Final Day of Internship

I completed the final day of my internship on April 20. I finished testing the federated search and wrote a brief report of the test and made recommendations. Several of the databases that were supposed to be included in the federated search were not being included, which was leaving out a great deal of academic articles. Also, FirstSearch was returning many, many items and most of them were not relevant. I suspect that there is a problem with translating the search from the federated search to OCLC.

Total hours completed 135

Federated Search: Learning and testing

This week I am learning about federated searching in general (journal articles,websites), learning about 360Search (tutorials, FAQs, Best Practices) and testing 360 search as we have it configured at MCU.

I have found some interesting results and find that at times the federated search is more difficult than I thought it would be.

Tues 6.5
Thurs 6.5

Federated Search

After testing I believe the "The" problem is fixed and the updating print holding in Serials Solutions is complete.

I returned to the federated search project and continued to evaluate which of our databases have 360Search connections and which would be link only. I completed lists of our databases, the ones we are currently configured for in subject searches and for federated search and the status of the connections for each. The next stop will be testing different combinations of databases in different federated searches (keyword, subject, etc).

Next week is Spring Break. I will not have my usual internship on Tuesday and Thursday but I do plan to visit some academic libraries.

ABCs of Military Sources

I attended a presentation on "The ABCs of Military Sources" last night which was held in conjunction with the DTIC conference that is going on this week. It was a very useful and fast paced introduction to a large variety of military sources, including military universities, military archives and historical documents, and miltary publications available online. (That's not technically part of my internship)

Today I worked on fixing a problem we have with many of our periodicals in Serials Solutions showing a title that begins with a "The." Unlike the catalog which automatically remove initial articles, Serials Solutions keeps them and lists all of those titles under T. This makes it difficult to find the item unless you search with the "The" which we usually tell people not to do. So the solution to the Serials Solutions problem was to go in and edit each title. This was only a problem for those titles which were unique to MCU and which had been entered with a "The" I did keep three "The" titles because I checked on the print copy and the "The" was there. One example was "The old schoolhouse."

Because Serials Solutions updates my edits overnight, I will not be able to test today's work until my next internship day on Thursday.

eBook Summit

I attended an eBook summit on Thursday instead of my internship. There was a speaker, small group discussions, and a panel for questions. Academic, government, and corporate librarians were on the panel and in the audience so there was a mix of ideas and experiences. I am pretty sure I was the only student.

My small group discussed the advantages and challenges of eBooks. I was familiar with most of the ideas discussed, but I did learn about the advantages/disadvantages of the variety of ways that eBooks can be acquired: (purchased or leased) and (individually or by collection) and (put in a catalog and/or put in a database)

One thing that really surprised me was that one government organization's library catalog displays who has checked an item out so that if you really need a book and it's checked out, you can go to that person and ask for it. I am surprised that they would do that, even if the collection is only professional books. But it does make sense.

0 hours

Virtual Branch projects continue

I did a little research and straightened out some problems Serials Solutions. I am still working on issues with SS including "The" and "A" in our print periodical holding.

7 hours
TOTAL so far = 102 hours

A new Serials Solution Project

Today I started a new Serials Solution Project. I am working on reviving the federated search (called 360 Search in Serials Solution). The Library had used the federated search approximately two years ago with unsatisfactory results and I am trying to improve and revive it.

Today I created an excel spreadsheet with three columns:
1. The serials that Serials Solutions can include in the federated search
2. The serials that MCU library holds
3. The serials that MCU had used in the federated search in the past.

I color coded each of the MCU serials titles to indicate if Serials Solutions can include it in a federated search or if S.S. could only display a link to the database which the user would have to search separately.

Next week I will discuss progress so far with my supervisor and proceed to the next step, which I think will be "turning on" the federated search and testing to see which serials we want to include in the overall federated search or in subject specific federated search.

7 hours.

Finishing the finished project

Today worked on the project some and there was a little more work left to do than I had thought. I have some minor problems and one particularly pesky problem: I have one more record in Serial Solutions than I had in the original Excel spreadsheet. There was some test data in Serial Solutions so I suspect that one of the test files did not get overwritten for some reason. Other minor problems were things like periods in the title and inconsistency in the titles.

7 hours.

Phase 3 completed

On Thursday, March 4 I completed the Serials Solutions project. I uploaded > 600 MCU holdings records in Serials Solutions. Prior to this project print serials holdings were not in our Serials Solutions account.

I recognized that the "Make List" feature of Millennium has the same types of functions that I did with SQL in the database I created in my Design and Management of Databases class.

I am trying not to use personal names in my blog so I won't name her, but the person who guided me in the project was an excellent teacher. In addition to learning the download/manipulate/upload process I learned a little about teaching also.

7 hrs

The Virtual Branch

Tuesday, March 2 was my first day in the virtual branch. I am working on a project to update all of our periodical holdings in Serials Solutions. The three steps of the project steps are:

1. Use Millenium "Make a List" to make a list of the periodical title, its holdings record number, and its ISSN.

2. Export the list to Excel and manipulate it as needed to convert the record number into a URL for the record, eliminate extraneous data, and correct title errors caused by special characters, particularly in foreign language titles.

3. Batch upload the file into Serials Solution.

We are now in step two.

Cataloging finale

I finished the cataloging project on bombing surveys. Quite of few of the "problems" from Tuesday turned out to be typo errors in the call numbers or other fields. Several of the items that I thought were missing records completely had records with the call number having an 8 instead of a 6 or something like that. Since I was searching by call number and then using that list to go down the shelf, my problem books were appearing to be either physically missing or missing their catalog record. So the good news was I only had half as many problems as it first appeared. Once the cataloger or I fixed the typos in the record, the missing books/missing records "appeared" in their proper place.

