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 I spent a short period of time at my desk attempting to locate and unpublished paper from 1972.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:)