Reference Questions, 12/7/2011

So close...

1. Having trouble printing. There was no printer installed on the computer
2. Looking for a reference entry on the Rosenberg self-esteem scale
3. Looking for books on karate and wanted to know what databases would be good to search for it as well
4. Looking for a copier

The library was fairly packed tonight, but these people did not have many questions. It was a slow shift.

Reference Questions, 12/5/2011

Only 2 weeks left in the Fall Semester. WooHoo!

1. Needed help using the microfilm machine
2. Wanted to know if the legal drinking age was 18 until 1987. Yes it was.
3. Needed help printing from Publisher

Reference Questions, 11/30/2011

I can't wait for this semester to be over.

1. (Chat) Had question about citing a website in APA
2. (Chat) Another question about citing a website in APA
3. Looking for lost and found
4. Looking for the ABP
5. Needed help with the scanner
6. (Chat) Needed to know how to create an APA in-text citation for a song

APA is more popular than ever.

Reference Questions, 11/29/2011

Let's hope there are no more printing issues this week.

1. Paper wasn't printing. Had no money in her printing account and wasn't switching over to RU Express.
2. Needed a stapler
3. (Chat) Needed to know how to cite a picture in MLA style
4. Wanted to know how to print
5. Needed to know how to print one-sided
6. Looking for a book
7. Looking for the children's books

Yay! No printing problems this hour. :)

Reference Questions, 11/28/2011

We are now entering the final stretch. :)

1. Looking for the Encyclopedia of Careers
2. Was having trouble getting their flash drive to show up on the computer
3. Computer did not have a printer installed on it
4. Looking for some headphones
5. Looking for 3 different DVDs
6. Couldn't get her resume to print. The printer was just printing blank sheets of paper. She'd opened it from an email and for some reason she needed to save it before it would let her print. Once she saved it, it worked fine
7. Printer was printing blank sheets. Again there was another computer that was printing blanks sheets because she had not saved the document after opening it from an email. I believe the computer are having trouble getting going after Thanksgiving break.
8. More printing problems. This time the print assist window would not come up when she was trying to print. I just had her restart the computer and move to another one.
9. More printing fun. Same issue as above.

Love it when the printer server goes down across campus!

Reference Questions, 11/18/2011

This is the last day that the students will be here until after Thanksgiving.

1. (Chat) Wanted to cite just a chapter of a book in APA. However the book was not edited, so he just needed to cite the whole book not the specific chapter.This student was really trying to make things hard on himself.
2.  Needed to use the APA citation manual
3. Wanted to get copies of some different theses. I showed him our dissertation database and I suggested he contact the universities directly for ones the he could not find in the database.

Reference Questions, 11/17/2011

I was on the desk last night until 10 pm, and now I'm back for the first shift at 9 am.

1. Looking for scissors
2. Looking for stapler
3. Looking for the set of books Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology
4. Looking for a copier
5. Looking for a hole-puncher
6. Looking for a copier
7. Looking for a copier
8. Looking for binder clips
9. Looking for scissors

Reference Questions, 11/16/2011

I submitted a chapter proposal today. One down, two to go.

1. Looking for articles on homosexuality in adolescents
2. Wanted to know how to find articles that had cited an article in PsycINFO
3. Needed to add money to his printing account
4. Wanted to know if you could print from a laptop
5. Needed help finding books in the stacks
6. Needed to borrow a pen
7. (Chat) Needed to know how to create an APA in-text citation for a movie
8. Needed to clarification on how to create an APA in-text citation for a movie

It was a steady night. I'm so glad Thanksgiving is next week. :)

Reference Questions, 11/14/2011

1. Had a list of articles and needed to know how to find them. I showed him how to use the journal finder.
2. Needed to know how to use the scanner
3. Needed help with the scanner

Now for lunch and then back to article writing. :)

Reference Questions, 11/9/2011

I hope it's slow tonight so I can work on this article I'm supposed to be writing. That may be too much to ask though.

1. Wanted to know if the computers in the reference area had Word
2. Needed help finding a book in the reference collection and had a question about formatting a cover page in APA
3. Looking for a trash can
4. Wanted to know if there was a back exit in the library
5. Looking for a video that shows death ritual dancing
6. Looking for a recycling bin
7. Looking for databases that would be good for the debate on global warming. I suggested GreenFILE and Environment Complete. I showed her how to limit to scholarly articles and use the articles to find keywords.

Writing an article is not as fun as it sounds.

Reference Questions, 11/7/2011

Reference fun continues...

1. Needed help using the scanner
2. Student had several questions about Chicago citation style
3. Needed help using the scanner

Reference Questions, 11/6/2011

Sundays are always very long shifts (7 hours to be exact). Hopefully I can be productive today.

1. (Email) Having trouble getting into Ulrich's from their personal computer
2. Printer wasn't printing his paper
3. Stapler was empty
4. Wanted to know how to add printing money to her account
5. Grad student looking for a quiet, secluded place to grade papers
6. Wanted to know how to print in color
7. Looking for headphones
8. (Chat) Looking for scholarly articles on nurses and alcoholism programs. CINAHL to the rescue
9. Student had spilled a latte all over a computer work area. Thankfully the computer was spared.
10. Looking for labs that have the Peachtree software. It looks like that is in Walker and the Bonnie
11. Had emailed a link of an article from a database and couldn't get the link to work. I explained to him that database links are not permanent. I then showed him how to search some databases and email the articles to himself.
12. Needed to add printing money
13. Wanted to know when the library closed
14. Wanted to know if the library had his business calculus book
15. Wanted me to tell him where to find a specific book in the library
16. (Chat) Looking for articles on lesbian rappers
17. Wanted to borrow a highlighter
18. (Chat) Wanted to know how to cite a cartoon in APA for a Prezi presentation
19. Looking for a classroom with a large dry erase board
20. Looking for a pen that writes in green
21. Wanted to know how to get to the research search engine. Sigh. This guy was definitely an upper class man. I explained to him what our databases are and how they work/how you find the different ones for your major.
22. Vending machine decided not to give a student his drink, again. This seems to happen about once a week.
23. Wanted to know when the library closed

It was a steady afternoon, and I was able to get a little work done. Yay me.

VLA 2011 Presentation

I presented at my first library conference on Friday, October 28. It was at the 2011 VLA Annual Conference. This year's conference was held in Portsmouth, VA. Our session was apart of the Academic Track fro the conference and was submitted to and accepted by the College and Research Libraries (VLACRL) section of VLA, which means it was a peer-reviewed session. This makes my inner scholar so happy for some reason. :) Our session was entitled Free Tech Tools that Enhance Library Instruction. In it we covered Prezi, Mindomo and Bubbl.us, Jing, Lino it, Poll Everywhere and Google Forms. For each tool we covered we gave background info, things to know about the tool and examples of how we have used it in library instruction.

My co-presenters and I presented to a room of 70+ librarians. The session volunteer joked that if any hotel management had happened by our room, they would have made about half the people leave because of fire code violations! The presentation went great. My co-presenters and I couldn't have been happier. We received a lot of great feedback from the evaluations. We also got invited to write an article on our session for the next issue of Virgina Libraries. So, if all goes well I will be a published author soon.

Here's the Prezi we used during our session.

Reference Questions, 11/2/2011

It's Wednesday night at the reference desk, and tonight we are featuring Twizzlers. This is the last of the department's Halloween candy. :)

1. Looking for the stairs
2. (Chat) Looking for articles on palliative care and barriers, focusing specifically on cancer
3. Lost her paper when the power went out and wanted to know if there was anything I could do about it. Sadly no, since she hadn't saved her paper at all. Use your H-drive Highlanders! 

I've seen too many crying students this week because they are not using their H-drive. Sigh. I try to mention the H-drive in every class I teach because of this. Oh, and the entire campus did lose power tonight. It was crazy. So I'm sure there were several more students that lost their papers that didn't come to the desk. I did have about 7 students come to the desk just for candy, they could have at least asked a question. It really would have helped my numbers tonight.

Reference Questions, 11/1/2011

So, we've finally made it to November. Instruction is finally slowing down, but that just means that everything else I've been neglecting this semester needs attention. Ack!

1. Student was looking for articles on cyberbullying and how counselors cope with the stress of helping others deal with their problems. I could not find a single article on this. I believe the topic was a little too specific. I suggested he find articles on coping strategies and counselors and then on cyberbullying and counselors.
2. (Phone) Needed to know where to find biographical info on authors who had written an article she wanted to use in her annotated bibliography
3. Needed help finding books in the stacks
4. Looking for a stapler
5. Wanted to know how to add printing money
6. Help printed scanned images. Had to convert images to a PDF before they would print

Reference Questions, 10/31/2011

It's Halloween here at the reference desk. Several of our librarians are in costume, alas I did not join them. I'm too much of a fuddy duddy I guess.

1. Looking for a CD for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
2. Looking for Powell Hall

 It was a slow shift, and I even have candy at the desk!

Reference Questions, 10/25/2011

I have 4 hours on the desk today, and tomorrow I leave for VLA. I'm presenting at my first library conference. WooHoo!

