- Having trouble printing a Word doc; I just told him to go to another computer, I hate having to use that as an answer so frequently.
- Asked if we had non-fiction books and then wanted me to look up Lasher by Anne Rice.
- Was having trouble finding a book; I had written the call number down incorrectly, oops
- Wanted to know where the printers are located; I explained that we have several printers located through out the library and where you sit determines what printer you will use
- (Chat) Looking for the e-HARF database; they were actually looking for the eHRAF World Cultures database and were looking in the H's instead of the E's in the database finder
Monday, January 31, 2011
Reference Questions, 1/31/2011
The first shift of the day on the reference desk. Oh what fun.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Library Day in the Life
During the week of January 24, I participated in the sixth round of Library Day in the Life (#libday6). Library Day in the Life chronicles the working life of librarians. The purpose of this collective outpouring by librarians is to let the outside world get a sneak peek at what exactly a librarian does everyday. I participated during the week by tweeting about my library duties, and blogging about my reference shifts.
On Monday, January 24 I began the week by teaching an ESHE (Exercise Sport and Health Education) 350 class. In this class I covered popular vs. scholarly articles, what a research article is, and APA style. I was also scheduled to cover database searching in this class, however I ran out of time. I often think that fifty minutes is a long time to fill, but that time goes by quickly. The week before I taught a similar class that lasted an hour and fifteen minutes, and I believe I ran out of time because I was thinking I had an hour and fifteen minutes when I really only had fifty minutes. Following lunch, I had a two-hour shift on the reference desk. With eight questions asked it was not a busy shift, but not a slow one either. The typical beginning of the semester questions persists. Textbooks and printing are always popular topics at every reference desk at the beginning of each semester. After my reference desk shift, I attended the weekly instruction meeting. We have this meeting every Monday in order to discuss instruction within the department, and to divide up the next week's classes. The meeting lasted about an hour, and after we divided up the classes (I ended up with six) we discussed several topics including prep time for instruction classes and how to allot for it during busy instruction times. This semester we are evaluating our instruction sessions, and we also discussed how to place the evaluation link in our LibGuides. I am the minute taker for the semester, so after the meeting I worked on the meeting minutes until it was time to go home for the day. My normal Monday runs from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
On Tuesday, January 25 I arrived at the library at 1:00 p.m. On Tuesdays I work from 1:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. I began my shift by attending a CPR/AED certification session. I am now certified in CPR/AED for two years. After the training session, I returned to my office to check my email and to finish up the minutes from Monday's instruction meeting. I filled the rest of my afternoon with class prep for this week's remaining classes, and I began to look ahead to next week's classes as well. I had to email the professors whose classes I was assigned to touch base and get clarification on what they were expecting from next week's visit to the library. I went to supper at 4:45 p.m. and at 6:00 p.m. I was on the reference desk for my two hour Tuesday night shift. My shift actually ran over about fifteen minutes because the librarian who I share Tuesday nights with had a class that ran until 8:00 p.m. and she needed a few minutes to collect herself before coming to the reference desk. This reference desk shift was a steady shift, with great deal of printing questions asked. We had lots of trouble with our printing system last semester, and it doesn't look like things have improved much. Word docs freeze when students try to print them, and printers disappear from computers. Library schools need to start offering printer and computer troubleshooting classes. I know I have spent a great deal of my time troubleshooting hardware since I became a librarian in September. On a side note, the shift was also peppered with the sounds of fighter jets flying low over the campus. It is amazing how loud they are. You can barely hear yourself think when they fly over. I believe at one point during my shift they were simulating a dogfight over the campus. We hear them nearly every day. I remember the first time I heard them here. I thought we were under attack. I've been told they are flying out of Langley and that they like to fly missions/maneuvers around the mountains here. Our campus is a favorite target because we have the tallest building in the area. It keeps things exciting. When I did return to my office I spent some time answering emails, and I continued to work on class prep for this week and for next week. I left the library at 10:00 p.m.
