Internship Week 5

Monday

Monday night was spent at the Audio Visual desk. This desk is generally fairly busy and popular and Monday was no exception. A patron asked if we had any French Hip Hop cds. Although the patron did not ask me and was already being assisted by a librarian I was interested to know if the library did have any French Hip Hop. I searched the catalog but couldn’t find anything. I headed over to Last.fm to search for French Hip Hop so that I could cross reference artist names in the library catalog. Still nothing. Finally, I used the Enhanced Catalog to search. I searched for “rap” selected “French” as the language and an NTM recording came right up! I grabbed the CD and searched the library for the patron but they had already left.

NTM video

Friday

The first part of my Friday was spent at the Readers Advisory desk with Mick Jacobsen. Mr. Jacobsen was working on a presentation on using screen capture software to shoot mini tutorials to assist with reference questions. Look forward to seeing the finished presentation.

I helped two patrons, I think a father and daughter, take a picture playing chess together. Although a very small part of my Friday night it was one of those heart warming moments that makes librarianship undoubtedly the right profession. I was called over the Audio Visual desk to help out during a rush period. I was able to answer voice mails which were left during this rush period. I have quite a bit of experience with phone “reference” at my normal job so I enjoy returning calls. I was able to help a book mobile patron pick out a workout DVD by returning one of these calls. She was extremely grateful, pleasant, and once again reaffirmed that libraries are all about interacting with people.

I also started this week fleshing out some ideas for the Digital Media Lab web presence I hope to have a ‘rough draft’ of this completed by the end of this month.