1. (Email) Having trouble finding a particular article. I created a Jing video to show her how to find it. I love Jing!
2. Wanted to know how to print in color
3. Had another question about printing in color
4. Wanted to borrow some scissors
5. Wanted to know how to print single-sided
6. His headphones were not working on the computer. I couldn't figure out why they weren't so I had him move to another computer.
7.  Needed help using the scanner
8. (Email) Was trying to search the Wellesley Index and kept getting "subscription isn't valid" messages. It looks like this was a database that we had a free trial of, and the trial has now expired. Free trials are not supposed to be put int he database finder, but for some reason this one was. I suggested the Waterloo Directory of English Newspaper and Periodicals, 1800-1900, to her.
9. Having trouble printing. He was having trouble because he didn't have any money on his printing account.
10. (Chat) Wanted to know how to use Endnote. We do not have Endnote at RU, and I do not know how to use it. They said they didn't go to RU anyway.
11. Looking for a book about the Tinkerbell Effect
12. Looking for a book about writing fiction
13. Needed a guest login
14. Needed to know how to add money to his printing account
15. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
16. Needed help finding a particular book; she had the call number
17. Looking for the book Gregory, the terrible eater
18. Looking for change for a $10
19. Wanted to know how we decide what books to purchase for the library. I explained to him that we have subject liaisons here in the library that work with liaisons in the different departments across campus to decide what to purchase for the library.
20. Needed help opening a file from D2L
21. Wanted to know if something was scholarly was it also peer-reviewed
22. (Chat) Question about citing a speech in Chicago style

Here's the Jing video I created for email question #1. The video I sent to the student was clearer and much easier to see, of course.

Reference Questions, 10/21/2011

WooHoo! It's Friday, and I move into my new place tomorrow. I can't wait.

1. Looking for an open computer
2. Had call number and needed to know where the book would be located
3. Wanted to check out books; sent her to the front desk
4. Wanted to know if the printers printed double-sided

I'm done at the reference desk for the week. :)

MABUG Conference Presentation

I presented at my very first conference on Monday, October 3. The conference was the Mid-Atlantic Banner Users Group (MABUG) Banner in the Blue Ridge Conference, and it was held here at Radford University. My presentation was on Prezi. The session was well attended. There were about 20 people in attendance, and they asked a lot of great questions at the end of the session. I answered questions for over 15 minutes. Everyone seemed really excited about Prezi, and what it can do for their presentations. I even received a phone call from someone who had attended the session the following week. He had a few questions concerning the Prezi Desktop software.

Here is my MABUG presentation on Prezi:

Reference Questions, 10/19/2011

Ok, I'm back after a hiatus of sorts. Let's just say I've taken on too much this semester. Lesson learned.

1. Needed help finding a specific article
2. Looking for the book A Raisin in the Sun
3. Looking for a copier
4. Had question about what the title of the journal was for an article she was trying to create a reference for
5. Looking for books on minerals and mineralogy
6. (Chat) Looking for the APA LibGuide
7. Wanted to know how to cite a photo in APA
8. Wanted to know how to quote a quote from an article
9. Needed help opening a file from D2L. He didn't have PPT on his computer and this is why he was having trouble.
10. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
11. (Phone) Had question about a book they had checked out. I transferred them to the front desk.
12. Wanted to know how to print in B&W
13. Had question about APA in-text citations

cpd23: Things 13 & 14

I have been neglecting my cpd obligations over the last two months due to vacation, then an abscessed tooth, a root canal and a death in my family. Needless to say, my semester has started off rough, and hasn't improved much. Here I am now though to try to catch-up.

Thing 13:
I love Google Docs and Dropbox. I always wonder how we ever lived without these. They make collaboration and file sharing a breeze. I've been using both regularly since grad school. When I was president of the ALA student chapter at UNCG, Google Docs is how the other officers and I did all of our club work. I still use Google Docs today when collaborating across the miles with other librarians. Right now I'm preparing for a conference presentation and my co-collaborators and I used Google Docs to create and edit our conference proposal. I'm sure we will be using it more as we prepare of the presentation itself.

I use Dropbox to share files between work and home and between computers at work. It makes having to work away from you desk a lot less of a headache.

Thing 14:

I have never used Zotero, Mendeley or citeulike. My university subscribes to RefWorks and I am the librarian who teaches the workshops for it. So right now I am focused on the impending RefWorks up date. (I love it when sites decided to completely change how they do things!) I do need to check these other tools out though, and I will...someday.

Reference Questions, 9/18/2011

Working 2 Sundays in a row is not recommended. I'm so glad I have a 3 day weekend coming up.

1. Wanted to know what printer her printout would go to
2. (Chat) Question about using block quotes with APA
3. Wanted to know if she had to reshelve the books she used
4. Trouble printing from D2L
5. Looking for a textbook
6. Looking for a book on Descartes
7. Wanted a manilla envelope
8. Needed help with the scanner
9. Had a question about printing in color
10. How to print single sided

So glad that it was not as busy as it was last Sunday. That was a rough day.

Reference Questions, 9/13/2011

Ref desking in the afternoon.

1. Looking for a particular article. I showed her how to find the journal and go from there.
2. Looking for a quiet area with computers
3. Vending machine took her money and did not give her a drink. Had to call vending services since the drink was kept in the delivery slot and she had to go to the Bonnie Info Desk for a refund.

I'm glad this shift was calmer than Sunday.

Reference Questions, 9/11/2011

It's Sunday at the reference desk, and with the number of email questions and phone messages awaiting me this could be a busy day. Here we go for 7 hours...

1. (Email) Had a question about RefWorks
2. (Email) Had a question about accessing an ebook at another library
3. Looking for Alice in Wonderland
4. Trying to print some pictures she had scanned and they were not printing. I had her scan them as PDFs
5. Wanted his money back for some print outs that did not print correctly. I sent him to the Front Desk
6. (Phone Message) DNP student looking for databases that give stats on census data and state health department data. I told her how to find the American Fact Finder and the VA Dept. of Health sites.
7. Couldn't get her PowerPoint to print. Kept getting an error message saying that the printer was not configured for this document. Had her go to another computer.
8. Couldn't get her PowerPoint to print. Kept getting an error message saying that the printer was not configured for this document. I went to the printer properties and looked at every tab, but didn't change anything. It printed after that.
9. Looking for the textbook for his class
10. Wanted to know how printing worked, how they paid for it, etc.
11. (Chat) Had question about listing references in a reference list using APA citation style
12. Wanted his money back for some print outs that did not print correctly. I sent him to the Front Desk
13. Looking for her color print-out
14. Her computer kept freezing and wouldn't print. I had her go to another computer
15. Looking for the journal Music Therapy Perspectives
16. Wanted to know if she could check out a journal. I told her no, because lots of students have been coming in looking for the Music Therapy Perspectives journals. I told her she could use the copier or the scanner to make a copy of the article she needed.
17. Having trouble with the copier; sent her to the front desk
18. Wanted to know where the 9/11 remembrance was being held. McGuffey 203
19. Wanted to borrow some colored pencils. All I had to give her was highlighters.
20. (Email) Grad student had question about APA in-text citations when you introduce the quote with the author's name.
21. Student couldn't find his print out. He'd went to the wrong printer
22. Looking for magazine and newspaper articles on a global issue. She wanted to know where to go to look at the magazines and newspapers.
23. Looking for a stapler
24. Looking for a book on werewolves
25. Wanted to know what floor we are on
26. Wanted to know where to check out books
27. (Chat) Wanted to know how to format a cover page in APA
28. Looking for the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
29. Wanted to borrow the scissors
30. Stapler was out of staples
31. (Email) Having trouble accessing a book chapter in PyscINFO
32. Looking for some tips on how to search for articles on self esteem development and adolescents. I showed her how to mine an article, use index terms attached to articles and I suggested 3 other databases she could try.
33. Looking for books on the Russian Revolution
34. Wanted to know how to get articles from her EBSCO folder in the EBSCO database to her flash drive
35. (Chat) Question about how to cite an article found on ERIC in APA
36. Looking for reserves
37. (Email) Having trouble accessing an ebook chapter
38. (Phone) Having trouble accessing an ebook chapter
39. Needed help finding the book Tom Sawyer in the stacks
40. (Email) Having trouble accessing an ebook chapter
41.  Computer student was working on did not have a printer installed

Reference Questions, 9/7/2011

Wednesday night is here and I am at the reference desk.

1. (Chat) Had a question about using the APA LibGuide
2. Needed the guidelines for formatting a paper in APA style
3. (Chat) Had a question about using the APA LibGuide
4. Looking for the copier
5. (Chat) Student had a question about using block quotes in APA style
6. Looking for a water fountain
7. Wanted to know how to print after your printing money ran out
8. Bathrooms
9. Wanted to know if we had a textbook section
10. Needed help scanning
11. Bathrooms

It's nice to be getting real reference questions again.

Reference Questions, 9/6/2011

I'm here for 2 hours. Bring it.

1. Student needed help printing his paper single-sided
2. Looking for a VHS tape Secrets & Lies for her professor
3. (Chat) Looking for a database that contained different psychology tests; it was Mental Measurement Yearbook!
4. Student said Lisa did a great job yesterday, said her pointing out the H drive was very helpful and her explanation of the journal finder was also a big time saver
5. Looking for a trig textbook
6. Looking for the SRDS Lifestyle Market Analyst
7. (Chat) Looking for an actual test from the Mental Measurement Yearbook. The yearbook doesn't contain test on reviews and descriptions. You must contact the vendor to purchase the test. Or if you are willing to do the leg work, if the author's published about the test before it was finalized you might be able to find a preliminary copy of the test in a journal somewhere.
8. Looking for demographic info on Radford. I gave him the website for the American Fact Finder http://factfinder.census.gov 
9. (Chat) Wanted to know how to create an in-text citation in APA; got cut off before I could answer his questions completely
10. Student needed help finding a book in the stacks; had to get Alyssa to help with this one. Had too many other questions and chats happening
11. Needed help using the scanner
12. Student needed an article for her music therapy class and expected me to know the exact type of article she was looking for. She answered all the questions I asked her with "I don't know." I tried several different ways to help her. She finally said her friend was coming by to help her. OK.
13. Wanted to know if she was allowed to print stuff
14. Looking for the journal Musical Therapy Perspectives
15. Student found an umbrella by one of the computers. I had her take it to lost and found at the Front Desk.
16. Looking for a textbook, Norton Anthology of World Literature. We didn't have it.

This was a very busy 2 hours. I haven't been this busy at the reference desk in ages. I even had several real reference questions; imagine that.

Reference Questions, 9/5/2011

Here we go again.

