Day One

Today was my first day at Mooresville and I guess you could say I jumped right in! As soon as I arrived at the library, Suzanne and I took off to Neil Armstrong Elementary for an Access Giveaway program. I don't remember ever seeing anything like this when I was a kid, but this was a fantastic outreach program. Suzanne and I visited all the fifth-grade classrooms (which she has been booktalking to all year) and gave a presentation on the summer reading program. Well, Suzanne gave a presentation and I watched but, come on, it was my first day! Anyway, after that, we headed to the cafeteria where we set up a table. The kids had all been told to bring their library cards to lunch today and any child that did received a free book! The kids were all excited and even the ones who didn't bring a library card were happy to see us (we gave them bookmarks). This was a great way to get kids interested in the library as well as to give them a book for their own collection and keep them reading.

I know that I never had a librarian come to my school and give booktalks when I was younger and I never got free books to keep just for having my library card, so this whole thing seemed fantastic to me. Outreach is incredibly important when it comes to youth services, I think, and obviously schools are a great place to do that. Ever since deciding to come to library school, I've been thinking about libraries and promotion. I think libraries really need to work on promotion all around. Giving kids books and bookmarks and just talking to them about the things they can do at the library is a great way to promote your library.

After we finished up our giveaway, we headed back to the library and Jaymi showed me how to register patrons for programs using the Evanced software. Then we had a staff meeting regarding the summer reading program which I think went really well. I had a chance to meet and interact with all the youth services staff and I think I'm going to get along well with them. Everyone seems laid back and friendly. There are a lot of things planned for summer reading which is great - this library is lucky to have an endowment for children's programming. It got a bit hectic trying to arrange schedules to accommodate staff vacations and such, but we all managed to work it out. Suzanne and I had a meeting after this where I discovered that I'll be responsible for planning some programs in partnership with the Parks and Recreation Department. I'm a little bit nervous about doing this completely on my own, but I know I'm capable. I'm just a natural born worrier! Suzanne gave me information about some other tasks I'll be in charge of over the summer and we talked briefly about my goals for the internship. We staffed the reference desk for a while and I made my calendar for the summer and then it was time to go home!

All in all, it was very much a headfirst, hands-on first day but I think it went great! Suzanne is going to be a fantastic supervisor - she is not at all intimidating and very personable and friendly. I think she knows that I am willing and able to do pretty much any and everything she needs to give me and I appreciate her faith in me. I'm really excited to be working for the duration of summer reading and getting to see such a variety of programs. I'm also excited about doing the everyday work at the library - reference and readers' advisory and upkeep and all that stuff. I think this is going to be a wonderful internship experience!