Internship Day 17

It’s been a pretty neat day. I did some spine-reinforcement, re-taped the shelving labels for the W-Z shelf area, and then updated the library catalog and spreadsheet again. The library catalog is run on Destiny Quest, which had an update a few months ago, so I am updating my knowledge of the user-interface and where all the links are still.

On the downside, I realized I need to carefully check the books I’m labeling against the larger database. I had to undo some level labels because I learned that the title the book catalog referred to happened to be a different book.

I have found that with ambiguity in titles, I need references handy so I can double-check what I’m doing. At least I did that extra work and looked up said book.

Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating Women in Technology: Dreamwidth Women

To be honest, I deeply admire the women who help build-up Dreamwidth! It’s a long list, but I find each of them fill their roles amazingly well and well, I think the Dreamwidth community loves them for it… and well Dreamwidth Rocks for an up-and-coming social networking site.

I find I prefer Dreamwidth overall for its community — there’s a wonderful team of people working there [men and women alike] and it’s very much a user-centered environment. But a good portion of the staff is female, and I love admiring them for all that they do!

Most especially I admire these ladies: Denise, Afuna, Aveleh, Kat, Dom, and ChemicalLace.

Note: not all staff has their full names on this list. Most people on this list have been addressed by alias and journal name.

Denise Paolucci (denise): the co-founder and very wonderful advocate of this community! She’s also the business manager/marketer.

Afuna(afuna) and Aveleh(aveleh): Styles support! also Afuna does invite system too. Both of these are very important for a social networking site. Because a site’s only as good as the its users and its pretty AND accessible design.

ChemicalLace (chemicallace), Dom(domtheknight), and Kat (zarhooie): The Support Triumvirate! Well, can’t have a good webteam without the support techs. And I love these guys to pieces they’re fun and geeky and all kinds of helpful in both contributions and instruction.

There’s a ton more people that I love over at Dreamwidth, but these leading ladies get a lot of props from me. I might feature the rest of the team later on in a post over here.

If you wanna learn more about Dreamwidth:
Dreamwidth Studios
Dreamwidth Notes – The Dreamwidth Studios Wiki

If you’d like a code go hop over to: Dreamwidth Code Sharing

And since Dreamwidth’s anniversary is up and coming look out for The Three Weeks for Dreamwidth Project

Internship Day 16

Another late post.

I finished all the book-moving [or well most of it]. I also finished what I could figure out of the books from the catalog that needed to be re-leveled. Latest item learned this time around: If titles are ambiguous in a catalog, do not label the books titled as such — it is 98% likely that said the book the library has is an older edition compared to the one referenced.

Internship Day 15

Finished arranging the leveled shelves W-Z today. Then was put to the task of finding books from a mini catalog that are supposed to be leveled but currently unleveled. Unfortunately there are two design difficulties with said mini catalog: it does not have an index and the books are listed simply by title under grade level and then by Fountas and Pinell level — there is no information on the author or the publisher… both of which make it extremely difficult to locate!

Internship Day 14

I finally finished arranging the leveled books balcony shelf today, though I had to do some mid-process organization troubleshooting (I started moving up the next alphabet level, but realized I had run out of the flex-room space for more books in the lower-end of the moved levels because of it, so I had to undo some of the work done to regain that space). That shelf now has Levels U – V books. Now I’m rearranging the upper levels of books on the now emptier shelves downstairs from Levels W – Z. So that’s what I will be continuing to do on Thursday.

I liked listening to my supervisor teach while I was working on those shelves. The open classroom for the grade-level she was teaching is right next to my work area, in the middle of the Biographies section of the library. She was teaching the children about the Caldecott Medal and allowing them to view and judge the 2010 Medal Winner and the two books that were awarded Honors.

Listening to her makes me even more determined to be a School Library Teacher someday!

Internship Day 10 – 13

err… whoops haven’t updated in a while. Mostly, been working on a managerial task — re-arranging the multiples collection. I consolidated the unleveled books to 4 rows of bookshelves with a bookcase worth of “flex-room” because the Massachusetts Children’s Book Awards nominees have to go on the shelves, as well as some storage books from last year’s Pierce Reads.

I also moved up a good portion of the Leveled U-V on the opposite side of the shelf [still have about a bookcase and a half to fill on the balcony]. After I rearrange these, I need to rearrange whatever upper-leveled multiples are left in the lower area.

Then, I will tackle the A-T leveled books… which may well be a bit harder as they are much denser and have a lot more multiple-copies [Beverly Cleary books for instance]. Following that, I will probably work on labeling and spine-reinforcement, as well as book-counts so the spreadsheet is accurate.

I will not be in charge of the final print-out of this and I’m okay with that; the prior owner of the document wants to print it because it’s technically her original work that I’m modifying.

Internship Day 9

Finished Tuesday’s labels and made more for the unleveled books. I’m still trying to figure out how to re-organize the shelving situation. And I finally figured out how to get the circulation desk printer to print labels. It’s a bit of a hassle, but at least now I can print and don’t have to interrupt the students printing their classwork. In addition, I finally have both logins memorized!

Internship Day 8

It’s good to be back. I had a break off for February vacation, but I’m very happy to be back in the library. I really enjoy this job.