1. Looking for Classroom A
2. Student was logged into a computer and it did not have any printers installed on it
3. Wanted to know if we had a Mac Book charger
4. Wanted to borrow a pen

Still nothing too difficult, but then again is it ever.

Reference Questions, 8/31/2011

It's my first night shift of the semester. I have moved from Tuesday to Wednesday nights. The new librarian took the Tuesday night shift. I've heard we've been busy all day. Let's see how my 4 hours go.

1. Needed help pasting a discussion post he'd composed in Word to his class' discussion board in Desire 2 Learn. D2L is such a pain. This is our first full semester using it and I expect to field lots of questions about it.
2. (Chat) Student needed help locating a specific article. Turns out it was actually a book chapter. We had the book int he library but the student wanted to look at it online. It was an older book (1972) so I was able to find it in Google Books for them.
3. Looking for 2 books for a class (The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy and The World is Flat). Surprising we had both and they were available. I told him he was very lucky.
4. Needed help printing off some PDFs. When he printed them off originally from IE the right side of the sheet was cut off. I had him open the PDF files in Adobe Reader and they printed off fine then.
5. Was looking for the study rooms. I pointed him to the 2nd floor.
6. Wanted to know where to check out books
7. Looking for her print out, said it printed to pay-for-print
8. Student's document didn't print; she didn't click accept in the print assist window
9. Student wanted to know if they had to pay for everything they printed.
10. Needed help printing from D2L
11. Wanted to know how they had to pay for printing
12. Wanted to know where her print out would be
13. Could not get a web page to print from Chrome. I had her switch browsers. That fixed it.
14. Looking for the Norton Anthology of Western Music
15. Wanted to know where all the Macs that used to be on the 3rd floor are
16. Looking for a textbook for one of his classes; we didn't have it
17. Printer was giving a paper jam error message; printer was fine, just low on paper
18. Wanted to know if there was a back exit to the library
19. Needed me to explain how to find a book in the library
20. Needed help commenting on a blog post for an online class; she didn't have a blog and thought she couldn't comment if she didn't. I showed her how to use her Google account to comment on the blog.

Reference Questions, 8/30/2011

The Fall semester rolls on...

1. Professor looking for the journal Holistic Nursing Practice.
2. Wanted to know how to add printing money
3. Needed help printing a PDF
4. Had questions about how much printing cost
5. Needed to borrow a pair of scissors

Reference Questions, 8/29/2011

Thus begins the Fall semester. Let's see what's up.

1. Student was not given her allotted $5 in printing money for the academic year. Told her to go to Walker to have that checked out and to go to Heth to the RU Express office to have her RU Express set up.
2. (Chat) Student was having trouble accessing an article from PsycINFO. I emailed it to her.
3. Student wanted to know how to print

Day 1 down, a lot more to go.

Reference Questions, 8/26/2011

I'm back after a vacation and a medical absence for an abscessed tooth/root canal. Classes start Monday. Here we go.

1. (Chat) Wanted the group code for RefWorks
2. Wanted a campus map
3. Wanted to know if the printers were working here
4. Wanted to borrow a pair of scissors
5. Coke man was looking for the ABP
6. Looking for a water fountain

Reference Questions, week of 8/8/2011

8/8/2011 (1 hour at the desk)
no questions

8/9/2011 (3 hours at the desk)

1. Looking for the ROTC offices on campus
2. Student needed me to witness her signature on a couple of documents she had to submit to the nursing school
3. Student needed help with the scanner
4. (Phone) Professor was having trouble accessing Web of Science. It's seems off-campus access might be having issues. I contacted the e-resources librarian
5. Looking for a book by Madalyn Murray about atheism.
6. Patron needed help finding a book in the stacks

Reference Questions, week of 8/1/2011

8/1/2011 (4 hours at the desk)

1. Needed help using the scanner
2. Looking for the bathroom
3. Wanted to know where to go to change her address in the system. She said she had emailed the registrar's office about it. I suggested that if that didn't work to try DoIT.
4. Wanted to borrow a post-it note
5. Wanted to know if he could still print even if he wasn't enrolled for summer classes. He is enrolled for Fall, so I told him he would be able to.
6. Looking for a reference book on demonology
7. Looking for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on DVD

8/2/2011 (2 hours at the desk)

1. Professor wanted to know how to save a picture that had been embedded into an email. The picture was only appearing as a blank box with a small red X in the upper corner. I told him he'd have to have the sender resend the picture, preferably as an attachment. The red X means that there is no file there to load.

8/3/2011 (2 hours at the desk)

1. Looking for books on the Army

8/4/2011 (2 hours at the desk)
no questions

8/5/2011 (2 hours at the desk)
no questions

cpd23: My Path to Librarianship

My path to librarianship has been an interesting one. I did not grow up wanting to be a librarian. I grew up wanting to be a dentist, an orthodontist to be exact. How did I go from orthodontist to librarian you might ask? To make a long story short, I had an extremely bad freshman year in college. This experience prompted me to go from being a chemistry major to an English major two months into my sophomore year. Goodbye dentistry career. Anyway, I had also been working for my grandfather's commercial plumbing company since graduating high school. I worked there part-time while I was in college. So after I graduated with a BA in English, I continued working for his company. I ran his office and pretty much handled whatever he wanted me to do. During the time I worked there, I thought about going and getting a masters degree in something. In 2006, pursued my MS in Accounting for a semester, but in the end I decided it was not something that I wanted to do. In November 2007, my grandfather announced he was retiring. I decided then that I was also finished with the plumbing business. I have several cousins who are also in the plumbing business and I could have easily continued with that, but I decided that I was done with construction (and working for family) for good.

I wanted to pursue a masters degree that would let me utilize my undergraduate degree. An MA in English was out of the question. That degree is basically worthless by itself. My husband has 2 masters degrees, and one of them is an MLIS. So, I was already familiar with our alma mater's library program, and they already knew me. So I took the GRE and enrolled at UNCG in March 2008. I started grad school in August 2008. During my time there I was a graduate assistant for the department, a member of the LIS department's curriculum committee, Representative for the department on the Graduate Student Association, a reference intern, and president of the ALA student chapter. When I started library school I wanted to be a cataloger. All of my research, along with my independent study and practicum, were focused on cataloging. However, when it was time to apply for jobs it became evident that I was not going to be a cataloger. There were no cataloging jobs out there. The ones that I did see wanted 3-5 years experience which is impossible to have straight out of library school. Thank God I was also a reference intern while I was in grad school. It is the only reason I got a job.

Library Day in the Life, Round 7

Last week I participated in the 7th round of Library Day in the Life. I participated by tweeting my daily activities and blogging the reference questions I received during my reference shifts. Here is a summary of a week in my life as a librarian.

I am a reference/instruction librarian at a small, public university in southwest Virginia. We are 4 weeks away from the start of the Fall semester. Instruction classes and reference questions have been in short supply this summer, and this is completely to be expected. This is my first summer as a professional librarian, but I know from speaking to more seasoned librarians that summers for academic librarians are for catch up and for planning for the coming academic year. That is what I have spent most of my summer doing. Here is my week.

Monday, July 25, 2011
Today I work the 1:00 - 10:00 p.m. shift. I start everyday off by checking and responding to any necessary email. After that I spent most of my time from 1:00 - 4:45 p.m. working on my annual report. This is the first annual report I have had to write, and I am a little nervous about it. The annual report is just a summary of everything that I have done in the past year, with an emphasis on the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the fiscal year. I set 5 goals for myself. This was a rookie librarian  mistake. This report is going to take me forever to write! This is a lesson to heed. Set no more than 3 goals for yourself. Apart from working on my annual report, our new instruction librarian started today, and we are sharing an office. I took many breaks during my report writing to answer some of the different questions she had about the library and how we do things here. At 4:45 p.m., I took supper and then reported to the reference desk at 6:00 p.m. for my 4 hour shift. It was a very slow night. I only received 7 questions and they all rated below a 3 on the READ scale. I spent my downtime at the desk working on blogs and reading.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011
I am again working the 1:00 - 10:00 p.. shift. (It is very unusual to be working multiple nights during a week at our library. However, we have several people out on vacation this week, and I volunteered to do this. Do not think it is going unrewarded. I am receiving 2 comp days next month for my pains.) After checking email first thing, I again spent most of the time between 1:00 - 4:45 p.m. working on my annual report. I also took a break during that time to give our new instruction librarian (and my new office mate) a tour of the supply closets in the library, and again I fielded many of her questions about librarian life here at our library. I also took a break to go on a walk over to the Starbucks on campus. Librarians cannot run on books alone. ;) At 4:45 p.m., I took supper and then reported to the reference desk at 6:00 p.m. for my 4 hour shift. It was another slow night at the reference desk. This night only yielded 4 questions. At least one of them was a "real" reference question. I spent my downtime at the desk reading and checking my Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Today I worked from 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. I started my day off at a planning meeting for the library's staff picnic. The library is holding the picnic on August 19, at a local park. This meeting lasted about 30 minutes. After the meeting I spent the 30 minutes before my 10:00 a.m. reference desk shift checking email. At 10:00 a.m., I was at the reference desk desk for the first of my 3 hours on the desk. There were no questions during that shift. I spent the downtime during this shift on Facebook. After my reference desk shift, I returned to my office to continue working on my annual report. At 1:00 p.m. I took lunch, and at 2:00 p.m. I returned to my office to finish up the annual report. I finished my annual report right before my 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. reference desk shift. At 4:00 p.m. I reported to the reference desk for my shift. While I was on the desk, the instruction coordinator came out to speak with me about the online modules we had been working on. She wanted me to evaluate one of our colleagues online APA modules (on in-text citations) that she felt was a little too confusing. I told her that I would report to her on Thursday about it after I finished proofreading my annual report. I spent my downtime at the desk going over this module and taking notes on it. I did receive 6 questions while at the desk, with 5 of the questions being from the same patron who was trying to locate various books in the collection.

