Sunday Desk....

Items in no order of importance that happened today on Sunday Shift at desk!

1. payment terminal crashed - 10 minutes to work out what was wrong, thanks to casual staff that helped put it back together. :-))

2. lots of very tired students on this the Sunday in the middle of the exam period.

3. the student with the 'winning smile' who tried to con me into letting him have more than his fair share of overnight loans & early. (what didn't he understand about 'Exam week', in demand items and sharing??) Later on before closing I let him have 3 as no one else was standing in line and I would hate it to be on the shelf and not being used! (even then he tried for a 'sleep in' return time.)

4. 'anatomically correct disgusting drawing' found in computer room handed in by, thankfully a mature person, who just suggested I shred it, done!

5. student with many fines trying to borrow 'in demand' loans with another students card, without written permission. (he eventually paid his fines and took the book he needed - I didn't feel bad as he has been doing this for three years.)

6. philosophical discussion about families being the same the world over with casual staff who hails from mainland China. This was over a cup of green tea.

7. Post grad. student from South America, dropping into campus for two weeks, asking about conference papers. Found some!

8. face mask on to flush loos in mens toilet when opening - uggh. (only joking about the mask, not the loos. arhh country livin' gotta love it. - cleaner doesn't come in from friday morning until monday and it can get...) much hand cleanser/sanitizer applied.

9. going home time came and we went out into a little rain, Yay!

@kalgrl
#blogeverydayforjune

A graduate engineer walked into the library...

In a special library at a mining company where I worked we had a yearly batch of graduates from all spectrums of the industry and it was really wonderful to watch them go through their programme and experience the interesting angles at which they would approach their work.

Some would have new approaches to old problems, like the one when presented with the problem (a favorite one to give the graduates every year) of 'wood picking' from the ore, went off to the hospital and asked to use some of their equipment to work out his solution.

(This problem, briefly explained, is the pulling of old wood, from disused underground works, out of the ore mined from the pit. The extra carbon from the wood interfered with the process of extracting the gold.)
His solution didn't work, but he married one of the nurses from the hospital.

Some of these graduates were very young, older hands would enjoy sending them off to the store for a 'long weight' or some striped paint. The storemen would just send them to a chair in the office, and get back to work, which, after a while so did the graduate.

I have met a graduate that insisted that there must be a 'standard' for everything, if only he could find the number to order it. I met a graduate that showed me an erupting volcaneo online,one that was interested in extraterrestrial geology, and one that built a boat. Working in this library I purchased items on all manner of subjects and ordered papers from many interesting conferences for seemingly obscure subjects, and enjoyed all of it. They were an interesting, vibrant and stimulating group.

Where I am working now is at the other end of the education cycle. We recently had a graduation and more graduates went out into the industry, where I hope they meet the old hands and have a company library to ransack and a Librarian to torment. I hope she/he gives them the one paper ever written on 'Wood Picking', and they finish their graduate programs with ease.

Some of them come into the library, with their families. Telling them tales of nights spent searching for information for their 4th year projects or other important assessments. These students often stop to thank the library staff,and then go off to their new exciting careers in the industry.

Ah bless, lets hope they don't have a 'long wait'. :-)

Good night! @kalgrl

5 things ...

5 things on my mind at the moment;

1. writing a paper to present at a conference
2. the storms in Perth yesterday and the damage done.example @ 1 library
3. the heat - the air conditioning is not working in the staff areas
4. the 25 or so jobs on my desk
5. new staff - hard to find

Tea now and thinking to do

Library 101

FromHere!

Information Literacy

In the past few days, I have been planning for next year's information Literacy classes, emailing Academics, offering classes and asking for indications of requirements.
The three levels on our campus, Yr 11&12 High School, Tafe and Higher Ed (Mining, Nursing & Education) are quite diverse and I am endeavouring to devise programs I can adapt to each level quite quickly.

I found this YouTube video via '@kgs' on twitter about an information literacy program. It is positive and I was interested in the students views on gathering information, especially the comment from one student that she 'asks the librarian, but has to remember that she/he will not be grading the final paper'. - Wikipedia featured prominently as a 'kick off' search page to start research.



Some student quotes "the more you know the more you realise how little you know".
I discovered "how to nail it down and sort through" the information and "how to ask a question".

I can just hope that the students on this campus will be encouraged to ask a question and learn how to nail the information they require!

We have the year 10s here for orientation this week and they are remarking 'how big' the library is compared to their Middle school library. I am encouraged when they ask 'if they can come in on Wednesday' which is the class free day for them.:o))
All for now, last day 2008. Yippee FeralTB-) (aka @kalgrl)

Pathway to work

More Spring then Summer at the moment.

"You can even see Jesus from here..."

Quiet morning in the library, received a document delivery request.
Went to the library stacks with colleague to look at the item, that is the years either side of requested date (thank goodness it only has 3 issues per volume, but unfortunately the vols don't run in a calendar year), as title of requested article didn't exsist as far as we could see.