On Wednesday, January 26, I arrived at the library at 9:00 a.m. My typical Wednesday sees me working at the library from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. I spent the morning working on class prep. Most of my free time seems to be devoted to this. When I refer to class prep I mean creating scripts and LibGuides for the actual class instruction, along with worksheets or other handouts that the students will need during the time they spend with me. I'm still new to library instruction, so I like to run through my script or class plan several times before I actually teach. I do this to avoid any surprises, like a search in a database not producing the desired results. At 1:00 p.m. I taught the first of the two classes I would teach for the day. It was a Core 103 class. Core classes are required classes that all entering freshman must take here. This class was on avoiding plagiarism and APA style. The class went amazingly well. The students were engaged and asked great questions. At the end of the session the professor gushed about how wonderful the class was. She said it was the best instruction class she had sat in on in two years. Well, needless to say I was blown away. That comment made my semester. My next class was also a Core 103 class for the same professor that I saw at 1:00 p.m. This class was also on avoiding plagiarism and APA style. The class went well. However, the students were not as engaged as the ones before. They were very quiet and asked few questions. After the class the professor thanked me again for a terrific job on both classes, and she told me that she was going to email the instruction coordinator about it. Before I left for the day I got a very nice email from the instruction coordinator praising me and thanking me for my hard work. The reference coordinator even stopped by and congratulated me on a job well done. My last hour in the library was spent monitoring chat from my office. During busy times of the day someone in the department is assigned as "back-up" for the reference desk. You provide "back-up" by monitoring chat. We received no chats during that hour, and I left the library at 6:00 p.m.
On Thursday, January 27, I began my day at the library at 8:00 a.m. This day was wide open. I only had one scheduled appointment for the day. So most of my day was spent working on class prep, and catching up on emails. At 3:30 p.m. I went to a classroom in Floyd Hall to give a Core 202 class a quick walk through on Prezi. I have become the library's Prezi guru, and I am called on at various times to teach classes on it. (I actually have an hour and a half workshop scheduled on it for next week.) I guess this is what happens when you use a Prezi on a job interview and then you get the job. This is the third time in less than three months that I have given a Prezi workshop. The professor of the Core 202 class has assigned the class a group project where the end result is a Prezi and a poster. So I gave them a quick fifteen-minute walk through of the site and how to use it. I am sure I will be hearing from many of them in the near future. The rest of my day was spent in class prep for next week. I left the library at 5:00 p.m.
On the final day of the week, I the only thing I had scheduled was a one-hour shift on the reference desk. My 10:00 a.m. shift was very slow. It may have been due to the fact that we received a light dusting of snow this morning. I had two questions asked during my hour-long shift, and of course one of them was about a printing issue. Hopefully some day these printing problems will be solved. The rest of my day was spent in class prep, with a great deal of the afternoon spent on one class. On Monday, myself and another librarian will be teaching a NURS 362 class. Nursing classes are always complicated. For this one we had to request a training password from a database vendor, and we spent much of the day trying to get it to work. We had to keep bothering our electronic resources librarian because first they gave us extra access to the wrong databases and then the account was not working at all. We finally got it all straightened out. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon getting the script worked out. I was not the script person for this class. The other librarian I was working with was, so it was his job to get the script together. After he got the outline of the script together, we took time to go through every search and database to make sure we were finding what we needed to. This is a two-hour class, and during it we will be covering database searching in four different databases and APA style. I was glad to see 5:00 p.m. roll around, and with it the end of this week.
So that's my libraryday week in the life. It's been fun participating on Twitter and through this blog. It has also been interesting keeping up with all I do. I really am a busy person who does a lot more than read books. ;) Since I became a librarian I believe I am reading less than I was before, but with a schedule like this who has time!
