Internship Week 11

Monday

On Monday I gave my fifth presentation at the Skokie Public Library. This was a lecture style class on electronic databases. I was observed and assisted in my presentation by Bruce Brigell Head of Reference at Skokie Public Library. I was glad to have Mr. Brigell present during the presentation as he was able to provide assistance with difficult questions that arose.

Friday

I went in early to work on my Digital Media Lab project. There were a couple snags involving php coding but thanks to the assistance of Mick Jacobsen the problem has been resolved (this was actually resolved on Sunday which I also spent at the library). I believe the project is shaping up nicely and hope to iron out the rough edges in the coming week. http://blogs.skokielibrary.info/medialab/

I worked at the audio-visual desk. My favorite interaction on Friday was assisting a woman in finding yoga DVDs. I used a catalog terminal and she was absolutely amazed by aquabrowser. She enjoyed the ability to search by genre, or author, and the fact that she could see a the cover of the DVD. We talked for a while about yoga and although she is a card holder at a different library she let me know that she would be back!

Internship Week 10

Monday

Monday was spent at the audio visual desk. Monday was quite busy at the library. There was a special screening of Where the Wild Things Are in the auditorium and many patrons were in the library for the viewing. I assisted a patron in inter library loaning all the seasons of Hogan’s Heroes.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to think of movies for the new feature display of films where a character (or characters) Beats the Odds. This proved to be difficult.

Friday

Friday was also spent at the audio-visual desk as it was extremely busy. Being that it was so busy and there were already librarians behind the desk, I decided to try out roving assistance. I assisted several patrons using the stand alone computers in the audio visual area. This was great and many of the patrons were excited to see how I used the catalog and asked questions about searching in the catalog. While assisting a patron she revealed to me that she was a retired librarian from the Chicago area. We talked and I discovered that she attended Dominican University for her MLIS back in 1967. She said I had great service skills and left me with other kind words as we located her material.

A patron was also interested in Chinese Opera songs. I had the great opportunity to attend several Peking Opera performances during my time in China and this was a topic I felt very comfortable with. The library had a few cds available which I helped the patron check out. The patron and I browsed the OCLC offerings for Peking Opera cds and had a couple inter library loaned. We also talked about the language the Peking opera is sung in, which is a dialect of Chinese with 13 tones. In hindsight I wish I would have shown them the Naxos music library database which the library has a subscription to.

A patron was interested in knowing if we had a particular Billie Holiday song “These N’ That N’ Those” Although we did not have this particular song I showed the patron how they could access this song through the web. They were completed elated that they could pull up the song anytime they wanted to and listen to it at home. I also helped the patron find a handful of other jazz musician tracks.

Internship Week 9

Monday

Monday was spent at the audiovisual desk at the Skokie Public Library. I had a very interesting request from a patron. The patron had recently checked out and watched the Underworld series from the library. The patron was very interested in the main character from the film, a charcter played by actress Kate Beckinsale. The patron wanted to know where Kate was from and what other films we had in the library with the actress. By using the aquabrowser layover it was quite easy to pull up several records for the patron. I helped the patron with several other titles that had Kate Beckinsale.

Another patron was interested in Film Noir. Luckily, Skokie Public Library has a great Movie List available on their website which I pulled up to assist the patron. http://www.skokielibrary.info/s_audiovisual/av_lists/av_ls_Movies/noir.asp

Friday

Friday was spent at the Reader’s Services desk. I assisted a patron in locating all materials that the library had available in Greek. This patron was very excited to see the shelves stocked with Greek books and a great selection of Greek films. I asked the patron if he was Greek and he said he was just interested in learning Greek and wanted to fully immerse himself in the language. I recommended that he also checked out Mango Languages and showed the patron where to access Mango languages through the Skokie Public Library website.

