Final Week

I worked my final week at Mooresville last Tuesday and Friday. I have mixed feelings. I can't believe it's already over. I can't believe how much I accomplished. I will really miss all the great people I worked with. I'm so glad I got such wonderful opportunities there. Tuesday we had a staff meeting first thing. I got a bit of acknowledgment, so that was nice. Then I mostly worked on the shelf label project all day. I answered a few reference questions and did a little bit of shelving, but I really focused on finishing up the shelf labels. I got them all done, so that was great. Just another project I managed to complete in my time there.

Friday was my last day. I spent the morning updating the Town Criers with all the fall program information. I must say - I am excellent at PowerPoint nowadays. I think they came out looking really nice. One thing I will take away for the future - download free fun fonts for use on flyers and brochures and such. They have so many cool ones!

My afternoon was spent on collection development. Mooresville keeps reference stats (at least, the children's department does, not sure about adult reference) and whenever a patron appears unsatisfied with the answer to their question, Suzanne goes over these things and takes them as suggestions for purchase. She provided me with a list of the subjects patrons had asked for that the department didn't have and asked me to find a few titles for each. A lot of these were media tie-in sorts of books (Spongebob, Veggie Tales, Hello Kitty, etc.). It was an interesting new challenge for my last day. I also did a bit of shelving (their page was on vacation this week). And that finished up my time there.

I'm sad that it's over. I really enjoyed my time with everyone at Mooresville. However, I feel like I've learned a lot and there are a lot of practices and advice that I can take with me to my future workplace. Suzanne read over my blog and said she hoped I still wanted to be a public librarian after seeing how crazy some days are and how boring others are. If anything, it makes me positive that this is the right choice for me. I'm looking forward to the point in my career when I won't have boring days because I'll be using slow patron days to plan programs, develop the collection, and make outreach contacts. I can't wait to be doing this full-time! I still feel nervous about interviewing but, at this point, I'm also pretty sure that I'll be a valuable addition to a children's department. Overall, I'm happy with what I accomplished!

End of Summer

Friday marked the end of summer reading for me. The last day was officially on Saturday. During the afternoon, we mostly had kids coming to collect prizes and I worked on the shelf labels during the down time. Suzanne managed to locate some more magnets for me so I should be able to finish up before my time here is done. The day was pretty uneventful. Suzanne took me to dinner and did sort of an exit interview about my time here this summer. I didn't have too much to complain about. Then we headed over to the pool for the Teen Summer Reading Pool Party. I was surprised at how low attendance was for this. It wasn't as hot as it had been so I thought people might actually come out and swim. Plus, a free night at the pool - I would have loved that when I was younger. But there were only a few people there. We had door prizes and snacks, so people just swam and ate. I was on door duty, so I checked people in and drew the door prizes. Pretty boring night! I can't believe next week is my last week - I can't believe summer's over!