On Monday, January 24 I began the week by teaching an ESHE (Exercise Sport and Health Education) 350 class. In this class I covered popular vs. scholarly articles, what a research article is, and APA style. I was also scheduled to cover database searching in this class, however I ran out of time. I often think that fifty minutes is a long time to fill, but that time goes by quickly. The week before I taught a similar class that lasted an hour and fifteen minutes, and I believe I ran out of time because I was thinking I had an hour and fifteen minutes when I really only had fifty minutes. Following lunch, I had a two-hour shift on the reference desk. With eight questions asked it was not a busy shift, but not a slow one either. The typical beginning of the semester questions persists. Textbooks and printing are always popular topics at every reference desk at the beginning of each semester. After my reference desk shift, I attended the weekly instruction meeting. We have this meeting every Monday in order to discuss instruction within the department, and to divide up the next week's classes. The meeting lasted about an hour, and after we divided up the classes (I ended up with six) we discussed several topics including prep time for instruction classes and how to allot for it during busy instruction times. This semester we are evaluating our instruction sessions, and we also discussed how to place the evaluation link in our LibGuides. I am the minute taker for the semester, so after the meeting I worked on the meeting minutes until it was time to go home for the day. My normal Monday runs from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
On Tuesday, January 25 I arrived at the library at 1:00 p.m. On Tuesdays I work from 1:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. I began my shift by attending a CPR/AED certification session. I am now certified in CPR/AED for two years. After the training session, I returned to my office to check my email and to finish up the minutes from Monday's instruction meeting. I filled the rest of my afternoon with class prep for this week's remaining classes, and I began to look ahead to next week's classes as well. I had to email the professors whose classes I was assigned to touch base and get clarification on what they were expecting from next week's visit to the library. I went to supper at 4:45 p.m. and at 6:00 p.m. I was on the reference desk for my two hour Tuesday night shift. My shift actually ran over about fifteen minutes because the librarian who I share Tuesday nights with had a class that ran until 8:00 p.m. and she needed a few minutes to collect herself before coming to the reference desk. This reference desk shift was a steady shift, with great deal of printing questions asked. We had lots of trouble with our printing system last semester, and it doesn't look like things have improved much. Word docs freeze when students try to print them, and printers disappear from computers. Library schools need to start offering printer and computer troubleshooting classes. I know I have spent a great deal of my time troubleshooting hardware since I became a librarian in September. On a side note, the shift was also peppered with the sounds of fighter jets flying low over the campus. It is amazing how loud they are. You can barely hear yourself think when they fly over. I believe at one point during my shift they were simulating a dogfight over the campus. We hear them nearly every day. I remember the first time I heard them here. I thought we were under attack. I've been told they are flying out of Langley and that they like to fly missions/maneuvers around the mountains here. Our campus is a favorite target because we have the tallest building in the area. It keeps things exciting. When I did return to my office I spent some time answering emails, and I continued to work on class prep for this week and for next week. I left the library at 10:00 p.m.
On Wednesday, January 26, I arrived at the library at 9:00 a.m. My typical Wednesday sees me working at the library from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. I spent the morning working on class prep. Most of my free time seems to be devoted to this. When I refer to class prep I mean creating scripts and LibGuides for the actual class instruction, along with worksheets or other handouts that the students will need during the time they spend with me. I'm still new to library instruction, so I like to run through my script or class plan several times before I actually teach. I do this to avoid any surprises, like a search in a database not producing the desired results. At 1:00 p.m. I taught the first of the two classes I would teach for the day. It was a Core 103 class. Core classes are required classes that all entering freshman must take here. This class was on avoiding plagiarism and APA style. The class went amazingly well. The students were engaged and asked great questions. At the end of the session the professor gushed about how wonderful the class was. She said it was the best instruction class she had sat in on in two years. Well, needless to say I was blown away. That comment made my semester. My next class was also a Core 103 class for the same professor that I saw at 1:00 p.m. This class was also on avoiding plagiarism and APA style. The class went well. However, the students were not as engaged as the ones before. They were very quiet and asked few questions. After the class the professor thanked me again for a terrific job on both classes, and she told me that she was going to email the instruction coordinator about it. Before I left for the day I got a very nice email from the instruction coordinator praising me and thanking me for my hard work. The reference coordinator even stopped by and congratulated me on a job well done. My last hour in the library was spent monitoring chat from my office. During busy times of the day someone in the department is assigned as "back-up" for the reference desk. You provide "back-up" by monitoring chat. We received no chats during that hour, and I left the library at 6:00 p.m.
