A picture is worth a thousand words...

Today is my last day at the library for my internship. (Sad day.) I have had a lot of fun working here again. I have definitely been missing it.
Anyway, while I was working on getting some of my internship stuff situated, Brian from Special Collections came down and suggested a great picture: me sitting in my old corner with the current person looking angry:

Oh the mayhem... :D

Overall, it was a great day even thought it was my last day. Debbie bought pizza for the cataloging/acquisitions department. I still answered some reference questions at the desk. There was one lady who was not use to using a computer at all and was about to go after the public computer Office Space style...I'm glad I was there to help her out though. :)

Day 19 - June 7

(June 7th? Already?!) *Sheesh - where did time go?....
Today I was working on cataloging DVDs:
Life and works of Michelangelo
Horse sculpture of Deborah Butterfield
What's race got to do with it?

For the 'Horse Sculpture' record, there wasn't an authority record for Deborah Butterfield, so I got to create one. :)
We got a new version of ALEPH and had to get that set up and working OCLC so that I could export my records. :) I didn't get to exporting all my DVDs today, so I will have to do it tomorrow. Tomorrow is already my last day. (Crazy! Time goes by too fast...)
I got into a discussion with Shelby about some more things with RDA, specifically how things are translating for it and that some changes needed to happen because of the ONIX books peoples.

In the afternoon, I was at the reference desk. Most of the questions that took longer than others was helping patrons use the Microsoft product, Word and Powerpoint.
There was a time capsule sealing ceremony today as well at the library. (See post about Time Capsule.)
I worked with Victor in the evening at the desk. We got into a discussion over doing reference at various types of institutions and federated searches like UA has for their OPAC and various other related topics.
I also discovered the marker drawer. Today was a great day! (Apparently those draw erase markers work on water bottles very well...)

Day 18 - June 6

Today I was only at the reference desk. I mostly answered the phone and questions at the desk. One of the fun reference interactions if you will was hunting down a particular book. It's really nice to see if the library has that particular book or where a person might get it. I don't remember the titles at the moment but the library had one of the books they were looking for, but not the other.
Otherwise, I was modifying some of the LibGuides for one of the reference librarians here. :)

125th Anniversary Time Capsule for UND

People now have another excuse to come to the library! Well, those who are interested in history, particularly the time capsule for the 125th Anniversary for the University of North Dakota. They had a sealing ceremony here at the library in the 'Fish Bowl'.
What's really neat is that the capsule itself is going to be staying here at the library! So people will always be able to see the capsule. Neat! :D
The pictures are of the capsule itself in the 'Fish Bowl' and the handout that they had for the ceremony.

Day 17 - June 4

Today I worked on cataloging more DVDs. (Hey! They're fun! Sometimes they require me to watch part of it to get the record correct!)
With hand & heart
Life after oil
One of the records from yesterday was being exported into ALEPH, but didn't work out so well. Shelby even tried to export it with her highest level password, and that didn't work. We got it worked out though. Involves creating a new record and moving order records to the new record and deleting the old record.
Later in the afternoon I was at the desk again answering patron questions. One of the reference librarians had a question of how Google Docs works and I started to show her how to use that service. :)
(I didn't stay as long as I'd like to today due to something going on out at Firestarters in Ottertail, MN. So I left a couple hours early in order to get there.)

Day 16 - June 3

Well I have pretty much finished all the different types of cataloging projects that I was assigned. For cataloging I worked on cataloging more DVDs:
Art 21 : Season 5
Lascaux, a new look
Art of the American West

I was at the reference desk again for the afternoon. (Dictionary man strikes again!)
Long story other than there is a person in the area who likes to call all the libraries almost every day with a question about a word. They call us to find out the meaning of any word or how a word should be used. We don't know who it really is, but it's more of a nickname that was given.
Aside from phone questions, I started to work on the reference binder again. I tried to work with a wiki for the binder but I'm not having very much luck. I went to our resident computer guru for some help - I know he's very busy but he'll help in anyway he can with the time I have left.
I also worked on understanding how Meebo would work for the reference librarians and how that gets embedded into the LibGuides and what not.
Oh which reminds me - I embedded a Meebo chat thats really me on the Online Reference Tools LibGuide so that they could see how it functions.

Day 15 - June 2

Well, my list of things of cataloging projects is coming to an end. I added some fields that were needed for Paul Kannowski - there were some of his works that were published that were donated to the library; he is a UND alumni and professor for many years here at UND. After I added those notes, I got to see how children's and young adult literature is cataloged here at the library.
A long time ago, there was a library school here for about 10 years or so in the 1960s. With that being said, there were children's and young adult literature that was collected. After the library school here got the ax from the university, all the books needed to go somewhere and they were moved over here to the main library. The main collection of the library is done with Library of Congress classification. This collection however is done with Dewey. (Or at least that's how I remember what Joan was telling me. She's the one who gets to catalog all those items. How fun!)
One really cool thing that I learned was more ways to search OCLC for records. A lot of fields of what is needed for regular books are pretty much the same, such as a 100 or 245 field. Fields that are added to children's / young adults records are 520, 521 and 082/092 fields (well and 700 for illustrators.)
Anywhoozers, searching in OCLC:
to search an author, you need the first 4 letters of the last name, first 3 letters of the first name and middle initial.
to search the title, you need the first 3 letters of the first word of the title, first 2 letters of the second word, first 2 letters of the third word and first letter of the fourth word.
Author and Title search, first four letters of the authors last name (comma) and first four letters of the title.
Corporate bodies, such as American Quarter Horse Association, can be searched as well, but there are some stop words. Stop words are ones that there are so many of them that its not searched, such as American or Society.
/ can be used as well with years or types of materials that are being searched. / can be used multiple times.
(Very useful way of searching if you ask me!) I did learn some more way of how you can search WorldCat Local as well with the advanced and expert search. He uses this at time to see what is not held by the library for developing the collection in his areas.
There was another reference meeting today as well. I showed the reference librarians my LibGuide of the Online Reference Tools. There were other issues that they discussed in the meeting as well such as funding and things specific to the library.
Afterward, I was at the desk again and worked on LibGuides for and the reference binder that is here at the desk.