Philotic Web

Things To Do


4) Tell Pweb that I was offered a position as a Youth Services Library Assistant and start next Tuesday [Check]

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CONGRATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YAAAAAAAY!!

*feeds celebratory cookies!*

I am SO happy for you! You more than deserve this.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

*happily munches on cookies* 'Celebration' is the best flavor ever.

YAY! You did it!!!!

Congrats, Alea!

That's awesome, Alea! Grats.

Best news I've heard all day! Congratulations Alea!

AH!!!!!!!

*so excited*

Congrats Twinny!!!

Thanks, guys.

Awesome. High-five, fist bump, all of that.

*waves Mod wand*

I am not letting you get away with sneaking your awesome news into a to do thread!!

CONGRATS!

Welcome to the library world.

I am beyond excited for you.

*chuckle* But lists are what I do!

Thank you, though. I'll be sure to throw some stories in here or something so I feel less silly about this thread being all on its own now.

When I'm up to it, I can add one about my preparation, which included having Adam pretend to interview me over the phone the night before and me getting so frustrated that I either kept making him tell me what to say or going off on tangents about who knows what.

hooray

Congratz!

*chuckle* But lists are what I do!

Thank you, though. I'll be sure to throw some stories in here or something so I feel less silly about this thread being all on its own now.

When I'm up to it, I can add one about my preparation, which included having Adam pretend to interview me over the phone the night before and me getting so frustrated that I either kept making him tell me what to say or going off on tangents about who knows what.

that was indeed amusing

"Anyway, moving back to the first part of the question"
"but I forgot it rehearsing the answer to the second part!"
"Back to the question."
"I'm going to answer both all at once, that way I can remember it."
"No! if you can't answer them separately you won't be able to answer either one effectively tomorrow."

Congrats Alea. That is very cool.

Good show!! I'm so happy for you!!!

Congratulations!!11!!

Congratulations, Miss Alea. =)

Congratulations Alea!!!

Thank you, guys!

Gah! Limited internet access for just a couple days and I miss stuff!

Congratulations Alea!

(very belatedly) Congrats!!! I hope it all goes superbly!

Congrats ! Good luck !

I know I'm a little late, but congrats Alea!

And I am late saying thanks, so we're even.

Okay, time to start transitioning this thread into a place to share stuff about life at my library, or in this post's case, "If You Give an Alea a Wall."

The AZ summer reading program theme of the year is "Be Creative!" and so I thought it might be appropriate if I started being creative in terms of decorating a very boring, very white wall. (I'm hoping people realize at this point that blank white walls are like the dragon to my knight...they must be overcome.) After going through some ideas, I finally settled on one, even if that also did some evolving after I got started.

I wanted to do something that incorporated all 6 weeks worth of sub-themes and I'll just say now, I failed to come through on that. Big time. The plan was to make a big palette (check!) with six 'paint blots' (check!) that each had a small image attached to them that represented one of those sub-themes (fail!), and a big paint brush (check-ish) far off to the side. Between the palette and the brush will be crepe streamer manipulated to look like writing (to say Be Creative, Create, Get Creative, or some variant), as if it were painted on the wall by the brush, using the paint on the palette. Follow all that?

Down below are thumbnails, of first my supplies, the cut out palette and foiled brush, the painted palette w/ obvious brush strokes, and the palette with the paint attached. Even if it's not quite what I wanted, I think it'll look kinda neat once it's all up. To put the scale in perspective, the palette is basically all of a poster board, the brush is the diagonal of another poster board, and the paint blots are made from 8.5x11 sheets of card stock.

Didn't you have your first day yesterday? Tell us all about it!

I've been missing out by not checking Pweb enough

YAYYYYY ALEA!

That is totally awesome news, and I am really very excited for you. I know you'll do well there.

very important question

is your library on the Library of Congress call number system or are they still using the archaic ewwy dewey decimel system?

Thanks, Cameron.

is your library on the Library of Congress call number system or are they still using the archaic ewwy dewey decimel system?