She was on desk duty and mentioned that we shouldn't be this far away for the desk "in case". I agreed, and then showed her how to look through the stacks to the front desk, to check if anyone came in while we were over here for a short while. Look, I said, "you can even see Jesus from here." (Library client, mentally disturbed, thinks he is Jesus and photocopies a lot to prove it.) That cracked her up :-)

Printer stopped working on Thursday, quite dead in the water. Tried "turning it off and on again". Maybe it's tired.
BTW Have you been watching "The IT Crowd" hilarious show on ABC (Australia) about an I.T. department at a large company, who, to quote "Got a computer problem? They'll fix it, well...sort of." Lots of over the top personalities (some we have all met), they even have a 'Goth' living in the inner server room.

We had a client come in to protest that he hadn't claimed something as returned (he had received an account to replace the item, horror, "what is this about"?), and then he proceeded to claim it as returned,(lol) with the same details he had given our staff member last month. We had already completed all the searches for the item. He had a heavy with him to help (boss of his department). So a staff member took him through the "claimed returned" process, again. Methinks he was playing for time. :-)

At the same time we have had a lot of students coming in to sort out fines for the items they took overseas to a mining games competition in the US, to study, and I quote "in the quiet times between airports". A number of these items had been recalled by other clients, but "I couldn't return it from America". Then there was the Academic who emailed from Brazil to say he was sorry to not return his items before he left and another collegue would do so, however he was in a hotel in Brazil and typing on a 'Spanish Keyboard'. Collegue remarked they all deserved the fines for not inviting her on the trips!
FeralTB-)

Hungarian girfriends, excess and other thoughts...

Today I worked, yes I know it is Sunday, however the ten students waiting for me to open the library door were very grateful!

I left it late to leave the house because I was having so much fun clearing out areas of accumulated 'stuff'. (yeah right) Things that we no longer needed, and possibly never did...
...because of this, I had toast for lunch (you know..quick) and that got me thinking of a friend I had years ago. She was the niece of a friend of my fathers and he brought her out from Hungary to live with him and his wife (from New Zealand) in a mining town in Western Australia. (Thats one of the side bennys of living as a mining brat, you get to meet an amazing diversity of people, experience different cultures and learn from them...but I digress...)

As we got to know each other she would ask me in 'hugarian english' about various aspect of our life that puzzled her. One was, Why did I put two things on bread?. I asked her what she meant and she said, two things, why not just butter or jam, why both? I really hadn't thought about it before that moment and to be honest not much since. But now with people changing the ways they think about things, it made me realise, I still put two things on bread, when only one would probably be enough.

That lead me to remembering a conversation with a colleague recently who said she had made a decision to not buy new clothes for a year, and another who had changed her whole diet to feel and live better, and others that are recycling with a passion I haven't seen for anything else lately, except possibly 'Captain Jack'... but I digress again...

So I have made a decision to in a sense, stop putting two things on bread (figuratively speaking) when only one will do...

bye for now.....FeralTB

(busy recycling my notes from the units I studied the past two years... taking back the books I am not reading to the Library and just having butter :-)

Sports day...

It was my daughters sports day today at her school.
Spent a lovely day in the sun watching the children have fun running, playing tunnel ball, and a lot of other games I had forgotten. Ribbons were won and trophies given. Our team (Red) came last, but the children didn't seem to mind, they were all having such a grand time!

(A few of them reminded me that Rupunzel had golden hair, quite long in fact!See previous post.....8-)

The buzz amongst some of the parents was the next big thing to do was to convince the government that the school needed a library, a purpose built building. The school has had a very small library for quite a while. One large room that is also used to store the teaching resources and doubles as a computer lab. But then, the next parent told me that they actually needed a new hall as the one they had was too small and not good enough for any special events...The sports teacher needs a gym for the children to practice and the dance teacher wants an indoor venue to practice instead of the undercover area in front of the canteen. Then another parent said they need two more classrooms to accommodate the new student numbers. Phew....

I wandered back to my chair in the sun and decided to keep out of it and support the thing they settled on...all of them would benefit my daughter, but I couldn't help having a small lean towards supporting the Library...*-)FeralTB

Bibliothèque sans frontières

"You are the Library"
Western Libraries' video "Finding our Place".

This is a youtube video on "the Library as Place" from the University of Western Ontario, Western Libraries. It is well made and makes the point of the library moving outside the building and accessible from anywhere you have an internet connection.



FeralTB-)

Murdoch Uni Library on 2nd Life

This is a photo of me at the Murdoch University site in Second Life.
The "Steps to Research" lead to enlightenment!
I like the Hills Hoist behind the steps and the constantly mowing lawn mower.
Good one Emerald!
FeralTB-)

Searching, reading and exploring....

Upper Primary school library skills, considered a thing of the past?
I was talking with a cousin who is a primary school teacher, (on the beach on Sunday, lovely day, nice shady spot),she was telling me that she has Grade 7 this year (last year of Primary school in Western Australia) and that the class would not be having 'Library', rather they would be using the time to develop their computer skills and net awareness. She wanted them to have both, but apparently they could not fit 'Library' into the timetable and computer skills were seen as more relevant to the children moving on to high school next year. The younger years will be still going to the library. I asked my son what he had experienced and he said he had 'library' in one English class a week, and they were expected to chose a book and do personal reading in the class.
Changes are obviously happening and the schools are moving on to the new skills, but I can't help being sad about the loss of what I viewed as one of my happiest times, in a chair, in the school library, exploring other worlds.
Thanks all FeralTB-)