Thursday, July 28, 2011
Today was my final 1:00 - 10:00 p.m. shift until the Fall semester begins. When I arrived at 1:00 p.m., I began by checking my email and then I proofread my annual report. After making the necessary changes to my annual report, I emailed it (along with all 24 appendices) to the coordinator of reference services. Around 2:45 p.m., I finished reviewing the online module that the instruction coordinator had asked me to go over and I had a meeting with her about my thoughts on it. During that meeting she asked me to redo the APA in-text citation module and make the changes we had discussed. I need to make 3 Jing videos for this module so I returned to my office to start working on the scripts for these videos. At 4:45 p.m., I took supper and then reported to the reference desk at 6:00 p.m. for my 4 hour shift. I spent the downtime at the desk working on the scripts for my Jing videos along with a Prezi that I would be using in one of the videos. I received 6 questions on the desk, and all of them were from the same person. She was attending a conference at the university and needed help finding articles for a research topic she was pursuing. I spent about an hour and a half helping her locate articles and using the microfilm machines.

Friday, July 29, 2011
Today I worked from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. I started my day as I do most days, checking and responding to emails. My first reference desk shift of the day was at 10:00 a.m. It was a shift that saw no questions. I spent the shift tweaking my scripts and Prezi for the Jing videos that I would be creating later in the day. At 11:00 a.m. I began working on the first Jing video. This was the video that I would be utilizing a Prezi in. I had never used Prezi with Jing before and I had a little trouble getting it to work. Honestly I spent an entire hour just trying to get the screen size right and figuring out how to advance the presentation like I wanted to. It was a very frustrating start. So without a single second of usable video, I went to lunch at noon. At 1:00 p.m. I was back at the reference desk. This shift again saw no questions, and I spent it browsing Facebook, trying to relaxing before tackling my Jing videos once again. When my shift was over at 2:00 p.m., I returned to my office determined to conquer these videos. And conquer I did. I was able to create video #1 on the first try (after working on it for an hour before). The other 2 videos on took me 2 attempts each to complete. I loaded the videos into our CMS Desire2Learn, and reported to the instruction coordinator that I had completed and uploaded the videos. I returned to my office to begin working on the activities for the module. At 4:00 p.m., I was once again at the reference desk. I received 2 questions during that shift, one being a very complicated scanner question that had to do with putting a PDF through OCR. During the downtime of that shift I worked on the activities for the APA in-text citation module.

I did not work on Saturday and the library was closed on Sunday, so that is a week in my library life. I really enjoy working on this project. I always amazes me how much I actually do in a week. And to think that I get to do it all over again on Monday. Joy, joy. ;)

Reference Questions. week of 7/25/2011

I'm working 3 nights this week. It should be crazy fun.

7/25/2011 (4 hours at the ref desk)

1. Wanted to know how to get to the 4th and 5th floors
2. Wanted to know where to check out books
3. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
4. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
5. Looking for the DSM-IV-TR
6. (Email) Professor wanted to know if we were going to have access to the database PsycTESTS in the Fall. I emailed the collection management librarian and head of tech services to find out.
7. Wanted to know how to turn off double sided printing 

7/26/2011 (4 hours at the ref desk)

1. Wanted to borrow a glue stick
2. Student wanted to know why it was costing her so much to print per page. She was trying to print to the color printer and that was why. She said she was logged in as herself but come to find out she was logged in as lib-public. That's why the pay for print printer/color printer was her only option. Odd.
3. Student had a question about MLA in-text citations. She wanted to know if she needed to include line numbers in her in-text citations. I told her no, just the author's name and page numbers.
4. Student was having trouble printing from D2L. He was using Chrome and trying to print PDFs and it just wasn't printing. I had him switch to Firefox.

7/27/2011 (3 hours at the ref desk)

1. Patron was looking for a book called Chipmunk Loves Squirrel. We did not have it.
2. Patron was looking for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
3. Patron was looking for Through the Looking Glass
4. Patron was looking for Gravity's Rainbow
5. Helped a patron find a book in the stacks
6. Wanted to borrow a pen

7/28/2011 (4 hours at the desk)

1. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
2. Needed help using the scanner
3. Needed help turning off double sided printing
4. Needed help finding articles on integrating computer literacy into classroom instruction. We searched the education databases for about 40 minutes and were only able to find a very limited number of articles. We tried several different combinations of search terms. She did find some ERIC docs that were helpful. They had to be viewed on microfiche so after we finished searching the databases I took her up to the 4th floor, helped her find the microfiche, showed her how to use the microfiche machines and showed her how to scan the microfiche into pdfs. (This was my first advanced reference question of the summer!)
5. Needed help with the microfiche machine
6. Needed help with the microfiche machine

7/29/2011 (3 hours at the desk)

1. Wanted to know how to print in color
2. Student needed to convert a pdf into a Word doc. I helped her put the pdf through OCR and then save it as a Word doc.
3. Needed to put money on his RU Express account

#LibDay7

This time around I decided to officially participate in the Library Day in the Life project. I signed up and everything. ;) For those of you who don't know. the Library Day in the Life project is a semi-annual even coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day fame. Twice a year, librarians, library staff and library students from all over the world share a day (or a week) in their life through blogs posts, videos, pictures and Twitter posts. I participated during the last round (in January) through my blog and Twitter accounts, but I did not sign up for it. This time I decided to sign up and make it official. During this round (#7) I will be again participating through my Twitter and blog accounts. I will tweet my activities daily and at the end of the week I will post a summary blog recounting my week. ¡Viva la bibliotecaria!

cpd23: Google Calendar

In my opinion, Google Calendar is one of the best things that Google does. I started using Google Calendar in grad school, and I really do not know what I did without. I love the fact the that you can share calendars with friends and colleagues, but my favorite thing that you can do with it is sync my Google Calendar with my iPod Touch and iPad. That way I have my work Outlook Calendar and my personal Google Calendar all together in one place. It is pure genius. Also lots of places are using Google Calendars. For example, the library I work at uses Google Calendar to post the libraries hours, etc. on the library's home page. It's also easy to post Google Calendars in blogs or on websites.

cpd23: Real-life Networks

It dawned on me over the weekend that I did not post a blog about the real-life or in-person networks I am apart of for Thing 7. You will have to excuse me, I spent most of last week working on my annual report. This is the first one I have had to write, and well it is consuming a lot more time than I anticipated.

I am a member of the America Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the New Members Round Table (NMRT), and the Virginia Library Association. Unfortunately, I have yet to attend one of their conferences. This is something I hope to rectify in the near future. (I'm planning on attending the VLA conference this October.) I am a former member of the North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) and I did have the opportunity to attend one of their bi-annual conferences. In my opinion, in-person networking is more rewarding than online networking. I also had the opportunity of attending the 2009 conference of the American Association of School Library (AASL). I was there volunteering, helping out the professor that I was a graduate assistant for. Even though I was not going into school libraries, I found the conference experience to be most helpful. I was able to meet a lot of wonderful people and I felt I learned a great deal about librarianship during the week of the conference. I would love the opportunity to volunteer at a national conference again. It is very informative to see what goes on behind the scenes.

I am also involved in the Library Exchange Observation (LEO) program. LEO is a group of instruction librarians from the New River Valley and Roanoke Valley area of Virginia. We meet twice a year for mini conferences, where we exchange ideas about instruction, offer feedback and discuss what works and what doesn't in our instruction classes. We also have the opportunity to observe other instruction librarians who are members of LEO. I had two librarians observe me during the Spring 2011 semester and I found their feedback on my classes to be invaluable. I hope to do some observing of my own during the Fall 2011 semester.

Reference Questions, week of 7/18/2011

7/19/2011 (2 hours at the desk)

1. Needed to check his email; I gave him a public login
2. Wanted to know how to print from a public account
3. Student was having trouble logging into a computer with her username and password. I suggested she try another computer and if that didn't work to use the public login. I also told her to contact IT to see if they can fix whatever is wrong with her login.
4. Looking for the bathroom
5. Needed a public login
6. (Phone) Wanted to know if we had a database that could be used to look up legal cases. YES! Lexis Nexis!
7. Patron was being very impatient with the fact that the computers were taking a long time to boot up. I had him move to another computer.
8. Student was looking for some books on level 4 and 5 and wanted me to point her in the right direction. I got her a map and showed her approximately where her books would be.
9. Wanted to know if you can print from the computers with scanners

7/20/2011 (4 hours at the desk)

1. Wanted to know where to go to put money on her printing account. Black box beside the vending machines.
2.  Wanted to know how to print a file that is on his laptop. I suggested he email it to himself and then login to one of the PCs in here and print it that way.
3. Was looking for the cafe he was told is in the library. It's not open in the Summer.
4. Faculty member wanted me to make copies for her, she had no money she just wanted copies. I told her I couldn't do that.
5. Needed help with the copier
6. Patron needed to print something. I told him to get a public login and he could print to the front desk using that.
7. Wanted to borrow a pen
8. Needed help printing her schedule

7/21/2011 (2 hours at the desk)

1. Conference goer needed help scanning a document and printing out 30 copies of it
2. Conference goer needed a public login
3. Student was having trouble printing; he didn't have enough money on his printing account

7/22/2011 (2 hours at the desk)

1. GSS wanted to know how to print in color
2. GSS needed to print, but her login wasn't working. I gave her a public login and explained to her how she could print and pay for it at the front desk
3. Printer was out of paper. Turns out the student was trying to print something bigger than 8-1/2x11 so the printer was giving her an out of paper error message. Had her change the size of the document and it printed no problem
4. Looking for the book Get Shorty

cpd23: Online Networks

I participate in several online networks. I use these to connect with other librarians in my field and in other fields and I also use them to stay up on current event and trends in librarianship. I have already written about many of the networks that I participate in, but I'll recount them yet again for the sake of this week's topic.

