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Free Library of Philadelphia

The Free Library is a public library system, with 54 branches, serving the people of Philadelphia, PA. Joseph E. Coleman is a large regional branch, serving the Germantown area in the northwest part of the city. Daycares and pre-schools sign up to bring children in for storytime once every four weeks. The children's librarians usually do two storytimes Thursday morning, and two on Friday. Schoolchildren can come in after school for homework assistance through the LEAP program, to use the computers in the Gates lab on technology days, and for games on Friday afternoons. Librarians do visits to local schools twice a year, once near the beginning of the school year to promote library services and once in the spring to promote the summer reading program.

Goals

Academy of Natural Sciences

Goals

As an MLIS student at the University of Washington iSchool I completed two Directed Fieldworks. The first of these was in Winter 2005, as an intern librarian at the Shorewood High School Library, in Shoreline, WA. The second was in Summer 2005, as an intern reference librarian at the University Branch of the Seattle Public Library. The Directed Fieldwork was one of the most valuable learning experiences I had in the MLIS program. Three things made this experience highly significant:

• First, though I had worked in libraries before as a work study student when I was an undergrad I had never worked as a librarian. While studying at Antioch College, I worked at the circulation desk of the Olive Kettering Library. While at Drexel University, I worked in the Information Services department of Hagerty Library, assisting the librarians with adding electronic resources to the library web site. Yet to enter the library as a librarian was a new experience drawing on a whole new range of skills and knowledge, and carrying a whole new set of responsibilities.


• Second, I know that I learn best when I have the opportunity to put knowledge and skills gained in the classroom to use in practical, "real-life" situations. The Directed Fieldwork gave me that opportunity. I gained confidence in my ability to do the work quickly as I interacted with patrons, librarians, and staff, and as I became familiar with the library collection. The library staff I worked with in both of my fieldworks were immensely supportive and I learned a huge amount from them about reference, teaching, and working with the public.


• Third, I was given the opportunity to work on a wide variety of interesting projects that I might not otherwise have gotten a chance to work on including: putting together a new section of the library web site containing reading lists developed by Shorewood High teachers for their classes, collection development projects, and a poetry jam.

Directed Fieldwork at Seattle Public Library, University Branch

The University Branch of the Seattle Public Library is a medium sized Carnegie-funded branch library, opened in 1910. The collection includes books, magazines, newspapers, videos, DVDs, music CDs, books on tape, a small collection of foreign language materials, and ESL materials. The library has 14 computers available for patrons to use, plus 3 computer terminals for catalog searching only and a print terminal. There is a large meeting room downstairs which any non-profit group can reserve. The reference desk usually receives 20-30 in person and 10-20 telephone reference questions per day.

Significance

In the summer of 2005, I completed a public library Directed Fieldwork at the University Branch of the Seattle Public Library under the supervision of Andrew Bates, the Branch Manager. This was my second fieldwork; my first fieldwork was in a high school library. The purpose of doing a second fieldwork was to hone skills I had worked on developing through my first fieldwork and expand my experience to encompass other library types and library programs. While I had really enjoyed my fieldwork experience at the Shorewood High School Library, despite some initial trepidations about working with teenagers, I was leaning strongly toward public librarianship. There were three things that I wanted to get out of this second fieldwork: 1. gain experience working in a public library, 2. gain additional experience doing reference work, and 3. gain experience working with library programs. As an intern with the Seattle Public Library system, I also had the opportunity to complete their "Ready for Reference" training program.

Goals & Achievements

• Goal 1: Gain experience doing reference work in a public library setting, and doing telephone reference. Continue to apply and improve reference skills.


• Achievement 1: Worked 20 hours per week at the reference desk of the University Branch of the Seattle Public Library, with staff librarians Mike Herman and Josie Watanabe, handling both in person and telephone reference questions. Helped patrons: find specific items, do searches for material on topics of interest, search for information on the internet, and find good books to read. When working on the reference desk, I was always paired with a staff librarian. This gave me a great opportunity to work with and learn from experienced reference librarians.
  See: Log of Reference Hours


• Goal 2: Work with staff librarians on summer programs at the library. Because library programs play a big role in promoting public library services and drawing people into the library, I wanted to gain experience working with public programs at the library.