I have modified or deleted over 1500 records in my cataloging projects!!!
Today I also attended a short training session on the customer side of the new Millennium ILS and a short birthday cake social.


7 hours. (I have shortened my hours in an attempt to avoid 5pm traffic jams.)

Cataloging and Half-way point

More cataloging! I finished the project of entering 505 contents fields for the Foreign Affairs Headline series and started a new project linking records for bombing surveys from WWII. Which would have been slightly less interesting except that there were quite a few....problems?.... anomalies?...Things I didn't understand? I'm not sure what the word is but there was exactly one cart full. Still, I was able to finish about four shelves, which is most of Europe, successfully. I will find out more/work on the problems on Thursday and finish up the Pacific.

I have completed half of the minimum hours needed for my internship credit.
7 Hours. ( I left a little early)

Feb 16 and 18: Cataloging

I worked on a project in cataloging this week. I was entering Marc 505 contents fields to item records. By luck (I think) it was the Foreign Affairs Headline Series. My undergrad degree is in Government so it was really fun for me to see familiar authors and topics. It was also interesting because the dates were spread over a range from before WWII to the seventies. I was reminded how country name changes could dramatically affect search results.

The actual work was slow going at first but I picked up speed as I went along. At the beginning I was spending a lot of time looking at examples trying to decide to capitalize or not, how to treat certain punctuation, etc. As I filled in records I saw examples of how other parts of the record were done or situations I had already looked up and so I moved along faster.

7.5 + 7.5 =15 hours this week

Another Snow Day

Today was another snow day.
0 hours today, total 53 hours.

Snow Day

Quantico was closed on Tuesday, Feb 9 because of the snow.

0 hours.

Cataloging

I enjoyed my first day of cataloging. I linked catalog records in the new Millennium ILS so that the users can more easily find Congressional Hearings which had been bound together. I was surprised how fast the day flew by.

Although the work was repetitive, it was interesting to look at the various books and I found I had many questions. Instead of interrupting the cataloger every time I had a question, I set the books aside and twice during the day we went through the pile.

A couple of times I made mistakes. Once when a book was misshelved I didn't notice at first and changed the wrong catalog record by mistake. After that I was more careful about checking every call number and record. And isn't that what cataloging is all about?

7.5

I worked two more days at the reference desk this week. On Tuesday I worked at reference desk and at my desk in the reference office on a couple of new questions and continued to work on two pending longer term research questions.

I will be moving to cataloging next week. so for my last day the head reference librarian set aside time to "answer my questions." This was great because I had questions about the library that don't come up at the reference desk. We talked about:
the work schedule
relationships/division of labor with other departments (esp. the virtual library)
relationships with our different customers
work responsibilities besides reference (instruction, liaison work w/schools)

7.5+7.5 hrs for Tues and Thurs.

Thursday, Jan 21 was my fourth day in the reference department. I continued to work on reference questions and also attended an individual RefWorks teaching session and a library tour for an intern doing research for one of the schools.

I also "refreshed" the ref desk binder by reorganizing the information and putting it in a new binder with new tabs.

I learned where facilities management is when I noticed one of the clocks was working and took it to be fixed. The facilities at this library are excellently maintained.

I have noticed a lot of differences between the public library and MCU library. One is that the public library had a lot of meeting. I haven't seen one large group meeting here. At the public library there regularly scheduled meetings on Tuesdays. Different teams met, such as third Tuesday was the entire Info Dept at 1pm and the Childrens Dept at 3. There was an all staff meeting once a month, management teams, IT teams etc. There were also many meetings at library headquarters. So that a lot of time was spent in meetings, and staff from one branch would come to work the desks during "all staff" meetings. I will be curious to see how information is passed without meetings. I know email is used. Two things that I see that make meeting less needed are that there are dedicated people for IT and facilities instead of them being collateral duties that librarians do, and there are no part time people.

7.5 hrs

Ref desk week 2

Today I spent more time at the reference desk and worked more ref questions. I can answer a lot of the common questions that are brought to the ref desk that are not real ref questions, but are directional or policy:

Can I make free copies of this? You can make free copies of any library material, but nothing else.

Which computers can take a thumb drive? NONE, it's not allowed because thumb drives can contain executable files.

Where is...

And I've learned to identify the people who are wandering around looking for something they printed, but don't know which printer.

I am spending any extra time learning the resources (databases, links)available from the library's website.
7.5 hours

Reference Desk

For my second day I worked at the reference desk almost the entire day. I spent a short period of time at my desk attempting to locate and unpublished paper from 1972. I sent an email to the Air Force archives people but they were unable to locate it. I then began looking online for the authors. I wasn't able to locate one who had a very common name, but I was able to locate one person by connecting their name to a sport USAFA sports team. I think they will be shocked that someone wants their unpublished paper from when they were a student.

7.5 hours

I completed my first day as an intern in the reference department. I spent some time at the Ref desk answering questions about where to get headphones and where to make copies. I spent most of the time working on reference questions, one for an instructor, one for a student, and one for an ongoing project. I took me a long time to get the answers, but I know from my previous job that once I learn which databases to use and how to get to them that it will go much faster. I also spent some time in the Ref collection just learning what is there.

I think this was a pretty typical day for the reference librarians--a mix of duty at the ref desk, appointments, and research time at your desk. I think having a "typical" day for a first day is best. It wasn't the "ideal" day- One person was out sick, one person had a major family emergency, one person is on long term leave and their collaterals are temporarily distributed amongst the ref librarians. But that is typical.

Other things that are going on include that the library is in the process of migrating the ILS to Millennium.

Hours: 8 (9-5, too interesting to stop for lunch:)