Week 2: Reference, Prep, and Surprises

Okay! We're back at it again. I'm technically seven weeks into my internship, and I fully feel like I'm in the thick of things. I'm realizing now that I didn't necessarily end my first post on the most positive of notes. After the first two/three weeks of freaking myself out for absolutely no reason, I did start to feel much better about my standing within CSULB. I don't necessarily feel like I'm drowning anymore, but I am treading fairly well.

Over the past few weeks one of my main focuses has been learning the reference desk and doing the CSU and global co-op online chats. This entails waiting for people either locally or around the world to need my help, and it turns out most people just want the librarians to find sources for them instead of teaching them to do their own research. Well that's not what I'm here to do Sally D.* from Westchester! It's really funny to me that even though the academic library environment is so different from the public library, people still act the same. While there are some who are willing to learn library services, a good majority really just want me to give them the answers. It's interesting to see how disappointed people get when they realize that librarians aren't necessarily all-knowing or omnipotent, and that we aren't going to be doing their homework for them.

Most of my focus if I'm not on desk has been preparing for my workshops that will be held later in the semester. One of them focuses on promoting the university archives and how to use primary sources (I'm still looking for a snappy title for this so I'm open to ideas), the other I'm titling "Under the Influence: Using Social Media to Inspire Research Paper Topics". Both ideas were approved around the third week (there's absolutely no way this shifted my perspective of my standing at the school...), so they have been in the works for a minute. I'm even meeting with the head archivist to plan the first workshop and hopefully making a good connection there.

I was thrown a bit of a curve ball this week. In all the time that I had been here, Joseph (my internship advisor) casually dropped that he wanted me to make an application packet to submit to jobs. This kind of sent me in a spiral as classes have started and I'm feeling the stress from that. Part of me is excited to take on the challenge of writing a whole application packet including a CV, the other part wishes I had known this earlier so that I could have used my off time more wisely. Oh well. I'll push through. It is nerve wracking though, as they're planning to have other librarians critique my packet and I'm genuinely not sure what to put on there. Luckily I have great resources who can offer me good examples.

Deuces my dudes.

*Apologies to any Sally D's that may be offended by me using their name. This is not a reflection of all Sally D's in the world. This is completely for emphatic purposes only