I worked on spine labels again today [and fought with the circulation desk printer and gave up on it — that machine really doesn’t like the label sheets]. Working through the unleveled book shelves.

I found some things that are mis-shelved and will have to reshelve them after they get labeled. The major problem will be whether or not they’re all going to fit on the shelves. I have approximately 80 books to label on Thursday and then I’ll have to create more labels and/or figure out where to put books. We’ll see what happens.

Internship Day 7

… today was a little more difficult as I didn’t have as much access to my supervisor since she was at a workshop and the catalog back office seemed to be having some difficulties with loading properly.

I ended up not following the original work plan for the day because of it. Instead I went through the books and marked up which ones needed to be moved to a different section because I’m not sure if they’re in the listed count or not, and the counts of the books I have at the moment so I can look in the catalog and see if they have been taken out or are actually missing, lost or misplaced.

internship day 6!

Finished adding books to the spreadsheet AND sorted them! It took awhile to figure it out because I've never used AppleWorks before. Then I added some more spine labels, which took 3 tries because I didn't have the printer settings correct. I also emptied all the book-return bins and have started adding spine labels to the Unleveled Multiples section. :) I'll continue doing that next week. I also noted that one of the graphic novel series had the author's name misspelled on the call number so I made a note to fix it in the catalog.

internship day 5

making good progress on the main Multiples project!

I finally finished labeling the section of books I was working on (unleveled multiples that should be re-leveled) and started updating the spreadsheet records for them.

Next week, I am finishing updating the spreadsheets by updating Genre and Subject for the re-leveled multiples, then I'm adding in the multiple books from the 2010 Massachusetts Children's Book Awards(MCBA) nominees.

Following that, I have to both figure out how to re-shelve the books (a lot of them are getting moved around) and also start labeling the other books in the multiple shelves as their proper areas and do a count-check for updating the spreadsheet. Following that, I will have to update the catalog with which books are missing in the ones that are off-count.

Internship Day 4

Did some more book labeling, as well as some shelving of labeled books. Still have a few more labels to go. This time I'm adding not spine labels, but the sticker labels for reading levels.

It was a good day and I made a decent amount of progress. Thursday, I will be finishing labeling with the reading levels, marking off where the books will be going in the spreadsheet binder, and checking book-counts so that they can be updated in the spreadsheet with the correct locations.

Internship Day 3

Today was my third day and I'm still having a lot of fun. I got there early and stayed a half-hour later today because I wanted to finish creating more spine labels so I wouldn't have to restart the project I was working on again.

I applied the spine labels I had printed off on Tuesday, I reinforced the spines of a large amount of paperbacks with the tape dispenser, and I scanned in the barcodes of 84 books that needed spine labels.

The spine reinforcement was the hardest part - it's super-difficult to get the tape to go around the book without bubbling or being too long. I got a little bit better as I finished up, but I could still use a bit more practice.

So, Tuesday's project will be applying spine labels and reinforcing the spines of paperbacks.

Second day of Internship

I'm enjoying working in a school library, even though it's only been my second day. It also amuses me when the sixth graders run by and wave a lot (I know most of them through my little sister). I love working with children, and my career goal is to one day be a youth services librarian.

What I did today:

1. Continued updating the catalog, this time updating the call numbers with Fountas and Pinell levels for the multiple-copy books.
2. Started working on book-preparation for both multiple-copy books and a few random books -- scanning in barcodes for spine labels and printing the labels out. Thursday's work will be the more menial side of book-preparation -- taping spines and adding spine labels.
3. Was briefed on lockdown procedure - where to go and what to do.
4. Filed CORI.

First day of Internship

So, today was my first day at my internship!

Things I learned/did today!

1. The Fountas and Pinell leveling system for Guided Reading Levels

Books are leveled A - Z with A being the easiest [~Kindergarten/1st Grade] and Z Being the hardest [Grade 8]

2. Looking up GRLs using a Sundance Publishing Catalog for multiple-copy books

Look through author list for author.

If author exists in the publishing catalog, check for the book title

If book title exists in publishing catalog, check the index page reference for the book

Look at the reference page and see if it has a GRL tag, for example, GRL-S

If yes, put a sticky on the book with the GRL and take all copies off the shelf and then put a check next to the book in the author's list.

If no, write no next to the book title on the author's list.

3. Updating the GRLs for said multiple-copy books into the library catalog

Search for Book

Edit title

Series/Notes Tab

Scroll down to Fountas & Pinell, set the A-Z dropdown, save.

select all the ticky boxes that pop up[the system is checking to make sure the MARC display record is properly punctuated as forms doesn't often remember to include the periods and commas at the end of certain variables], and Save title.

If it says a record already exists, overwrite the record.

Check catalog to make sure there isn't another version that doesn't have the Fountas & Pinell level recorded -- usually 2 versions - one hardback, one paperback.

If there is another version, repeat process.

Yeah this is somewhat low-tech and very "GUI" but, i think it's useful. :)

#2 & #3 are a part of my major long-term project for the semester "The Multiples Project", which is going through all the multiple-copy books, updating the catalog for them, updating the spreadsheet for them for the big white binders and then finally reshelving them to their proper reading levels.

Other things I'll be doing as needed during the semester will be book prep, shelfreading, and importing records.