Ok, now I’ve started to settle into a bit of a routine. I come in to the library in the morning, head back to my space at the reference desk, and see what Becky has for me to do. Becky’s been great in helping me out with things. A year ago she was actually in pretty much the exact position I am now. She was an MLIS candidate at USM, just like I am, and was working in the exact same internship I am. Now, a year later, she has a job as a librarian at South Georgia State. It’s nice to see how internship experience can work for your career. It’s also nice to have someone who knows exactly what I’m going through and can help me out.
We started off the week selecting art resources for inclusion in the library’s collection. Apparently the library has the opportunity to obtain a number of free art books as part of a program, so Becky and I went through a list of them online and selected some that we thought would be appropriate for the library. Some of them were pretty out there (as modern art can be), but we found some good ones.
I also started learning a new skill: cataloging! Yolanda started showing me how to go about cataloging materials using OCLC Connexion and Voyager Cataloging software. She printed out a handy little sheet telling me what to do, which was nice because I could never remember everything otherwise. Some of the stuff she showed me I remembered from my cataloging class, but most of it was pretty new. Really, the procedure is pretty simple. When we get a new book, we find the correct edition in OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center) and import the MARC record to Voyager. Then we make the necessary changes to adapt it to our library. There are a lot of steps, though, and a lot of specific things that we have to do to properly catalog the item. After learning these procedures Yolanda gave me three books to catalog. I think I did ok, although there were a few things I messed up. Nothing that couldn’t be quickly fixed, though. I think I may actually end up enjoying cataloging once I get the hang of it.
Over at the public library I got to work on putting together my computer class. The first one is just going to be on computer basics: the parts of the computer, using a mouse and keyboard, opening and closing programs, etc. Mark mentioned that a lot of the people who have come to these classes in the past have barely used computers before, so I might have my work cut out for me in explaining things to them. I’m ok with that, though! Computer literacy is a something that most people can’t afford not to have nowadays, so I’m happy to help them as much as I can. I also came up with a schedule for the rest of the classes. I’ll be touching on internet and email basics, social media, Microsoft Word, and including a practice lab for people to work on the skills they’ve learned in the classes. I’ll also be repeating the computer basics class for anyone who missed it the first time. I’m a bit nervous, but we’ll see how it goes! It should be great experience if nothing else.
Oden the Librarian 