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!