Friday, March 28, 2008

Been A While

I realised I hadn't posted anything new in a while. This is mostly because not much has been happening/I have been ill most of March.

Aside from midterms there hasn't been much going on in the Education of Librarian Elise. One would think that midterms would be educational but sadly they are not. However one of my midterms was a presentation/paper on a library visit. This was helpful both as a future librarian and as a current nanny.

I decided not to go to one of the city branches because frankly they all disappoint me by doing the bare minimum of programming and outreach and sometimes they even fall short of that. Last autumn I tried to find a storytime/lap-sit to take the wee redhead too in the winter months but there was nothing in our area. I called about four different branches and they didn't offer anything.

Anyway I decided to got to the nearest north suburb to see what they were offering children and young adults. I got to talk to the director of the library (which was the main point of this assignment since it was for my management class) and I talked to a young adult librarian. Both of these individuals were highly interesting and reminded me that library school is not indicative of actually working in a library. They were able to answer my questions and were very happy to talk to me. I imagine it would be nice to see a future member of your profession, a sort of confirmation of the work you are doing.

The library itself was amazing. This is one of the more wealthy suburbs and they recently renovated their children's and young adult sections. I will need to take the wee redhead to the children's department, it is like an indoor version of The Secret Garden, I was truly in awe of what I saw. The young adult section was similarly awesome, it is full of bright colors and comfortable seating along with a wall of television/computer monitors for video game nights.

The programming is really phenomenal too, there were lap-sits for the 0-12 month crowd, storytimes for the toddlers and preschoolers, and after-school activities for the elementary students and young adults as well as adult programming. It was really fantastic to see a library really trying to reach their community, especially in the young adult age group, those are the kids that are difficult to get into the library but the most important since they will become library supporting adults.

It is really sad that I live in a city with one of the largest public library systems in the country but the suburban library just outside the city is outdoing and outshining that system. This is one of the reasons people move out of the city when they have children and it is truly a waste of librarians and resources.

Monday, March 3, 2008

No Time

No time seems to be my new catchphrase. I had class this weekend and between that, my Thursday class and the laundry room in my building closing at 10pm I did not have time to do my laundry. This led to me doing it at work. This isn't necessarily a problem but it was a bit weird. It caused my employer to remind me that I can take some time off work if I need to. I have vacation days that I have not as of yet used but I always feel guilty about using them. I haven't even used a sick day, even when the wee redhead gave me a cold. So I am taking a few days around my birthday and the Monday after my next weekend class. This should help me from going too crazy.

This weekend wasn't actually all that bad. Like the previous class weekend we had a presentation due at the end of the second day and a paper due in a few weeks. My group did a presentation on the Luxeuil Abbey and the Luxeuil miniscule that they created which can be seen here http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/examples/luxeuil.htm
My group and I tried to recreate the script and the illuminations used as best as possible. Part of the presentation was do to a mock page of text to try to better understand the life of a scribe.
I don't know if I understood the life of the scribe that well but on Sunday night my neck and shoulders hurt so bad from the tension due to writing that I couldn't sleep.

I also introduced the others in my group to Google docs and to Refworks. Since we are all writing the paper together and because there aren't really clear divisions of the topics it makes sense to write it together in Google docs. This way we can all share the information as we go. Hopefully this will also make editing the parts together a bit more streamlined. Refworks is a really great tool when doing a bibliography, it will format it once the sources are entered into the program. You can also put websites into it by using RefGrab-It. This makes paper writing so much easier, it even does the in text citations.

I was very lucky to have Garrett's help this weekend. He encouraged me to enjoy the art project that I was assigned (even though I paid thousands of dollars for this class only to be assigned an ART PROJECT!). And even better he took Miso (the cat) for the weekend so that I would have uninterrupted rest. Most nights I get kept up until late hours because she decides to randomly bite my arm or she wakes me at 5am with her call of the wild moments that last for about an hour. Although it was very nice to have her back Sunday night, she fell asleep next to me by about 10:30 and stayed that way most of the night. I think I was missed.

Technically this week is spring break but next Tuesday I have a presentation to give about a library visit for my management class. I spoke to the library director today and will visit the library tomorrow evening. There is also a corresponding paper due the week after the presentation and a midterm take home exam for my cataloging class. Combine this with the paper for my early books and manuscripts class so I don't really have a Spring break at all.

I am debating my decision to take three classes next fall. This has been a very busy semester however part of the difficulty have been that these are the last of my required classes and the added problem of snowy commutes. I hope that taking classes that I want to take and in weather more conducive to commuting I should be ok. I think I will register for three but drop one if need be.