First off I have a LinkedIn account. I admit that I have not been as active on this site as I could have been. I do try to keep it updated, but I am not currently looking for a job, so its usefulness is lost on me.

I love the network that my Twitter account let's me participate in. Twitter is a great place to connect with other librarians. We have a very large showing in the Twitterverse. I love it because I can ask a question and in no time I have several replies from librarians in the know. It's a great place to get feedback on projects or ideas you're floating around.

Another great online network I'm apart of is the listservs I follow. I follow the ili-listserv, which is for ACRL's instruction section. This is a great place to share information and connect with other instruction librarians. I also follow the ALA InfoLit listserv and the ALA LITA listserv. All three of these listservs create a great network that can be very useful for professional development and furthering your career.

I also have an account on ALA Connect. This is something that I have rarely used and really need to look at again. I have no one in my network on this account, and I really need to work on it some. As a matter of fact, I found out today that I never updated that account after I got my current job. I really need to do better with that. I wonder if there's an app for it. That would help me keep it up-to-date. :) This is something I will be working on this week.

Reference Questions, week of 7/11/2011

The Summer continues on the reference desk. Here are this week's questions:

7/11/2011(2 hours on the desk)

1. Wanted to know how to print in color
2. Wanted to know where the color print out would print to
3. GSS looking for a bathroom
4. GSS was trying to print, but the printer she was printing to was reporting a paper jam via the computer; checked the printer and it was not having a paper jam so I told her to go ahead and print to that printer, and it worked
5. GSS wanted to borrow some white out
6. GSS student wanted to know how to pay for printing
7. GSS needed to print but didn't know their username or password
8. Looking for the play Stop Kiss

7/12/2011 (4 hours on the desk)

1. GSS looking for his lost book and notebook

7/13/2011 (3 hours on the desk)

1. Had hour long meeting this morning with a grad student about APA; had a followup questions from her when I got on the desk at noon.
2. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
3. Wanted to know if the Walker computer labs were open in the summer; yes!
4. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
5. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
6. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
7. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping
8. Another APA question from the grad student I've been helping

7/14/2011 (1 hour on the desk)

1. Wanted to know how to add money to her printing account

Reference Weeding Complete!

My portion of the reference weeding is now complete. I evaluated 5 disciplines for a grand total of 981 items. The disciplines I evaluated were accounting, finance and business law (AFBL), dance and theater (DATH), internet technology (ITEC), nursing (NURS) and philosophy and religion (PHRE). Out of the 981 items that I was responsible for, I moved 670 (68.3%) to the main collection. I left 53 (5.4%) in the reference collection. I removed 233 (23.8%) items from the collection entirely. Seventeen (1.7%) items were already withdrawn, 6 (0.6%) were sent to special collections, 1 (0.1%) was in periodicals not reference, and 1 (0.1%) was no where to be found.

This completes my weeding, for now. We've been told that from now on this will be an ongoing process. I guess we'll see.

PHRE Weeding

I have finished evaluating the philosophy and religion (PHRE) section of the reference collection, and with this section complete, I have finished my part of the reference weeding project. Currency is not as vital to this discipline as it was with some of the other disciplines I looked at. However, I did a fair amount of weeding because we had several of these items as e-books. I also moved some of the books to special collections. We were told to be on the lookout for anything that was published before 1909, and anything that was related to Appalachia. These items were to be moved to special collections. The archivist is in the process of creating an Appalachian section in special collections because we have a Appalachian studies program here at the university. He wanted to books published before 1909, just because they are old. The oldest book I found was from 1898.

Here are the stats for the PHRE section. There were 211 books in this section. I sent 156 (73.9%) of those books to the main collection. I kept 6 (2.8%) of the books in the reference collection. Six (2.8%) of these books were sent to special collections. I removed 43 (20.5%) books from the collection.

That completes my portion of the reference weeding project, and I finished it well in advance of the August 1 deadline. Yay me! :)

My First Concurrent Session!

Back in May, I submitted (along with 2 other NC library friends) a proposal to the third annual VLACRL Conference-Within-a-Conference, "Academic Libraries: Adding Value in a Time of Change." It's being held during the 2011 Virginia Library Association Conference in Portsmouth, VA. The conference is being held on October 27-28. Our session is schedule for 1:15-2:00 p.m., on Friday, October 28, in the Jefferson room of the Renaissance Hotel. They only accepted 12 sessions out of the 34 submission they received. To say I am excited is an understatement!

The proposal we submitted was entitled Free Tech Tools for Better Library Instruction. During this session we will be covering Prezi, Jing, Bubbl.us, Poll Everywhere, Lino It and Google Forms. Here is the abstract we wrote for it: During these times of cutbacks, instruction librarians are looking to provide dynamic instruction with no budget. Several free tools exist that can add value to our instruction classes. This session will look at some of these free tools and show how they can be used to enhance instruction.

Now the real fun begins. We get to plan the session! Wish us luck! :)

cpd23: Reflection Week

This week is for reflection on what we've learned over the past four weeks and how it will help our help us grow in our careers. This venture has been very helpful for me already. It has helped me blog more consistently, and it forced me to reassess the layout and structure of my blog. I am very happy with the changes I have made to it thus far. I feel it is a much better representation of me than it was. Branding yourself is key! That's what we learned in week 2 right? I feel more dedicated to participating in the library community, and I can only imagine that this will grow as each week passes in this course. I am excited about the coming weeks.

Reference Questions for the week of 7/4/2011

I've went to a week of format since the questions have become so few.

7/6/2011

1. Looking for books by Carl Hiaasen
2. Looking for the books Basket Case and Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen

7/7/2011

1. GSS wanted to know where she could print
2. GSS wanted to know where she could print
3. Wanted to know when applications had to be in for admission for the Fall semester; ASAP
4. Wanted to know how to use the scanner to create a PDF of his transcript
5. Public patron didn't have a printer installed on his computer
6. Public patron didn't have a printer installed on his computer
7. GSS wanted to know where to check out books

7/8/2011

1. A grad student I've been helping over the summer with APA had a few more questions, so I spent a little while helping her out
2. Wanted to know where his print out would go
3. Same grad student from #1 had a few more questions about APA

Summertime is slow time here at the reference desk. Things pick up when the GS students come in which is always a welcome change.

cpd23: Staying Connected

There is so much information out there that can be useful for librarians. The magnitude of it can be overwhelming. I, of course, read all of the important publications, American Libraries, Library Journal, C&R News, etc. I also use my RSS feed and Twitter to stay current. This week's cpd assignment is to begin to use (if you are not already) an RSS feed and Twitter. I've been using Twitter for 3 years, as I said in a previous blog, and I've been using an RSS feed for nearly a year.

On Twitter, I am currently following 380 accounts. That is a lot to keep up with. I organize my Twitter feed by using the list feature that they provide. I have lists for:

• Librarians
• UNCG friends
• News
• Job feeds
• Work
• Star Wars
• Brands
• Weather
• Music
• Football
• Literature
• Food
• ASC friends

And the list goes on and on. I believe I have about 20 lists at this point. I use the lists to keep up with what I think is important. If I do not have time to go through all of my tweets, I pick a list and go through it. It saves me time and separates the important tweets (@cpd23) from the unimportant tweets (@ew).

In a previous blog I listed all the "library" blogs that I follow in my RSS feed. In addition to those I also follow some blogs my friends write, and the blogs of my favorite theater company the American Shakespeare Center. The RSS feed is a valuable tool. I use the one that is in my Firefox browser, and every morning when I get to work I check it and see what is going on out in the blogospere.

Another way I stay connected is through the ili-l listserv. This listserv is sponsored by ACRL's instruction section, and is a great way to stay connect to other instruction librarians. People offer ideas, ask questions and look for feedback through the listserv. I've been following this listserv since I started my current job, and I have found many of the posts useful. You can subscribe to it by going to this website. I also added the ALA InfoLit listserv and the ALA LITA listserv to my subscriptions today.

I have never used Pushnote. So I signed up for it, and it searched my Facebook and Twitter accounts to see if any of my friends use it. I was surprised to discover that no one I am connected with uses it. I am not sure how useful this tool will be for me. I have yet to run across a site that has comments. I will continue to experiment with it, but I fail to see how this can be useful for me personally.

NURS Weeding

I finished weeding the NURS (nursing) section of reference today. Currency is vital to this subject area, so there were a lot of titles withdrawn. I also ran across several books that we also had ebook copies, so of course, the hard copies of these books were withdrawn . The oldest books I ran across were from the 1920s. I also discovered that several of the books in my list were not in the reference section. After a little digging I discovered that they had already been withdrawn. Obviously this list isn't as current as we have been lead to believe. I wonder who had these withdrawn. It is all a little odd.

Here are the stats for the NURS area of reference. There were 247 titles in this section. Of those 247 titles, 17 of them (7.3% of the collection) had already been withdrawn and 1 was not in reference, but it was in periodicals. I sent 142 of these titles (57.5%) to the main collection. I kept 18 of these titles (7.3% of the collection) in the reference collection, and removed 66 titles (26.7%) from the collection.

That's 771 books down and 212 to go. I have finished 78.4% of the books I am responsible for. I am on the home stretch now and I firmly believe I will be complete before the August 1 deadline. I will now move on to the last section, PHRE (philosophy and religion).

