Internship Day 6

Today was a very productive day! I spent the beginning part of the morning shadowing at the reference desk and answered a few questions on my own. The only one of note was this spanish woman who wanted textbooks on contract law. I told her we didn't typically carry textbooks, but that I'd see what we had on contract law. Sadly enough, all I could find was one book, and that looked like it was published in the 80s. I asked the actual reference librarian if he could think of anything else, but he couldn't. I'm actually somewhat surprised, but oh well. I guess we can't be all things to all people, (thank goodness!)
After that I decided to play around with the databases that we have and to take a more in depth look at them. I found some neat things, and some were so so. I discovered that many databases in effect search only a subset of another database that we have, Infotrac Onefile. We have that split up into 2 categories, Academic and General, and then we have Science, and Medical, and Literature, and all sorts of little things. I did enjoy looking at Access World News. They have maps provided and special reports of topics of interest.
I looked at a few health databases, and that was a mixed bag. The common search feature on one I thought was useful, and I especially loved the e-book library that one of them featured. That one was the Consumer Health Complete database. Another was a Gale database, so that was par for the course. And a third had a really slick interface, but I didn't find much useful information except a great link database of trusted health information. That one was Health and Wellness Reference Center.
After that I decided to mess around in the reference storage area, which chiefly consisted of shifting books around. The tops of the reference area are considered to be storage, and the first few tops are all filled up, with the last half being nearly empty. So, I decided to take it upon myself to shift them to make room for a cart of books that cannot be put away. At least, I'll take care of most of it, half of it are encyclopedia sets, (Something about the author, I think) which isn't going to be something I'll be able to tackle, unless I have a few helpers. I've gotten about halfway done with that. Hopefully next week I'll have it done.
After lunch I was given a list of VHS tapes to look at. I went through the whole thing and looked to see if we have a DVD copy in the system. I suppose the powers that be had thought that we would have many that were unique, but I found only 10 or 15 in 10 pages that were so, perhaps 3 per page. Not bad, I'd say. Hopefully I can throw those out next week.
And that's about it for this week.
I arrive at 8:30 and left at 5:30, logging in 8 hours.