Ah, the Joys of PowerPoint

Friday was my second day on the job and, as before, it was a pretty busy day. I arrived bright and early and Jaymi went over opening procedures with me. I hope I get plenty of practice with them before I have to do them by myself. I mean, it's mostly pretty basic stuff but I still worry about missing anything. After that, Suzanne went over Town Crier with me.

Town Crier is basically a PowerPoint presentation that runs on various computers throughout the library. There are a few different versions depending on where in the library you are - one for adults, one for young adults, and one for children. I'm going to be in charge of the Town Criers for young adults and for children. They highlight programs and library policies and occasionally, specific titles or sections of titles. So, after Suzanne showed them to me and explained what exactly she wanted them to contain, I got to work on updating the young adult Town Crier. I haven't done a lot with PowerPoint because, honestly, I just don't really like it. But, I don't think it's difficult to use, just tends to get a bit tedious. I worked on that for a few hours (there are a lot of programs for summer reading and we wanted each art class to have its own slide) and I definitely felt the tedium. However, by putting everything into one giant Town Crier and then deleting slides as events pass, I won't have to do as much in the long run. But, I didn't finish yet and I still have the children's version to do. I'm hoping to get time on Tuesday to work on them because I'd like to get them finished before the Summer Reading Kick-Off Carnival next Friday.

Suzanne and I went to the local high school for some more outreach. We set up a laptop and some prizes near the cafeteria and, if students had their library card, we would scan it. By showing their library card, we would forgive any fines or late fees (unless they had lost a book) and they could get some small prizes. We also, of course, had The Abstract, the library's teen newsletter, with all the information about the Summer Reading Program. I met a few of the regular teen patrons and got a feel for the teen population in the area.

When we went back to the library, I worked a bit more on Town Crier and then Jaymi introduced me to the Youth Bio Project. This is a project they started when they began to run into space issues. They've decided to move all their 921s, from juvenile and young adult, to a separate shelving section in the children's department. This means that all the books in the 921s currently have to be re-stickered and updated in the catalog. So this is another project that I'm going to be working on over the summer. I don't expect it will last me the whole summer; Jaymi has already completed all the juvenile 921s and about half of the young adult ones. But it will be another tedious bit of work. Still, I like the idea of having a more technical services piece to work on as well.

Finally for the afternoon, I was put in charge of the Wii Gaming program in the Young Adult Zone. This was really simple. I just had to stay in the room with the kids and make sure everyone took turns and no one damaged any equipment. I guess it also includes jumping in when they need a singer for Rock Band. There were only three boys there to play this time, so it was pretty low-key.

Finished up the day by going over closing procedures, which I'd also like to practice more. Thankfully, I think I'll have a chance to go over opening and closing most Fridays since I'll be working open to close those days. Throughout the day, I also sent a couple emails to people I need to be in touch with regarding programs throughout the summer. It looks like I won't have to work at the Twilight Prom, which could have been fun but I'm okay sitting that one out since I have a lot of other programs to look forward to.

I think the first week has been successful. I have a lot of work ahead of me for the summer, but nothing that I don't think I can handle. I'll be busy and I think I'll learn a lot.