Reference Questions, 6/29/2011

Back at the desk again. GSS = Governor's School Student

1. (Phone) Wanted to know if the library had The Dirty Dozen on DVD. No we did not.
2. GSS needed a public login because her username and password had not been set up yet.
3. GSS looking for The Prince by Machiavelli
4. Student was having trouble printing from D2L. She was trying to print a PDF and was using the print icon in the tool bar instead or using the print icon from the gray bar that appears when you move your mouse pointer over the document. This is going to create a lot of fun come Fall.
5. (GSS) Wanted to know which printer he should print to and where his print out would be
6. (GSS) Wanted to know where the bathrooms are
7. (GSS) Wanted to browse our fiction books. This is always a very frustrating question. I sent her to the PS section.
8. (GSS) Wanted to know where the bathrooms are
9. (GSS) Wanted to know how to login to the computers
10. (GSS) Wanted to know how to search the catalog
11. (GSS) Wanted to know how to print from a public account
12. (GSS) Wanted to know how much printing cost
13. (GSS) Student thought her article had not printed out correctly. She didn't realize it was front and back.
14. (GSS) Looking for a stapler
15. (Chat) A librarian in Jamaica wanted some assistance with writing a collection development plan. I forwarded her request to our collection management librarian.

The Governor's School students are still keeping the questions count up.

Hours on the desk = 2

Prezi and I

I was working on my Current Projects page today when I realized I'd never shared any of the Prezis I've created on my blog. I've been using Prezi for a year now, and I love it. I started using Prezi after a fellow library student suggested that I use it for my job interview presentations. I'd never even heard of it when she suggested it. So I did some research (like a good librarian) and I was very impressed with what I saw. Now I use Prezi whenever I can. (On a side note, I did use Prezi for the interview for the job I have now, and well I guess you now how that turned out.)  I taught 8 faculty workshops on Prezi alone during the Spring semester. Here is the Prezi I use during faculty workshops:


I've also created a Prezi for the UNIV 100 classes we teach every Fall semester. During this class we play a game to help the students learn about the library. This game was previously on PowerPoint and took the PPT and made a Prezi. Here it is:


I am really excited about using Prezi for some of my instruction classes in the Fall. I will keep you posted on how it goes.

APA Modules and my first Jing video

The instruction team at my library is currently working on Online Modules that can be embedded into the campus CMS Desire2Learn. We have decided that the focus of the modules will be to teach the students how to use the APA LibGuide we have created. We are using videos that show the students how to navigate the LibGuide's tabs. We decided to use this approach because it had been our experience, in the classroom and on the reference desk that the students simply do not understand how to use the APA LibGiuide. We are currently working on modules for the Scholarly Journal Article tab, the Websites tab and the In-Text Citation tab. We hope to have these completed by the start of the Fall 2011 semester.

To that end, I have created my first Jing video. This video shows the students how to navigate the Scholarly Journal article tab of our APA LibGuide. Here is the link to it http://www.screencast.com/t/hrbEfyQkAP7. It's too large to embed. (I know, I tried to embed it.) I hate my voice, but other than that I'm kind of proud of this little video. I just wish that Jing allowed you to zoom into areas of the page. I believe that would be effective than me just moving the cursor over them.

Reference Questions, 6/28/2011

It's Tuesday night and the Governor's School is in the house, so business should pick up. GSS = Governor's School Student

1. (GSS) Looking for a book on music theory
2. (GSS) Wanted to know where to check out a book
3. (GSS) Was looking for somewhere to type up something and print it
4. (GSS) Wanted to know if she had to pay for printing; no since she is in Governor's School they gave them $5 in printing money
5. (GSS) Wanted to know when we closed
6. (GSS) Wanted to know if she could check out books
7. (GSS) Wanted to know where the foreign language books are located; call number P, 4th floor
8. (GSS) Wanted to know how to log off the computers
9. (GSS) Governor's School student wanted to know how he could use a computer; use the username and password they gave you
10. (GSS) Looking for headphones
11. (GSS) Looking for headphones
12. (GSS) Looking for a book on the Balkan conflict during the 1990s. I did a search for Balkan conflict in the catalog and found the perfect e-book for her
13. (GSS) Wanted to know where his print out would print to
14. (GSS) Looking for a stapler
15. Student was printing out a 13 page paper but was printing it double sided. So he wanted to know why he was being charged for 13 pages when he was technically print out 7 sheets. I explained to him that when you print double sided it is $0.05 a sheet and single sided is $0.07 a sheet, but you still have to pay for each side of the sheet of paper.
16. (GSS) Had the call number for Kate Chopin's The Awakening and needed help finding it
17. Student was trying to print a Word doc that was larger than 8.5x11 and the printer was not letting him. I showed him how to change the size of the page and rearrange the text so it did not print outside the margins
18. (GSS) Needed help printing from Word
19. (GSS) Wanted to know if printing cost anything. She was with the Governor's School, so she had been give $5 in printing money, so no.
20. (GSS) Wanted to know where their print out would be
21. (GSS) Wanted to know how to login to the computers to use his printing money. He is a Governor's School student so I told him that he should have been given a username and password to use. He had to login with that to be able to use his allotted printing money
22. (GSS) Wanted to know where his print out would go
23. (GSS) Wanted to know if we had a graphic novel section
24. (GSS) Wanted to know where the foreign language books are located; call number P, 4th floor
25. (GSS) Looking for the book You Are What You Choose
26. (GSS) Wanted to know where to check out books
27. Patron wanted to know if Jay was working tonight. I don't know anyone by the name of Jay in the library.
    

These Governor's School students like to use the reference desk. They definitely livened the library up tonight. I haven't gotten this many questions during a shift in a long time.

cpd23: My Personal/Professional Brand

During library school "the personal brand" is something that was talked about a lot. It was always referred to in conjunction with networking and building your professional presence. To that end, during library school I began blogging and posting on Twitter. I also created a LinkedIn profile during my last semester in library school. I thought long and hard about the names I would use for my blog and my Twitter account. After all, these accounts would represent me.

When I created my blog (in May 2009), I wanted a name that would represent me as a librarian and also would reflect some of my personality. So I started with the URL. I chose librarianjenrae for my Blogspot address because it told the world that I am a librarian and it offered a little personality by using my childhood nickname Jen Rae. The title of my blog came from the Library Foundations (LIS 600) class I took my first semester of library school. During one of the classes the professor said that librarians were the gatekeepers of knowledge. This proclamation tickled quite a few of us in that class for some reason. I guess we are easily amused. Anyway, it became a running joke amongst my library school circle, and when I decided to start a blog, I felt it was the perfect title. I came up with the tagline "I am a lighthouse in a sea of information" myself. I felt it described a librarian perfectly. What else are we but guiding lights to our users, pointing them in the appropriate directions for their information needs? How clever I felt when I came up with that. ;) I do occasionally have good ideas.

I created my Twitter account on March 18, 2009. My original username was JenniferWhicker. I kept that for awhile, but I eventually decided that I wanted something that represented me as a librarian and that also showed off my personality. So I decided to use my Blogspot address as my Twitter username. This way I would be identified as a librarian and it would also be "connected" to my blog.

My blog and LinkedIn account both contain strictly professional musings. My Twitter account is a mix of professional and personal posts. (I am always very aware of what I am posting on Twitter since this account contains both personal and professional information.) I also have a Facebook account, but that is reserved for family and friends so I keep the privacy controls very strict on it, and I do not engage in much library discussion there. I have also chosen not to be friends with anyone I work with on Facebook.

This exercise has really helped me to re-evaluate my brand. I have changed the design of my blog and some of the information I have on it. I have also made some changes to my LinkedIn account. I think it is very important for us as information specialists to be aware of the information that is out there about ourselves. We need to constantly monitor what message we send out via our social media outlets and how that message effects our brand.

cpd23: What blogs do I follow and why?

I follow several library related blogs using my RSS feed. Here is a list of the blogs I follow:

• American Libraries Magazine: I follow this blog to keep up to date on news and information from ALA.
• lauren's library blog: This is Lauren Pressley's blog. She is the Instructional Design Librarian at Wake Forest University. Her blogs tend to focus on information and the Internet.
• ACRLog: This is ACRL's blog. I follow it to keep up to date of news and information from ACRL. The blog's tagline is "Blogging by and for academic and research librarians."
• the outreach librarian: This blog is maintained by Lizz Zitron, who is the Outreach Librarian at Cathage College in Kenosha, WI.
• lyndamk: Lynda Kellam is UNCG's Data Services and Government Information Librarian. She does a lot of instruction and attends lots of conferences, and she blogs about it! (On a side note, she was one of my mentors in library school, and I cannot say enough about how much she helped me gain real-life library experience. She is one of the big reasons I was able to get a job after I graduated. This women is a real library rock star!)
• The ALA Learning Round Table Blog: This blog contains posts about conferences, continuing education and professional development for librarians.
• A Ghost of Daisies: I went to library school with this newly minted web librarian. (She graduated this past May.) She blogs a lot about web design and Drupal. I don't always understand what she blogs about, but I try.

These blogs help me keep up with trends in libraryland. I also follow lots of librarians on Twitter. It's great for networking and professional development.

Reference Questions, 6/21/2011

I'm back for another night night at the reference desk. They say it's been slow today...what's new?

1. A very strange Word problem. A student was trying to open a new document in Word and it wouldn't let her. It kept opening the previous document that she had finished and saved on her flash drive. The flash drive had been disconnected from the computer as well. I had her restart the computer and I hope that worked. I guess we'll see.

These long desk shifts with very few questions are rough.

What is cpd23, and why am I participating?

I have decided to participate in 23 Things for Professional Development. (FYI: CPD stands for continuing professional development.) This is a program that is being hosted on a blog (http://cpd23.blogspot.com/), and for 16 weeks this blog will feature activities related to the "topic" of the week. Each week you will participate in the activities listed on that week's blogs and then you will blog about them. It is designed to introduce participants to different tools that will assist librarians and information professionals in personal and professional development.

I decided to participate in this program because, first off, it's free, and we librarians love that word. :) Secondly, I thought it would be a great way to share some of my knowledge about these tools and to gain some new knowledge about the tools featured. I also believed it would be a good way to network with other librarians and to create useful professional connections. Lastly, I thought it would help me blog about something other than the reference questions I get while at the reference desk.

The program began yesterday and this week is all about blogging. Blogging is something that I really need to do more often. Hopefully this program will help me reach that goal. I look forward to interacting with all the other participants in the coming weeks.

