different from the ones the library has. For example, the same book had completely different chapter titles and some different text. I just thought it was interesting. Old books can be very intriguing. The library has a whole collection of them, which I hope to learn more about sometime.

Thursday - Global Edit

          Today was pretty good. I helped out in the children's section again. It's amazing how messy it can get. Not surprising though - they're kids. There was more reorganizing today with labels. I had to change old summer reading list books to regular books. This entailed taking off some stickers, doing a global edit (more about that in a second), and reshelving them in their regular places. Now, the global edit was something new. It wasn't very complicated, but it was quite helpful. Basically, I used the computer to change all the old summer reading books to regular books located in the children's section. I used the library's system (SIRSI, I think it's called), went to cataloguing, and found "global edit". I simply commanded the computer to modify the item type - "schoollistp" (summer reading books) to "book" - and the location to "Children's". Then I just had to scan the barcodes and they all changed.

A Wonderful Wednesday

          We were swamped with books today so I helped put them back. The rest of the staff was so grateful... so it's not the most exciting thing in the world but I felt good. Honestly, there's so much to do at a little library to keep it running. For example, I remember how the librarian at the desk, Adair, was checking out books, telling me what to do, and handling a phone call all at the same time. Sometimes there really isn't a spare minute!

          However, I did have an interesting conversation about the library's labelling system. There are so many different categories. There's a room for all new releases (fiction, non-fiction, young adult fiction, etc.) and there's the children's room, which has a ton of categories. They have a holiday section, biography section, graphic novel section, picture book section, and so on. One of the sections is called the "easy reader" section - basically, between the difficulty level of picture books and chapter books. Marianne, the tech and teen librarian, explained to me what the easy readers were and the pros and cons of having so many labels. She recalled how these easy readers were just considered picture books when she was a kid. While she agreed that the labelling made it easier to find the appropriate reading level for a child, she also worried that so many labels "boxed kids in". Instead of looking for topics the children liked, she noted that many parents just asked about reading levels. I agree with her that perhaps there's too much of a focus on labelling and not enough on letting kids explore their interests.

Tuesday

          So today's big lesson was about how the library provides its services. I learned that libraries really need to be up-to-date on books to function well. A primary service of a library is to get new books to patrons as quickly as possible. People count on the library as an alternative to actually buying books, so they want new books. I helped reorganize some books for this very purpose - books older than 6 months were removed from "new" status and put with regular books instead of new releases.

Friday (Prom Day)

          Today was a pretty relaxing day. Nothing too exciting happened, but I was proud when I could help a patron find a book she was looking for. There's just something about actually having enough knowledge that people ask you for help that I find very cool. On a different note, I read an interesting book on my lunch break. It was called The Curse of the Good Girl and was about how social stereotypes of girls prevent them from reaching their true potential. I liked the book and agreed with a lot of it. It was thought-provoking.