While straightening up the New Nonfiction section of the library I noticed over three new books on Keynes. I was interested as to why there had been such a resurgence in the interest in Keynes. Luckily, Wikipedia had an entire article outlining the resurgence:

In 2009 there were several books published by economists advocating a further shift towards Keynesian thinking. The authors advocated further reform in academic economics,^[9][63][64] policy making ^[9][63][64] and even the public’s general ethics.^[9] Theoretical arguments regarding the relative merits of free market versus mixed economy policies do not always yield a clear conclusion. via Wikipedia

Internship Week 8

Monday

On Monday I was at the Audio-Visual desk. A patron that I find quite enjoyable came in and we discussed cinema. I lean towards Italian, Swedish, and French Neo Realism with a sprinkling of Tiawenese Neo Realism. This patron does not have a preferred style in cinema but instead focuses on characters and stories. As always, our conversation ended with each of us walking away with a few films recommended by the other. A movie I always recommend, really to anyone, is Yi Yi.

These types of personal interactions make librarianship a very rewarding field.

I came into the library quite early on Monday to work on my Digital Media Lab project. This project is coming along quite well. Check my progress here :

http://blogs.skokielibrary.info/medialab/

Friday

Friday night was spent at the Readers Advisory Desk. I spent early Friday with my regular routine of desensitizing RFID tags on library books and relocate them to the Book Sale Room. I am always surprised at how quickly these books are sold. Although I desensitize quite a few books every week there is always ample space. This seems like a great way to generate revenue from books which would other wise be given away, destroyed, or recycled. I had a brief conversation with a patron who was quite happy to see the library generating a little revenue from this book sale. This patron was actually disappointed that the library no longer charges for DVD rentals, as they saw this as a great revenue source for the library. This was a first for me at the library, I’ve yet to meet someone who was happier paying for the rental.

I assisted a patron with some fairly general web based email skills. The highlight of the evening was helping a patron locate the stockpile of Shakira CDs. They grabbed all the CDs available and happily went on their way.

Internship Week 7

Monday

Monday night was spent on the Audiovisual desk. It was fairly busy night and as always quite interesting and exciting. The best question I received was from a patron looking for a video on giving a massage. I did a search in the Classic Catalog and found several books on massage, some videos on relaxation but nothing specific to giving a massage, or learning how to massage. I ran the search again using the enhanced catalog and located an electronic downloadable video from the OverDrive service : Easy Home Massage [electronic resource]: http://tinyurl.com/yew7ytn

The patron was excited that we had something available. I showed them how to access the video and I hope they download it at home.

Friday

Friday night was spent at the Reader’s Service Desk. The Reader’s Services desk was fairly busy this Friday night and I had several interesting questions. The first question was a patron looking for a audio-books by a particular narrator. I was able to use the enhanced catalog which also pulls up narrators. We also ran a Google search and found a website which lists all the audio-books the narrator has read. The patron had already listened to the selections we had available so we had several others inter library loaned.

The second interesting conversation was a family looking for a selection of audio books for an upcoming road trip. We were able to locate several titles using the Family Favorite Audiobook Guide from the Skokie Public Library (thank you Sharon!). The family was extremely pleased with this list and we were able to provide both the audio book and regular book of several of the titles.

I am always amazed at the amount of lists, pathfinders, reviews, and guides that Skokie has available. These are great custom resources which I always find very helpful. The creation and maintance of these resources is something I will definitely take with me into the library field.

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.

Internship Week 4

Monday

On Monday I worked at the audio-visual desk. Being that Chopin’s birthday is upcoming the librarian I was working with decided to make a sign and display to showcase Chopin’s works.

A patron was looking for an older film that was adapted from The Bailbondsman by Stanley Elkin. After researching the topic we were able to determine that the Alex and the Gypsy is a loose adaptation of the film. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate a DVD copy of the film as it has not been released on DVD.

We had a great conversation with a patron about the Winter Olympics, specifically curling, as it was being shown on the plasma screen in the AV area. We all agreed that curling is fairly unexciting to watch and possibly the only olympic sport that an average person without training could compete in (no offense to any professional curlers out there).