On Thursday, January 27, I began my day at the library at 8:00 a.m. This day was wide open. I only had one scheduled appointment for the day. So most of my day was spent working on class prep, and catching up on emails. At 3:30 p.m. I went to a classroom in Floyd Hall to give a Core 202 class a quick walk through on Prezi. I have become the library's Prezi guru, and I am called on at various times to teach classes on it. (I actually have an hour and a half workshop scheduled on it for next week.) I guess this is what happens when you use a Prezi on a job interview and then you get the job. This is the third time in less than three months that I have given a Prezi workshop. The professor of the Core 202 class has assigned the class a group project where the end result is a Prezi and a poster. So I gave them a quick fifteen-minute walk through of the site and how to use it. I am sure I will be hearing from many of them in the near future. The rest of my day was spent in class prep for next week. I left the library at 5:00 p.m.
On the final day of the week, I the only thing I had scheduled was a one-hour shift on the reference desk. My 10:00 a.m. shift was very slow. It may have been due to the fact that we received a light dusting of snow this morning. I had two questions asked during my hour-long shift, and of course one of them was about a printing issue. Hopefully some day these printing problems will be solved. The rest of my day was spent in class prep, with a great deal of the afternoon spent on one class. On Monday, myself and another librarian will be teaching a NURS 362 class. Nursing classes are always complicated. For this one we had to request a training password from a database vendor, and we spent much of the day trying to get it to work. We had to keep bothering our electronic resources librarian because first they gave us extra access to the wrong databases and then the account was not working at all. We finally got it all straightened out. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon getting the script worked out. I was not the script person for this class. The other librarian I was working with was, so it was his job to get the script together. After he got the outline of the script together, we took time to go through every search and database to make sure we were finding what we needed to. This is a two-hour class, and during it we will be covering database searching in four different databases and APA style. I was glad to see 5:00 p.m. roll around, and with it the end of this week.
So that's my library
Friday, January 28, 2011
Reference Questions, 1/28/2011
Well, the big snow we were forecast to get on Wednesday never materialized. So unfortunately no snow days for me this week. Oh well, maybe next week. It seems to snow here all the time, but we never get much accumulation from it. It is such a tease. Well, time for more reference questions, maybe.
- Professor was looking for a book by Huston Smith, we didn't have it and so she asked if she brought in a copy of it could she get a chapter copied to place on reserve for her class; I sent her to the Front Desk, they handle reserves
- Student was having trouble printing; he was using Google Chrome and WebCT doesn't seem to like it; I had him switch to Firefox and it worked fine
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Reference Questions, 1/25/2011
I'm here on the reference desk for another Tuesday night. I might be here for three hours instead of two because my Tuesday night partner is teaching a MKTG 612 class right now that may go three hours. Also the rumor is that we will be getting four to eight inches of snow over the next 24 hours, along with some sleet and freezing rain to round it off. Should make for an interesting Wednesday.
- Needed a guest login
- Looking for Emma by Jane Austen
- Wanted to know how to get to the library catalog
- Student was having trouble printing; there were no printers installed on his computer
- Student was having trouble printing, and wanted to print from the reference computer because a librarian had let him do that before; however we are not supposed to do that so I told him he had to log back into a computer and try to print again, and to let me know if he had problems again
- Same student from question 5 was still having trouble printing; he was having trouble because he wasn't waiting for the print assist window to finish calculating before he hit print
- Needed to know how to print select page ranges within a very large pdf
- Had a question about printing cost
- Looking for the book Career Fitness Program; it was checked out
- Needed to know how to change the printing to one sided
Monday, January 24, 2011
Reference Questions, 1/24/2011
Here I am at the reference desk for today's two hour shift. I've been told it's been busy today, so let's see if that trend continues.
