Lissa in the Library

Week 13 at my IPPL practicum went a bit differently. Sure, I had my usual Kids and Teens Desk time - assisting patrons with catalog lookups, setting them up on the Nintendo Switch, and making sure that behavior expectations were being followed - but this week also contained one of the monthly IPPL board meetings, and for the first time, I was able to sit in a observe.   The board is made up of several unpaid elected officials. They represent a variety of age ranges and racial demographics, which seem to be representative of the patronage as a whole. No one from the public attended to comment, which they indicated was not unusual, but they seemed to be grateful nonetheless.  They expressed that public comment can get quite heated at times. Besides the typical board-related items of approving consent agendas and other fiscal matters, they heard a presentation from senior librarian Erin regarding her work as the Programming and Outreach department's Early Literacy expert. Sh...

In my professional work, I've been a paraprofessional at a high school library for about three years.  I'm ready to move on. I cannot grow any more in my role at my school of employment, and I'm not intending on getting the teaching endorsement. There are many reasons behind this - I won't go into the here. I've loved my time at IPPL and am truly crestfallen that it is nearing its end. To be honest, I have been stalking the Job Postings page of their website on the off chance that something matching my qualifications opens up.  There had been a Communications Specialist position available recently, but that never would have been able to translate into librarian work down the line, which is truly what I'm after. However, seeing what oppertunites are out there, and talking to the full time people at IPPL about what their backgounds have been like has been encouraging. We have all come from a variety of places before landing in Librarianship. It seems like this is ...

Ever had an "off" day?  A spill your coffee on a white shirt, call a coworker the wrong name, burn your dinner kind of day?  That was my in the Maker Studio at Indian Prairie recently. I was working a program where we were helping patrons heat press images onto tote bags and one of the steps involves pulling a backing material off of the image after the initial heating. For whatever reason, half of the ones that I peeled all had some sort of flaw that caused the image to distort and shred. I asked the staff member in charge to help me troubleshoot what I was doing wrong, but everything he came up with I was already doing right. He started to get frustrated to the point where a patron (bless you, Eloise) stepped in to defend me saying that I was doing everything exactly the way that I was instructed and that maybe the problem was with the materials or the instructions themselves. I think by the end of the evening the staff member realized that he was being unfair as he offered...

Disclaimer: I know that this post is late. Life gets really "lifey" sometimes. Seldom do I feel that I have a topic that is worthy of all aspects of one of the sets of professional standards that we as librarians hold ourselves to, but this one does. You'll remember that in a previous postI spoke about somebehavior issues we were experiencing in the YA department. We'll, changes were implemented and implemented swiftly! Furniture has been rearranged, the available hours for the Nintendo Switch have been lessened, study rooms have been set aside, the high school deans are dropping by regularly (we're just across the street, after all), and the threshold at which someone is asked to department for the day has been lowered.  I feel that these steps fulfill all aspects as outlined by YALSA. Accountability: We were accountable for our part in maintaining a positive public space and we keep the teenage patrons accountable. Collaboration: In working across teams and with...