mlpalmer

As my internship comes to a close, I think a lot about what I have learned as well as everything I want to continue learning. My last day is just like any other, except much quieter. I realize just how much I’ve grown through this internship, as I sit at the Youth Services desk and don’t have a knot in my stomach each time a patron approaches. I have spent much of today poking around on the SIRSI system trying to gain a better understanding of it. I intend to continue my work in the world of public libraries, so I want to make sure I can enter a library job knowing how to use the system. I have become used to knowing when to get up and clean the children’s area, and when to restock the displays. I think about all of the projects, big and small I wish I had completed while I was here including doing a true reorganizing and fixing of the easy juvenile section, all the way up to getting traction to begin a history and literature program for teens and young adults. Each moment here has been an experience, most of them overwhelmingly positive and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me in the public library sector.

 

For two weeks, I was farmed out to two different branches in order to learn how the experiences differ from that of the Main library. I spent a week at Melrose Library, and then the following week I was at Raleigh Court Library. The experiences were as different from each other as they are from the Main library. Melrose is in a rather poor part of the city, and the library reflects that with the resources they are able to provide. The staff was easy to work with, but the work itself was different from what I have been used to at Main. The children and youth section had their own half of the library yet the collection of books was smaller and there were far fewer available activities for kids to work with. Regardless, the patrons were very familiar with the staff and it was obvious how important the library is to the community.

Raleigh Court library is almost as large as Main with plenty of resources but not nearly as much staff. There were usually three people maximum working, so they were very grateful to have an intern to help with everything. I did a lot of shelving and cleaning up shelves just so the librarians could stay at the desk and check in all of the books and movies that come in. The circulation at Raleigh Court seems to be so much more than at Main, perhaps because it’s all done in one place as opposed to in several sections. However it was a fun and dynamic experience, one I would be happy to repeat if they ever need assistance.

My internship so far has presented me with multiple challenges and opportunities: working in the Roanoke City Law Library, assisting with major events, transcribing hundreds of Early Education surveys, as well as interacting with the public. However, none of these were as daunting as my first day working the Youth Services desk on my own. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I expected to be at the desk assisting as I’ve done a couple of times a week. When I arrived, I learned that the entire staff was either at a conference or at a branch assisting the branch managers. The Main library Youth Services department was left in the hands of work study students and interns, myself included. I had been in the Law Library all week so I was unaware of the conference. As I arrived, another intern was leaving and informed that the work study student of the day was at lunch and would return an hour later. For an hour, it was just me, the desk, and a fair amount of apprehension.

As I hadn’t manned the desk on my own before, I hadn’t had the opportunity to familiarize myself much with the system. Of course within ten minutes of my arrival, a call came in from a branch with a hold request for a book. So I had to not only answer the phone to represent the department, I had to use the system to find a book and see if we had it available. It doesn’t sound terribly difficult in theory, but in practice there was a tremendous amount of pressure for me to do it quickly and correctly. I ended up having to check fines, attempt to figure out the limit of fines before a user was restricted from checking out new books, logging users onto computers, and attempting to keep an eye on seven to ten small children who were running around without much supervision. Thankfully it all went smoothly for the most part, but it was quite eye opening and I learned that being a librarian is much harder than it appears.

In the past two weeks, I have been working in departments outside of the Youth Services area, and it has given me a new appreciation for all that happens in a public library, as well as how everything works together. On Mondays during the month of February, I spend my mornings in the depths of the library with Tech Services and the catalogers. I met with the head of the department, Lisa, who gave me insight into what goes on behind the scenes. One of the most telling things about the job is that, while I was there, there was nothing to do. The library has had their budget slashed and so there are rarely new acquisitions for her to catalog. We sat talking for three hours about all of the odd jobs that she does in addition to cataloging, such as being the director of a foundation that works with those with special needs. The director of the city library system called while I was there and I got to see how people interact, as though the library is a big family.

In addition to Youth Services and Tech Services, I have had the opportunity to sit in on two Saturday classes in the Virginia Room, the archive of the library. The first Saturday of this month was a class on Finding Elusive Women, and the crowded room was given several pages of helpful tools and a lecture on how best to use databases to find women in history. The class is centered on genealogy, so Wendy Allen, the archivist, used the examples of her own family tree to show how she has traced her lineage back several generations. The second Saturday was a class on how to use the census and its variations to track genealogy. I was not aware of how complex it could be and all of the different subsets that exist. It was interesting to learn and both classes had at least a dozen attendees with their own stories to tell and challenges to share. Sitting in on the classes gave me a new appreciation for the types of services that a library can provide outside of just providing books and internet access.

This semester, I have the pleasure of interning with the Roanoke City Public Library system in the youth services department. The first two weeks have been full of adventures and learning a lot in a short span of time, and it has been more fun with each passing day. I have learned the basics of the complicated system the library uses and I have done some of the simpler tasks such as checking books in and out, and getting patrons logged onto the computers. In addition, I have begun one of two pretty large tasks that I will continue chipping away at. I am weeding the juvenile section of books that haven’t been circulated in the past two years, and then my supervisor and I sit down and see if the books should be kept, sent to a branch, or recycled.

While I am mostly at the main branch of the library in the center of the city, I have gone to help fill in at a branch with my supervisor. It is a very different experience from working at the branch, and I look forward to continuing to go to branches and learn the ropes there. I have also had the pleasure of filling in for Star City Reads volunteers, and I have been going to local schools to read to young children in the mornings. There are always plenty of things to be done in a public library system, and so far I have enjoyed it all!

As I close the semester in this internship, it is a bittersweet type of feeling. I have learned so much in the last few months, from what accessioning is to helping set up events to inventorying and cataloging hundreds of items. Not only this, I learned why it is so important to properly care for and properly inventory items. A lack of these professional skills has made it incredibly difficult for Ashley Webb, as well as interns and volunteers, to discern exactly what is in the collection. I have learned just how much it takes to properly care of items and the amount of effort a simple inventory takes. It is no easy task and it was a privilege to have helped the organization. At the same time, there is still much work to be done. The title of this blog is a bit of a pun, since I have actually inventoried about a dozen or so forks. However, it is also important to state that it isn’t the end of the road, not for the HMWV. With all of the work left to be done, the road is simply forking to the side as I continue down my path and the museum keeps on striving to create a complete and accurate inventory and record system. I have learned that this job is too large for just a few people and must truly be a community effort through the help of volunteers and the community.