- Student put money on his RU Express account but was still unable to print; he was not switching to RU Express in the print assist window
- Assumed we had her textbook, we didn't. The thought to get my textbook at a library never crossed my mind as an undergrad. Just think of all the money I wasted.
- Wanted to know how to print in color
- (Phone) IT guy had question about when Classroom C would be available for a rebuild
- Looking for the copier
- Wanted to know if she got another $5 in print money at the beginning of this semester or if the $5 was just for the whole year
- Thought he got $5 every semester for printing and wanted to know where his $5 was; I had to explain to him that the $5 was for the entire year
- Problem with printing; didn't know he had to open the Word doc before he could print it
Friday, January 21, 2011
Reference Questions, 1/21/2011
It's Friday, an hour before lunch. I'm starving and on the reference desk. I taught the first instruction class of the semester yesterday and it went really well. The library is a little empty right now. Hopefully it won't be too busy.
- Wanted to borrow a highlighter
- Wanted to know what computer he had to use to print to the color printer
- Having trouble printing, however all I have to do is walk over there and it works, I'm magical
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Reference Questions, 1/19/2011
So begins a two hour shift here on the reference desk. It's my first day shift of the semester. There is some activity in the library, we'll see if it brings any questions.
- Student was having trouble downloading her syllabus from WebCT. She was in IE and she was not telling the browser it was OK to download the file.
- Having trouble printing
- Had a question about an Adobe form
- Looking for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
- Having trouble finding a book; she was on the wrong floor
- Looking for the popular reading section
- Wanted to know where to check out books
- Having trouble printing a pdf. The pdf was in a webpage and there were 6 pages that were numbered with Roman numerals. She had to add the 6 pages to the page she wanted to print. She was having trouble figuring this out on her own. Bless her heart.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Reference Questions, 1/18/11
And we're back. I choose not to blog during the Holiday Hiatus because while yes I did have reference shifts, I had very, very few questions. The reference desk holds little purpose when the students are not on campus. But now the clouds have parted and the Spring 2011 semester has begun. There are several students here in the library tonight. Lets see if any of them have questions.
- Needed to put money on his RU Express account
- Wanted to know if we had a business law librarian (um, not really)
- Needed to type up something and print it
- Having trouble logging into the computer
- Having trouble printing
I'm a teaching machine...
With the dawning of the Spring semester comes a full instruction load for me. Yes it is now time for me to assume my proper place here as a full instruction librarian. I will no longer be shadowing any of the other instruction librarians. I will be doing it on my own, designing scripts and worksheets, like a real instruction librarian. No time was wasted in throwing me into the ring either.
The week before the Spring semester began, I "volunteered" to teach two faculty workshops, one on RefWorks and one on Prezi. Now I have put volunteer in quotations because the head of instruction here asked me to teach these workshops, and being one that never steps down from a challenge I accepted. It really does amaze how my fear of teaching, and for that my fear of public speaking, has almost completely disappeared. It seems with every class I teach, every group I speak in front of, it lessens. It has diminished greatly just from the time I began graduate school in August 2008. I am truly grateful for this considering that 45% of my job is teaching instruction classes. (I'm already scheduled to teach four classes this semester. I have one this week and three next week. I need to enjoy the lite load while I can.)
