Lissa in the Library

Week 9 at the Indian Prairie Public Library was like life imitating art...or in this case, life imitating one of my other MLIS classes. The notes area within the Work Flows circulation software is overwhelmed with outdated and duplicate notes regarding patrons. As a result, it's been all hands on deck to review the notes and delete anything unnecessary. This type of thing is precisely what we've been discussing in the databases class. Luckily the note fields were able to be sorted in a way that made generating reports not overly burdensome, but there will still need to be considerable effort put into cleaning up the records.  This effort really makes me think of the PLA Leadership model, Sphere 2: Organization, specifically. Here we are o perating strategically, ta king risks and seizing opportunities in the hopes that the time and effort that is put into the clean-up project is well-spent. If all works out as it should, we will be better able to serve our patrons and have a be...

I believe with Week 8 we are halfway through the 16-week semester. It seems like it is going so very fast. It feels like just yesterday I was showing up for my summer orientation at IPPL, and now we're firmly in sweater weather and soup season.  Soup, with its melange of hearty ingredients, brings to mind this week's Practicum assignment. I was tasked withthe Guest Services desk and Boy Howdy do we offer a lot of services.  Printing,  Passports,  Reciprocal borrowing,  Museum passes,  Proctoring,  Tax prep for the elderly,  License plate renewal, and that isjusta sample of that on top of "normal" library things like makers studio, library of things, homebound delivery, and programming. I mean, if this doesn't just EXEMPLIFY both speres 3and 4 of the PLA leadership model then I don't know what does! Force 3 is Community and Force 4 is Cross-cutting Abilities and with this rich and savory guest services stew, IPPL is proving that they are a library ...

This week at the Indian Prairie Public Library had me reliving my days of teen angst. No one understands you, your body is going through changes, school is hard...huh...the same can all be said for my 40's as well. Weird.  The IPPL's Programming and Outreach team provides the staffing for the desk that is in the midst of it all: Tiny Town, the Mid-Kid Lounge, and the Teen Zone. Normally this desk just deals with answering questions from patrons and providing basic circulation services.  But over the last week, multiple patrons were asked to leave due to behavior issues, a higher-than-normal number of incident reports were filed, and our giant pencil was stolen. All of these were due to our teen patrons. I know A LOT of these teens pretty well. My full time job is across the street at their high school. They are NOT bad kids, just for some reason, they are really squirelly right now. Maybe there was a full moon?  I don't know. But what I do know is that now there are going...

For my week six assignent with the Indian Prairie Public Library, I worked a film viewing and discussion. The film was "Origin" which is a bio-pic following Isabel Wilkerson as she writes her book "Caste: the Origins of our Discontents."  I won't spoil the book or the film too much here, other than to say that WOW that woman had to endure a lot, and that I recommend both peices of media. Highly enjoyable yet heartbreaking and eye-opening.  While the event itself did not have an overly large number of attendees, the ones that did come were exactly the sort that you would hope would.  They had all read at least MOST of the book, were familiar with the terms and concepts presented, and were able to partake in civil and stimulating discussion after viewing the film.  Several different races were represented, which given the subject matter of the film, makes a lot of sense.   None of the participants knew each other before that evening, but they left the event w...