• Achievement 2: Seattle Public Library does summer reading programs for kids, teens, and adults. I worked with Josie Watanabe, the children's and teen librarian, on summer reading programs, and helped with two Donut Drop Ins to promote the teen summer reading program. While at the reference desk, we all worked to promote the summer reading program and encourage patrons to participate.


• Goal 3: Work on other project under the direction of library staff as needed.


• Achievement 3: I worked with Mike Herman, the adult services librarian, on choosing titles from two selection lists, one for Contemporary African American Fiction and the other for History titles. I also worked with Mike and Josie on the building a list of titles for the discretionary fund purchase order, creating a short list of titles to consider adding to the collection and adding titles to the purchase order in Baker & Taylor's Title Source II.

I really enjoyed working with the University Branch staff. They were supportive, helpful, and knowledgeable. They encouraged me when they saw how much I enjoyed doing reference work. Every day I learned new sources and new approaches to handling reference questions. I also learned a lot from the library staff about how to relate to library patrons, as well as how to recognize potential problem situations and some of the methods for diffusing them.

Directed Fieldwork at the Shorewood High School Library

Shorewood High School is a medium size public high school in Shoreline, WA, an incorporated suburb outside of Seattle. The school has about 1,600 students in grades 9-12. The librarians work to maintain good relationships and communications with the teachers, and many teachers bring students in to work on research for class projects. Students also frequently come into the library on free periods, during lunch, and after school.

Significance

In Winter 2005, I completed a Directed Fieldwork at the Shorewood High School Library. The Shorewood High School Directed Fieldwork was my first experience working in a library as a librarian. My mentor at this site was Betty Brennan, the library's part-time librarian, who I met at the WLMA conference. My primary reason for pursuing a directed fieldwork, was to gain practical experience working as a librarian. More specifically I wanted to gain experience in handling real live reference questions, working with patrons, reading promotion, and teaching. In my Directed Fieldwork (DFW) at the Shorewood High School library I worked as a intern librarian taking on, inasmuch as possible, the same duties as the professional teacher librarians working there.

Goals

• Goal 1: Apply and improve reference skills. Provide roving reference and assistance with computer problems.


• Achievement 1: Whenever I was not assisting the teacher librarians with classes, I provided roving reference services and help with computer problems to students, teachers, and staff using the library. Doing roving reference work gave me the opportunity to hone my reference interview skills, learn to assess when patrons might require assistance, and find ways to approach library users and offer assistance in an easy, friendly manner so as to not make them feel uncomfortable. Likewise, doing roving reference work proved to be an excellent opportunity to apply and improve searching and reader's advisory skills. Because the Shorewood High School Library has limited resources, I learned techniques for referring patrons to local public libraries including searching the King County Library System (KCLS) Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) and e-mailing the results of the search to the student. Every reference question or class I worked with provided an opportunity to learn new sources. Each day I became more familiar with the library collection and more confident in my reference skills.
  See: Log of Reference Hours & Sample Reference Questions


• Goal 2: Assist librarians with classes coming in to do work in the library.


• Achievement 2: Co-taught 27 classes, doing research for class projects and checking out class-related reading material. Communicated with teachers about class projects for which they have requested library time. Identified general resources that might be useful to students in completing their assignments. Put together book carts and resource handouts for class visits to library. Helped students find resources specific to their topics, and assisted them with the research process.


• Goal 3: Foster literature appreciation and reading through bulletin boards, expanding bookmarks on the library web site, and talking to students about books.


• Achievement 3: During my Directed Fieldwork I worked to foster literature appreciation and reading through bulletin boards and book displays. For the month of January, I put together a book display for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which led into Black History Month book displays for February. In March, I did book displays for Women's History Month and for the Diversity Poetry Jam. See: Bulletin Boards & Book Displays. I also helped students to select books for class independent reading assignments.


• Goal 4: Learn and apply practices of collection development.


• Achievement 4: The Career Center at Shorewood High School does a class project where students read biographies of people who work in fields they might be interested in. The librarians had done a survey of student career interests, in preparation for updating their biography collection. Based on the list of careers they developed, I put together a list of 100+ related biography titles from which the librarians selected titles to add to the collection.

This was a great experience, despite my initial trepidations about working with high school students. I learned an incredible amount about reference and teaching from the librarians worked with at Shorewood and had the opportunity to work on some really cool projects.

  Send Comments or Questions to: Aurora Grey agrey@juno.com