March 5, 2015 (Thursday)

Time: 8am-6pm (10)
Hours completed (IST): 68/135
Hours completed (Kara Robinson): 15/15
Accumulated on-site hours: 83/150

Today was another crushing day of work. I met with a member of the SLIS faculty to discuss the work atmosphere in academic libraries. While I always receive a lot of great advice while working in the library and on my practicum, I felt it was necessary to sit with somebody who spends more time studying academic libraries and is heavily involved in research. It was definitely helpful to get a broader perspective from somebody who is an "outsider" to the library in some ways. Particularly, as somebody who came from a research-heavy discipline, it showed me the level of commitment I would need to be an active writer especially if I work someplace that has no tenure or has lower requirements for research. By overlapping this conversation with my meeting earlier in the week, it seems that I better get used to planning out almost every minute of the day if I want to accomplish everything I hope to do.

After the meeting I helped Tammy with the workshop portion of a BI with a local high school. These students, unlike the previous, were not able to check out books so along with helping them search eResources and finding items in the stacks I also assisted them in using flatbed scanners so they could email themselves the relevant parts of books. The students broke for lunch from noon-to-one and then spent another half hour workshopping.

After this I observed Michael lead a BI with a class from the School of Communications. It was interesting that he chose to use a LibGuide that he built for the class as a tool for teaching. Not only does this seem to help with class preparation but it helps students become comfortable using the LibGuide while in the class. A difference that I have noticed between English and Communication BIs is that the latter is less likely to provide workshop time. Personally, I feel that workshopping is an important part of the BI experience for students and for the librarian: students can begin using the information while it is fresh and there is help on-hand and the librarian can observe students searching as a way to conduct an informal summative assessment.

Soon after it was time for me to do the introduction for the sophomore-level English BI with Tammy. Everything went well, mostly. I was able to get some of the students engaged but, despite my preparation, I seemed to stumble over things and several times asked Tammy what I should or should not talk about. The rest of the session was incident-free and the students left with a good star on their work. Afterwards Tammy and I discussed the session and what happened. I explained that I was very self-conscious about what I was and was not supposed to talk about. We concluded that I was trying to do the whole session in my head which may have caused me to worry more about what I was saying. We decided to look for an opportunity for me to do a session solo in the next few weeks.