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...

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...