Third Reference Librarian Observation

My third session with the school reference librarian occurred on October 15. I observed her on the final day of the Industrial Revolution movie project. Before class began, she was quite busy in a reference capacity attempting to assist a teacher in setting up her project in the library space. Although the librarian was not involved with the project per se, she spent a lot of time in the morning with the teacher, who was having a lot of trouble with her e-mail and printing (I was strongly reminded of our lesson plan unit in which we discussed always being prepared!!!).The responsibility of getting the computer and television/VCR set up ended up falling on the librarian. This came as no surprise, as during the interview, she mentioned to me to make sure to boost any technical skills I could. Apparently, she has become a bit of the “Go To Guru” for technology at the school. A couple of other reference issues she juggled before school began was scheduling space for a career resource program, and creating a responsibilities checklist for the library volunteers. Once class began, for this session, the librarian’s primary reference work was teaching and then assisting the students with the microphones for the narration of their parts of the movie. Reference issues included password management (a suspicious trend here), PhotoStory software questions, Creative Commons questions, and having the teacher from the morning pop into the computer lab a few more times for more answers about rewinding the VCR, and creating a link on the computer. During all this, the librarian managed to fix a couple of broken microphones and remind everyone of the importance of citation!When we were first assigned this project, I questioned whether shadowing a school librarian would be a benefit to my knowledge in a reference capacity. What a fool I was! I am beginning to see that a school librarian is bombarded with reference questions from the beginning of the day right up until the end (she has even mentioned getting reference questions in the restroom!). I have also appreciated this project in the sense of really getting a chance to see what “A Day in the Life of…” consists of for a school librarian.Although I am sad to not have seen the movie final project (I am supposed to be getting a link!), my next visit will involve a new project!