Reference Questions, 6/20/2011

I'm back for more.

1. Had found a book in the catalog and wasn't sure how to find it in the stacks. It ended up being an e-book so I showed her how to access it.
2. (Phone) Thought she was calling the bookstore. I gave her the correct number.

That was a rocking 2 hours!

Reference Questions, 6/19/2011

It's Sunday at the reference desk. As far as I can see there is no one in the library. Oh, wait I do see one person on the side opposite where I am, and there's another. OK, there are 2 people in the library who do not work here. Plus, my grad student just called to say that she's not coming in because she wasn't supposed to be scheduled for today. It's fine though because I believe this will be a slow 7 hours.

1. Want to copy a chapter of a book so that he could turn it into a Word document so he could make comments in the margins of it. Thank God for my time working in the NC DOCKS IR.
2.  Had a question about printing when logged in as Lib-public

Two questions in a 7 hour shift. When we staff the reference desk needs to be re-evaluated.

Reference Questions, 6/16/2011

Here goes another 2 hour reference shift.

1. Student needed help submitting an assignment in D2L
2. Student had a question about find the year an article was published
3. Needed help finding a book in the stacks
4. Student was having trouble printing in Classroom A. The printer is still out of order and I had to switch printers.
5. Wanted to know how to add money to her RU Express account
6. Looking for a stapler

We had a little action during this shift. Imagine that.

Reference Questions, 6/15/2011

I am on the desk for 5 hours total today. This first shift is a 3 hour one. Yikes. Here we go again.

1. Wanted to know how to print in color
2. Looking for the book The Color Purple by Alice Walker
3. Wanted to know how to print in color
4. Wanted to know how to get out of the library (the front entrance is closed)

Four questions in 3 hours. That may be a record.

Round 2:

1. Needed help scanning
2. (Phone) Wanted to know if our computers had slots for the 3.25 in. disks.
3. Needed help attaching a file to an email
4. Wanted to know if we would proctor a test. No, but the Disability Resource Office seems to, so I sent her there.

The second shift was only an hour long and was a little more lively. One to go.

Round 3:

1. Wanted to know why the computers take so long to boot up
2. Asked if I'd ever heard of a resume that placed "keywords" at the top. He said that it was for listing his computer certifications, C++, etc. I had never heard of it and when I Googled it and couldn't find it.
3. Student wanted to copy and paste chemistry equations from an online document into her notes in a Word document. I showed her how to use Print Screen and Paint to do this.
4. Wanted to know how to insert the Delta symbol (triangle) into a Word document. I showed her how to get to the Equation menu in Word.

And that concludes our reference programming for today. Tune in next time friends.

Reference Questions, 6/14/2011

I have returned from my vacation, and I am now ready to tackle all comers.

1. Looking for a place to spread out and plug in his laptop. Also wanted to know about our genealogy offerings.
2. Looking for the book 1984 by George Orwell
3. Looking for a children's book about Florida

The slow shifts continue. It is the summer, and really, what else can we expect?

Reference Questions, 6/5/2011

The Sunday reference desk. Chat is down for upgrades so this should be an extra slow 7 hours.

1. Her print out wasn't printing. She wasn't waiting for the print assist window to finish calculation so she could switch over to her RU Express account.
2. Looking for a collection of short stories by Edgar Allen Poe
3. (Phone) Blair called to check on the temperature in the library. It's still not what I'd call cool, but I guess it's an improvement.

It was a slow shift (of course), but I was able to get some good quality work done. Yay productivity!

Reference Questions, 6/2/2011

This heat is terrible. I am so tired. I'm seriously considering going on strike.

And another shift without any questions. Maybe it's me.

Reference Questions, 6/1/2011

Birthday month has begun. Unfortunately the A/C is still not working properly here in the library. We are into week 4 now. It's times like this that I wish I were a member of a union. Working without A/C is illegal on so many levels.

Not a single question in 4 hours. I'm not sure why they staff the desk at night during the summer. It is so hot in here right now. It is misery.

Reference Questions, 5/27/2011

We have "moved" the reference desk into Classroom A which is the only room with A/C in the building. We'll be using Classroom A as long as it's not in use otherwise. Which is nice considering I'm on the desk 4 hours today. Well, scratch that. The last interview for the web developer position is today and they've moved everything into Classroom A, so I'm back out in the heat. There really should be a law against this.

1. (Phone) Staff member wanted to know the interview schedule for today

 I'm still melting.

ITEC Weeding

I finished weeding the ITEC (information technology) section of reference today. Currency is vital to this subject area, so there was a lot of weeding in this section. I also ran across several books that we also had ebook copies, so of course the hard copies of these books were weeded. The oldest books I ran across were from the 1970s. I also discovered that one of the books in my list was not in the reference section.

Here are the stats for the ITEC area of reference. There were 38 titles in this section. Of those 38 titles I sent 18 of them to the main collection. I kept none of these titles in the reference collection, and removed 19 titles from the collection. There was one title in the list that was not in reference, and I could not find it in the catalog at all. 47.4% of the ITEC reference collection was moved to the main collection, 0.0% remains in the reference collection, and 50% was removed from the reference collection. 2.6% of the collection was unaccounted for.

That's 524 books down and 459 to go. I have finished 53.3% of the books I am responsible for. I still believe I'm making good time in my quest to have this finished by the August 1 deadline. I have NURS (nursing) and PHRE (philosophy and religion) left to go. I will be moving to NURS next. The next two sections are much larger than the ITEC section. They take up 46.7% for all the books I am evaluating. I still have a lot of work ahead of me.

Reference Questions, 5/24/2011

I'm still melting.

1. Student was trying to print and the print assist window was not giving him the option to switch to RU Express. He hadn't used his RU Express account in several years so it had become inactive. I told him that he would need to reactivate his account to use it, or he could go to Walker and put money on his actual printing account. 
2. Student wanted to know if there was a way to reactivate his RU Express account online. I was unsure if there was, but I directed him to the RU Express account management page.

The slow summer shifts continue. 

Reference Questions, 5/23/2011

The A/C is STILL not working here in the library. We are beginning our third week without it. I feel like I'm melting.

1. A student brought up a cell phone she found in the bathroom. I took the cell phone to Lost & Found at the Front Desk.
2. A student came looking for her lost cell phone. I sent her to the Front Desk.

I off to teach my first class of the semester. At least it's in Classroom A, the only room with A/C in the whole building.

Reference Questions, 5/20/2011

I'm scheduled for 3 hours today at the desk today. Here's hour #1.

1. Looking for a book, Linear Probability, Logit and Probit Models. Sounds like fun reading.
2. A group of women were on campus for a workshop and they came into the library looking for an art display that they saw last year when they were here. From the description they gave I told them it was on either the 4th or 5th floor. (It's basically a mannequin sitting in a chair, wearing a sweatshirt and pants.) Hope they find it.

Now begin hours 2 and 3. I'm here till closing. The library is pretty empty.

1. (Phone) Had a professor call me and say that she was trying to view an ebook but couldn't because someone else was using it. I explained to her that some of our books could only be view by one person at a time. She insisted that no one else could be viewing this book. She had been viewing it earlier and had only closed the browser and not actually "closed" the book. I told her that might be the problem. Unfortunately our ebook librarian had left for the day, and I could get an immediate fix for the professor. She said she was going to email ebrary and copy our ebook librarian on the email as well. She insisted that we should know what books were being viewed at what time, and when I tried to disagree with her she said that if we were paying for it we should know. Jeez, ever heard of privacy?
2. Looking for a Jewish Prayer Book
3. Looking for an MCAT book
4. Problem patron needed help printing

Well at least I did have a few moments of excitement. You can't beat Fridays at the reference desk for slowness.

Reference Questions, 5/19/2011

It's 8:00 a.m. at the reference desk. There is not a single student in the library right now. Maymester on the march.

1. (Email) Patron needed help renewing some DVDs. I forwarded his question to the Front Desk.
2. Wanted to know the time
3. Printer wasn't printing his print job. His printing account was out of money, and he wasn't waiting on it to finish calculating so he could switch over to his RU Express before he hit accept.

A few did wander in for the 8 o'clock hour, so I did get a couple questions. :)

Reference Questions, 5/18/2011

Maymester continues, and we still have no A/C in the library. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Ugh.

1. Wanted to borrow an ink pen

It's a slow summer, that's for sure.

Reference Questions, 5/17/2011

So begins my 4 hour shift at the reference desk. The A/C is still not working. We have no idea when it will be working. Their answer for that question is really soon. It's hot in here. I can't concentrate when I'm hot, so productivity has gone down considerably since last Monday.

1. Wanted to know which computers he could use for research
2. Needed help printing; couldn't get a document to print from the new CMS Desire 2 Learn
3. Online lecture in D2L didn't want to load; she was in IE, I had her switch to Firefox and it worked
4. Student was looking for records she had saved to her account; come to find out she had marked some books she wanted to check out and had emailed them to herself
5. Student from #4 wanted to know which number in the record she needed to find the book
6. Had a question about posting to a message board in D2L
7. Had shut down her computer and it said it was reconfiguring, she thought she'd done something wrong. I explained to her it was fine.
8. Student was having trouble printing from D2L

Four hours is a long time to be at the reference desk, especially when that desk is slow. I passed the time with some good books.

Reference Questions, 5/16/2011

Summer classes have started. I'm even teaching 2 classes next week. Yay me.

1. Wanted to borrow a highlighter
2. (Chat) Person thought they were chatting with another librarian. they didn't want to speak with me
3. Looking for The Searchers and Stagecoach on DVD. The Searchers was available, but Stagecoach was on reserve. He was not happy about this. He thought he was the only professor who would want that DVD.
4. Wanted to borrow a highlighter

I wasn't expecting the  summer session to be too busy and I wasn't disappointed. So far so good.