Friday

I spent my Friday night at the Reader’s Advisory desk. I was able to spend a brief amount of my time with Mick Jacobsen . It was great to hear about the exciting things he was doing with ileadu. I love the chances I’ve had at the Skokie Public Library to get away from the academia of librarianship and see what people are involved in on a daily basis. It got fairly busy that night with patrons. I showed a couple how to use the Overdrive service and they were absolutely delighted. They had one small problem though, they didn’t have an iPod as of yet they were only considering buying one. I showed them Skokie’s wide selection of play aways and they went away happy with some “work out” material. Unfortunately, a different patron ran into some difficulties with the OverDrive dedicated station. He was upset that the station had been changed from WMA to Mp3 synching format. Since I have been interning more patrons were coming in with iPods wanting to use the snych station.

I’m sure Mr. Greenwalt is going to hate me by the end of my internship as I keep directing these type of issues to him. Regardless of the issues that seem to occur with the Overdrive service I am genuinely surprised to see how many people are interested in using it and ask questions about how to use it. From my experience it seems that e-audio books are eclipsing the desire of e-books or e-book readers.

Intership Week 3

I only spent one day at the library this week. Although it was another short week it was very satisfying. I genuinely find myself looking forward to the days I get to spend volunteering at the Skokie Public Library. On Friday I got my hands dirty peeling rfid stickers off of books for the library book sale. The librarian explained to me the current and passed trends of the romance novel genre, which was extremely interesting. He explained that the paranormal genre which is popular now is being slowly eclipsed by Viking romance.

Case in point : The Outlaw Viking

I checked in on 4Square while in the library and was immediately greeted by the mayor of The Skokie Public Library on 4square, Toby Greenwalt, giving me tips on how to connect to the WiFi in the library. Well played Mr. Greenwalt, what a great example of using web 2.0 tools in an innovative and no cost way at a library.

Internship Week 2

Unfortunately I was only able to work one day at the library this week due to a vacation back to sunny Sarasota, FL.

This week I worked the readers advisory desk with several other librarians. It was a fairly busy weeknight and entirely enjoyable. We had several patrons who were interested in using the OverDrive service with their iTouch or iPhones. An ever dedicated librarian (Richard Kong) spent time assisting with the OverDrive difficulties and the patron was absolutely delighted to receive hands on assistance.

A librarian and I fielded a very interesting reader’s advisory/ reference question. A patron was looking for a book, although they were not entirely sure of the title, which their friend had read a review of in Haddasah magazine. I did a google site search (‘site:hadassh.org “search term”‘) to pull up a cached version of the article as it was no longer featured on the Haddasah website. After a quick search of Worldcat we were able to locate a copy for the patron in Boston and it is hopefully on it’s way.

Internship Week 1

This week I began my first hands experience at my internship.

Saturday

The week started off great on Saturday with Skokie’s Madden Bowl II. Richard Kong and Toby Greenwalt set up an amazing Madden 10 tournament for teens in the Skokie community. It was a great experience to be involved with new methods of community outreach and networking. Thanks to Richard Kong for this amazing video documenting the weekend:

Please also check out the Flickr Slideshow the of tournament

Monday:

On Monday I had my first desk experience working at the A/V desk at the library. I enjoyed fielding questions and learning more about the A/V department at the Skokie Library. I was very impressed with their Movie List Compiled By Librarians. During my desk time on Monday I assisted patrons with looking up movie titles, giving some recommendations, and placing holds on up and coming movies. I was really blown away the amount of new releases that the library has and the popularity of these titles with their patrons. Truly impressed by their helpful RSS Feed for New Releases.

Friday:

Friday was spent at the Readers Advisory desk. This was an exciting opportunity as I saw a wide variety of reference and advisory questions and was invited to participate in a manga club and book discussion group on The Plague by Camus.

We experienced two really interesting questions. The first was a patron looking for material on Middle Eastern/Arab Americans and their experiences with coping with their heritage and ethnicity. The librarian in charge did some great searches for the patron and we pulled a couple short story anthologies and novels. I remembered the recent movie Towelhead and brought the patron to the AV section to grab that as  well. I explained my internship and was flattered when she responded that I’ll be a great librarian because I seem so passionate and excited to help.

The second question was a patron looking for the number of copies of The Lovely Bones sold and how long the title remained on the New York Best Sellers List. We looked up this information in a Publisher’s Weekly Database.

Overall a great week, looking forward to spending more time at the SPL.