Today was the first day that I worked with the reference trainer at the Main Library. I was given a sheet that, presumably, they give to new reference librarians. For the first two days we are to review ready-reference materials, although we didn't do much of that today. Perhaps next week we will, as I'm under the impression that this was the first day the trainer had come back from vacation. I'm looking forward to learning more about them, as there are certainly a plethora of them to know about! I'm hoping a class I'm looking to take in the Fall, (if my work schedule permits,) will compliment this information, as all of my other classes at FSU have been lacking in this real world librarianship information.
So, this morning I did more journal reviews, also from a copy of Library Journal. I wasn't able to review my reasonings as much with Dani this week, but I suppose she understands my rationale from last week enough to carry it over to this week. An exciting thing I learned to do today was to input ILL requests into the ILLIAD computer system. I did mess up the delivery location for one, and wasn't able to fix it as the folks from ILL had already processed it. I'm told next week I'll have an opportunity to practice this on my own.
I also spent some time classifying materials in our reference collection, which is quite large and sprawling to me. We have six separate places that materials classified as "reference" might be found. We have a small collection for the telephone and virtual reference areas, a ready-reference collection for the actual reference desk, a large catch-all reference collection, and three separate storage areas: one for the catch-all reference materials, one for Florida-related materials, and a third for military-related materials as well as "Who's Who" reference materials. As materials from the first three areas become outdated, they are transferred to our three storage areas, depending on their subject matter. It has fallen to me to correctly classify them into their proper area as well, it seems, to find room on the shelf for them.
I'll continue this discussion at a later date.
I worked eight hours today, from 8am to 12 noon, and from 1pm to 5pm.
2 comments:
The Atlas Room also holds legal materials, such as the US Code Annotated, Laws of Florida, and FL Statutes.
I agree that it can be less than efficient to have everything classified as "reference", (and as you noted, scanning everything into new locations would be daunting) but most of the materials also have notes, with more specific information about their locations. Have you seen the notes in SIRSI?
Sadly, we had been anticipating a new Main Library, with room for all the storage materials within the regular collection. But it looks like this dream will now be many years away. But having access to all the literary criticism now online opens up new possibilities of weeding in reference.
I haven't seen this note feature. I know it exists, but I know we don't use it, at least in Circ. I looked for a couple items in normal storage, (above the Ref materials,) but I didn't see any. Do you know of any in particular that might have notes? I'd be happy to help add notes to those materials that need them, as time allows.
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