The two faculty workshops went really well. I taught the RefWorks workshop first. It was attended by three people, and lasted about an hour and a half. The second workshop was on Prezi, and it was attended by twenty-one people with a great deal of them being teaching faculty. The workshop only lasted an hour, but I could have easily gone on another thirty minutes. The head of instruction in the library assisted me during this workshop and was very impressed by the number of participants that were in fact teaching faculty. She said that oftentimes they do not attend these workshops because they are too busy gearing up for classes the week before the semester begins. The Prezi workshop was a big hit. I even received applause at the end. (I love applause. It's always nice to feel like the work you put in is appreciated.) The Prezi workshop was so popular that I'm doing it again next month and in May. I guess I'm going to be the Prezi goddess around here. I've already been getting emails from faculty with questions about Prezi. It's nice to fell needed.
Last week brought lots of excitement with the two faculty workshops, but a funny thing happened at the Prezi workshop that was even more exciting. A professor walked up to me and introduced himself and said that he knew I was Sigma Tau Delta. (Sigma Tau Delta is the International English Honor Society.) He went on to say that whenever I wanted to take over the university chapter of Sigma Tau Delta I should let him know, it's all mine. Well, I was rather surprised that he knew I was a member of Sigma Tau Delta, so after the workshop I emailed him to inquire about the position and about how he knew I was a member. He said he'd Googled me and found my capstone website that had my resume on it. Of course. Well we've exchanged several emails, and I have decided that I would like to take over the university's chapter. I believe this will be an wonderful new adventure for me, and I am excited to begin pursuing it. This will be a great opportunity for outreach, and it will get me an in with the English department. Shakespeare instruction classes here I come! That is my dream, teaching instruction classes on all things Shakespeare. It might help if they actually taught Shakespeare classes here. [Sigh] Maybe someday...
The week before the Spring semester began, I "volunteered" to teach two faculty workshops, one on RefWorks and one on Prezi. Now I have put volunteer in quotations because the head of instruction here asked me to teach these workshops, and being one that never steps down from a challenge I accepted. It really does amaze how my fear of teaching, and for that my fear of public speaking, has almost completely disappeared. It seems with every class I teach, every group I speak in front of, it lessens. It has diminished greatly just from the time I began graduate school in August 2008. I am truly grateful for this considering that 45% of my job is teaching instruction classes. (I'm already scheduled to teach four classes this semester. I have one this week and three next week. I need to enjoy the lite load while I can.)
The two faculty workshops went really well. I taught the RefWorks workshop first. It was attended by three people, and lasted about an hour and a half. The second workshop was on Prezi, and it was attended by twenty-one people with a great deal of them being teaching faculty. The workshop only lasted an hour, but I could have easily gone on another thirty minutes. The head of instruction in the library assisted me during this workshop and was very impressed by the number of participants that were in fact teaching faculty. She said that oftentimes they do not attend these workshops because they are too busy gearing up for classes the week before the semester begins. The Prezi workshop was a big hit. I even received applause at the end. (I love applause. It's always nice to feel like the work you put in is appreciated.) The Prezi workshop was so popular that I'm doing it again next month and in May. I guess I'm going to be the Prezi goddess around here. I've already been getting emails from faculty with questions about Prezi. It's nice to fell needed.
Last week brought lots of excitement with the two faculty workshops, but a funny thing happened at the Prezi workshop that was even more exciting. A professor walked up to me and introduced himself and said that he knew I was Sigma Tau Delta. (Sigma Tau Delta is the International English Honor Society.) He went on to say that whenever I wanted to take over the university chapter of Sigma Tau Delta I should let him know, it's all mine. Well, I was rather surprised that he knew I was a member of Sigma Tau Delta, so after the workshop I emailed him to inquire about the position and about how he knew I was a member. He said he'd Googled me and found my capstone website that had my resume on it. Of course. Well we've exchanged several emails, and I have decided that I would like to take over the university's chapter. I believe this will be an wonderful new adventure for me, and I am excited to begin pursuing it. This will be a great opportunity for outreach, and it will get me an in with the English department. Shakespeare instruction classes here I come! That is my dream, teaching instruction classes on all things Shakespeare. It might help if they actually taught Shakespeare classes here. [Sigh] Maybe someday...
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