Such a Cute Teen

Patron: "Wow, your such a young teen to be an intern."

Me: [Hangs head] "No Ma'am, I'm almost 30 and will have my Master's soon."

Patron: "Oh, well good luck!"


Today this "young teen" had an eventful full day on the adult desk. Besides gaining experience in the Wild West that is reference work, my primary focus was on learning the databases. I got to play around with the Biography Resource Center and really spent a lot of time on NoveList, which is probably my new best friend. Watch out world, I am ready for Reader's Advisory!

Also got to learn all about netLibrary, ILLs and Summer Reading Club (which everyone should join!).

A Librarian's job description is more set in stone then the tasks that they do on a daily basis. Some days your the Cruise Director or Event Planner, and others your the Computer Police, Tech Support, Therapist, or Mind Reader. Yes, patrons really do walk up to the desk and say "My [insert name/family member here] mentioned this book that they heard about/read, but I don't know the title or the author." Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't.

Overall, my first month is over and I feel much better prepared now then I did 45 days ago. I still have a lot to learn, but that will always be the case. On the way out the door, JA even said that I looked like a real librarian tonight and that made me feel really good!

Though, we have finally answered the age old question of "How many librarians does it take to jump a car?" Its 3 librarians and an intern, this is now a proven fact, two days in a row.

Fake it Till You Make it

What another great intern night! Tonight was spent with observing another one of MB's amazing computer classes, this time it was the File Management class. We had a great crowd and everyone learned something! That afternoon he decided to create some "Folder" and "File" props, and those were great. Though the quote of the night was definitely "I don't know where they are, I really don't have these files well organized."

While I feel well prepared to teach a class, my only hesitation is that the one I am supposed to teach is not one of the ones that I have observed. Will it be ok? Yes. But will I work extra hard to prepare? Absolutely.


My aha!, wow, light bulb moment came later though by SS and her awesome PowerPoint tips and tricks. Why on earth Microsoft decided to put the coolest editing feature in PowerPoint is beyond me, but they did. You can edit clip art in PowerPoint and then save it! Who knew? Place your clip art that you want to edit, ungroup all of the components, delete/move/recolor to your hearts content, and then save the image as a picture! Can't wait to play around with that some more.

Oh, the first day back after vacation is always interesting. Spent the first and last hour on the desk going through the databases and prioritizing with KC which ones I need to really need to learn. Looks like I got out of creating the YA Database scavenger hunt, for now...

The rest of my day was spent observing another of MB's computer classes, this time the Internet. This class was a lot different then the software classes because there was a lot less material to cover in the two hour time frame, and even with as slow as the internet was we still finished 30 minutes early. For the instructor of this topic, it would be important to have the sites already loaded to avoid some of the lag time it took for the sites to load, even though they were already bookmarked.