DATH Weeding

I finished weeding the dance an theatre section of reference today. Currency isn't as vital to this subject area as it was to the AFBL area, so evaluation was a little easier. This basically just resulted in less weeding. I didn't see anything as old as I ran across while weeding AFBL. I believe the oldest books I ran across were from the 1940s or 1950s.

Here are the stats for the DATH area of reference. There were 297 titles in this section. Of those 297 titles I sent 248 of them to the main collection. I left 14 of the titles in the reference collection, and removed 35 titles from the collection. 83.5% of the DATH reference collection was moved to the main collection, 4.7% remains in the reference collection, and 11.8% was removed from the reference collection.

That's 486 books down and 497 to go. I guess you could say that I've reached the halfway point in this weeding project. I'm making good time in my quest to have this finished by the August 1 deadline. I have ITEC (information technology), NURS (nursing) and PHRE (philosophy and religion) left to go. I will be moving to ITEC next.

Reference Questions, 5/5/2011

Last day of exams, it's almost over.

1. Student was looking for a room that had quotes on the walls. Come to find out she was looking for the alumni garden which is beside the library. We discovered this after she pulled the assignment up.
2. Needed help printing one-sided
3. Needed help printing one-sided

Last shift of the semester finished. Whew.

Reference Questions, 5/4/2011

Exam week continues, as does the instruction librarian interviews. Interview #2 was today and the last one is tomorrow. Today is also so Star Wars Day. My advice during this reference desk shift? "You must unlearn what you have learned."

1. Wanted to know how to print one-sided
2. Looking for ABP
3. Wanted to know if you can print from the computers with scanners
4. Looking for some scrap paper

May the 4th be with you.

Reference Questions, 5/3/2011

Exam week is always slow at the desk. I believe this is true at all universities. I'm not expecting many questions tonight. We found out today that the desk will be closed next week because of the re-carpeting project. Imagine that.

1. Computer was saying that the printer was jammed and it wasn't. I just love these new printers.
2. (Chat) A group on the 4th floor were complaining that another group was being extremely disruptive. I consulted the front desk on this and they sent someone up there to check on it.
3. Computer was saying that the printer was jammed and it wasn't. They are evil.
4. Had worked on a paper all day and thought she'd been saving it to her flash drive and it didn't save. Wanted to know if I could help her find it. I couldn't find it either.

It was as I expected, a slow night. Thursday is the last day of exams.

Reference Questions, 5/2/2011

Today is the first day of exams. Today we are also holding the first of three interviews for the Instruction Librarian position that will be vacant after June. (The former head of the department is retiring.) It will be an exciting day. It'll be nice to be on the other side of an interview, but I'm thinking that reference questions will be on the low end.

It was just as I thought. There was no action here at the reference desk. The calm of exam week is always welcome.

Reference Questions, 4/29/2011

Today is the last day of the semester. I've been told that it's been a quiet morning thus far. Let's see if that trend continues.

1. The print assist window was not giving his RU Express account as an option to pay for printing
2. Looking for a stapler
3. Wanted to know if the RU Express machine over in vending took a credit card

This was a slow shift indeed. Just about all of the computers are full but few questions are being asked.

Reference Questions, 4/27/2011

Lunch at the reference desk. Fun times always.

1. (Email) Needed help with searching for sources on gang involvement and the social disorganization theory of crime
2. Looking for headphones
3. Wanted to print in color
4. Wanted to know where his paper would print out
5. Wanted to know if he could print from the computers with scanners
6. All the computers in the ref area were full and he wanted to know where he could go to print
7. Wanted to add money to his printing account

The library is completely full. It's not surprising considering Friday is the last day of classes.

Reference Questions, 4/26/2011

It's Tuesday night at the reference desk. It's the last week of classes. I expect lots of APA and Word questions.

1. Wanted to borrow a pen
2. Wanted to know if we had a USB cord she could borrow
3. Wanted to know where to check out books
4. Needed a guest login
5. Wanted to borrow a pen
6. Wanted to print in color
7. Computer was giving a system admin error when he tried to log in
8. Was trying to scan a document with the printer
9. Wanted to borrow the glue stick
10. Paper was not printing out; he had no money in his printing account and was not switching over to his RU Express account

Not a single APA or Word question. Shocking!

My Shakespeare Experience

Anyone who knows me knows that Shakespeare means a great deal to me, and consumes a great part of my life. In honor of William Shakespeare's 447th birthday (which was this past Saturday), I decided to commit to blog my Shakespeare experience. I recently read The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum. In this book Rosenbaum talks about the critical moments in his Shakespeare journey, moments that changed his life. This got me thinking about what were the critical moments in my Shakespeare journey. I can think of three.

The first one happened in the Fall of 1991. I was in the 8th grade, and took a class field trip to see Julius Caesar at the High Point Theater. This production was put on by the NC Shakespeare Festival. Now I am not exactly sure why our teacher decided to take us to see a production of Julius Caesar. We were not reading this play in class. Whatever her reasoning was, I am eternally grateful to her for taking us to the NC Shakespeare Festival. This was my first exposure to Shakespeare, and I was blown away. I remember thinking that it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. The language moved me in a way I couldn't describe. Granted, I didn't completely understand everything that was being said, but I did understand the emotion that it moved in me. That morning at the High Point Theater lit a fire in me that still burns today. Later that year I would read Romeo and Juliet for the first time and my fate was sealed. I would be a life long Shakespeare fan.

The second defining moment in my Shakespeare journey happened my junior year in college. In the Spring of 1999, I took a class on Shakespeare's Later Plays (ENG 340) taught by Dr. Russ McDonald. Hearing Dr. McDonald speak about Shakespeare that first day of class was a near religious experience for me. He spoke about Shakespeare and his plays with such passion, power and excitement that I left that class completely changed. I had to immediately go find my fiancé and tell him all about it. Of course, he couldn't have cared less. He hated Shakespeare and had no interest whatsoever in hearing about my life changing experience. His attitude never once swayed my passion for Shakespeare. (He would eventually come over to my way of thinking, but that story comes later.) That ENG 340 class was amazing. McDonald brought out an energetic life in plays we read that semester. Each class was an grand show, and I was madly in love with everything Shakespeare. That semester we studied Measure for Measure, Othello, All's Well That Ends Well, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. The next semester I took ENG 339, Shakespeare's Sonnets and Early Plays. That class was also taught by McDonald. In that class we studied the sonnets along with The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV Part I & II, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. In both of those classes we didn't just talk about his plays. Along with our Shakespeare text (the Riverside) we also read The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare which McDonald had recently published. This is a great book that really gives you an inside look at the time period's cultural and historical context. Understanding what was going on during the time that Shakespeare was writing these plays really helps you understand the plays themselves. It also helps to understand the staging conditions that Shakespeare was writing for, which was another topic we covered in depth. Dr. McDonald taught me how to think about Shakespeare and his language. He has forever colored how I approach and think about Shakespeare, and I couldn't be more indebted to him for that. Words cannot express how much those classes meant to me. He changed my life in ways that I could not have understood or appreciated at the time. I would give anything to take a graduate level Shakespeare class from him. Alas, he is now teaching at Goldsmiths University of London. However, if he happens to find himself in this part of the world again, believe me I will be signing up for one of his classes.

The third and last moment came in September 1999. During the Fall semester of my senior year I had decided to take ENG 342, which was called The Seventeenth Century. This class was taught by Dr. Christopher Hodgkins. I distinctly remember that very first class. Dr. Hodgkins came in and started the class saying that in this class we would NOT be studying Shakespeare. If we wanted to study Shakespeare we should take one of Dr. McDonald's classes. This class was going to be about Shakespeare's contemporaries. He also announced that first class that the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express (SSE) would be coming to campus to perform The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont. We were told we should go see the play since we would be reading it that semester. So on an extremely hot day in September 1999, I drug my fiancé to the Brown Building Theatre on the campus of UNCG to see the SSE production of The Knight of the Burning Pestle. This just happens to be one of the oldest buildings on campus, and the air conditioning went out that day. So when the play started at 7:00 p.m., it was about 90 degrees in the theatre. The conditions in the theatre were miserable, but the play was fantastic. They used the staging conditions of the time, leaving the lights on and directly interacting with the crowd. I was completely blown away. Who knew theatre could be like this? This made me look at plays in a whole new light. My fiancé didn't share my enthusiasm, and practically ran out of the building the second the play was over. Granted it was insanely hot in there, but the magic that surrounded that production had given me the ability to ignore the heat. In 2001, I discovered that the SSE had changed their name to the American Shakespeare Center and that they had built a permanent home in Staunton, VA. I begged my husband to take me up there, but he always found some excuse not to go. It took me eight years to get him to agree to go to the American Shakespeare Center. We finally went to a play in February 2009. We saw Henry VI, Part I. My husband completely and totally fell in love with Shakespeare. In the end it wasn't me that changed his mind, it was the atmosphere at the American Shakespeare Center. When we got home from that trip, I sent an email to one of the actresses that was in that production, thanking her for doing what I'd been trying to do for years. (The American Shakespeare Center is home to the world's only recreation of Shakespeare's indoor theater, the Blackfriars Playhouse. They use Shakespeare's original staging conditions, and this means that they make the audience a part of the play. They literally do it with the lights on. :) This is an amazing experience, and I strongly urge anyone who has not had the chance to experience theater this way to do so immediately. You will not want to go back to watching plays in the dark.)

When I graduated with my MLIS, I knew I wanted to move up into Virginia so that I could be closer to the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton. It's doubly sweet now that I can share this passion with my husband. We go to Staunton as often as we can. It's an experience like no other. My dream is to someday get a Master of Letters in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin College, and to be a librarian that focuses on researching and teaching Shakespeare. I know it's a long shot, but who knows it could happen. Shakespeare has brought such amazing entertainment and people into my life, and I can't thank him enough for it. I don't know how I would occupy my time without him.