Day Seventeen

Today was a pretty slow day at the Children's Library at Main Branch.  Storytime was fun, today our stories were pancake-themed, but we didn't have a craft, so it seemed to be over quicker than usual.  After that, I sat at the reference desk for the rest of the time I was there.  Carol, the librarian on desk said I could answer the phone if there were any calls.  Unfortunately, the whole time I was there, there was not one call. There might have been one while I was at lunch, but not while I was sitting at the desk.  However, a mother of three young children came in looking for books on "water transportation" that she could use to teach her children about different kinds of boats and what boats were used for other than carrying people over waterways.  Carol allowed me to do the catalog search for these books.  There wasn't much of a selection honestly.  I tried to think of different terms to search, such as "boats, juvenile literature" and Carol gave me some other search terms to try.  She seemed kind of grumpy about it, and I don't know if it was me, or something else.  We were finally able to come up with a small collection and the patron seemed pleased, but I felt like I was a deer in headlights when it came to trying to search.  Sometimes I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, and this practicum is helping with that, a lot, as I've never had actual library experience before this, but I just feel like the librarians I'm working with are judging me for my lack of knowledge sometimes.

The day ended nicely, though.  One of the other librarians was talking to a patron about the online tutoring system that DPL offers for free called tutor.com.  After the patron left, the librarian and I decided to test it out and pretend like we were students with an algebra problem.  It was really fun, and the tutor was able to help us solve the problem.  The tutor was really nice about it too.  I wish I would have known about a website like this when I was in elementary/jr. high/high school.  I don't think my library offered such a service.  I also checked out a couple of books before I left the library, as I'm trying to become more well-versed in Juvenile and YA literature.  I'm excited about the books that I chose, now if only I can find the time to read them!