Ewwy Dewey, dude.

Didn't you have your first day yesterday? Tell us all about it!

Yes, yes it was. I meant to post about it yesterday, too, but I was made of pure exhaustion yesterday. Let's see if I can even remember yesterday...

Going in, I knew how to do shelving (oh, but of course), I could discharge/check-in books that were returned by patrons, and I could do very basic searches on the staff computer for books but I wasn't/am not very comfortable with that yet...I might be forgetting something but it was a lot of learning in the moment stuff yesterday and today and likely the rest of the week.

The librarian training me in Youth (I'm being cross-trained to be able to work in at least 2 departments) has a very hands off approach. Meaning, she told me I'm smart, stumble a little as I learn on my own. Oh, the mistakes I have made. Anyway, it being a branch and most people being excited about the new main, it's been relatively slow for most of the day both days, with a few spurts of crazy thrown in so at least that's been in my favor. It's been just busy enough that people are pulling books off the shelves and/or returning them so that I was able to pass at least 4 hours yesterday shelving, making me really sore from the repetitive bending over, squatting, rearranging, etc.

I also punched holes for name tags, to be placed in summer reading bags. I filled summer reading bags. Wrapped some boxes for a little activity (they try to match a painting with the artist...which just now reminds me I need to throw a sticker on those boxes). Copied a paper. Learned how to keep stats for programs. Learned how to override the computer registration for internet use. Straightened out shelves. Cursed whomever it was -patrons, volunteers, librarians, whomever- for being unable to put books in order. First official complaint: NF shelving sucks the worst. Fiction and picture books are super-duper easy. Spanish is easy. Graphic novels are easy. Board books are the easiest. But NF shelving, curses...God, how terribly exciting! I was given busy work and it kind of annoyed me because no matter how much I ask to try to learn the ropes from the Youth, she's not really helping. I'm nervous that I'll be lost when she leaves because she won't just tell me "I'm doing this, to accomplish that." Until she leaves, no matter how much she says it's my area, it's hers and I'm helping her make it into her ideal.

Today, I trained in Circulation and that person was much better about helping me out but that's because she actually needs the help and knows it's to her advantage for me to know what I'm doing. But it was still a little slow, so we talked quite a bit when I wasn't doing her busy work (sealing envelopes, anyone?) or the actual training stuff that could only be accomplished as the need to do the processes arose.

The director decided our hours of operation may change so that it's open every day of the week, until later in the evening. None of us like that idea.

That's about it for now, I'd say. I like to think any annoyance or snarkiness that may be coming across on the 2nd whole day I've been back to work is because I've actually had over a decade in the youth half of the position and am only just now getting paid to do it. No? That excuse doesn't fly? Okay, didn't think so.

I was able to pass at least 4 hours yesterday shelving, making me really sore from the repetitive bending over, squatting, rearranging, etc.

See, the shelving and rearranging sounds like heaven to me (I do it at bookstores as a soothing exercise) but the repetitive squatting and standing back up would be a killer. My vision goes all black whenever I stand up from a squatting/kneeling position. Stupid low blood pressure.

It sounds like it's going well, though! Through FB, I recently got back in touch with a good friend from high school who works as a librarian at one of the local colleges. She was valedictorian to my salutatorian . I'm meeting her for lunch soon. All you librarians are making me jealous!

That's very, very awesome! I'm glad it's going well for you!

oh shelving.

Just wait til you 'get your eyes on' and are able to spot a book in a sea of other books with a call number out of place. :-p Dewey is terrible for this though, all the numbers are the same, at least LoC has some sort of bizarre prefix system and an orderly series of letters and numbers that make sense if you try to catch the overall pattern in your brain rather than trying to isolate it.

You know you've spent too much time in a library when you can start predicting a book's LoC number from the title before you even look at the number itself. :-p

My biggest problem is that everytime I went shelving I would always find about five books that I simply HAD to take back with me to look at (or at the very least have beside me in potentia of being looked at even if I knew I had no business or time for checking out said book and reading it.