Fun with Fermentation!

Daily Hours: 4
Total Hours: 133

Last Thursday night was the "grand finale" of my practicum, the "Fun with Fermentation" event I organized with Slow Food-UW Madison.  I am happy to report that everything went off without a hitch!  I started off the event by introducing the presenter and talking a little bit about the Slow Food movement in general, and the work that the campus club does within the community.  Bradley, the presenter, gave a brief background on fermentation, but the majority of the workshop ended up being hands-on (which fits perfectly with the whole Bubbler aesthetic).  Bradley went around between the different stations answering questions and giving tips, and participants went home with an instruction and resource handout he had put together. We brought cutting boards, knives, containers etc. from the Slow Food Kitchen and a cooler full of produce from that week's farmer's market.  Although we had budgeted $200, the produce was only $30 and the two cases of pint Mason Jars were $20.  It was so nice to be able to use all the resources Slow Food has at their disposal, definitely a good example of a successfully negotiated partnership!

Participants had the choice to go home with either a jar of kimchi or sauerkraut, and those few that stayed until the very end were able to go home with both!  Twenty people came to the event, nine of which had pre-registered in advance through the website.  As we were all chopping and then "massaging" and packing the ingredients, it was great to walk around and overhear people getting to know each other and connecting about other fermenting projects (there were multiple side conversations about the state of people's sourdough starters).  Bradley also had brought a jar of kimchi he had made a week prior that was ready to eat and we all got to have a sample. I took an informal poll while flitting between tables, seeing where everyone had heard about the program; here is a list of how a few people heard about it:

• "Madison on the Cheap," a Facebook group that shares information about free and inexpensive events around town, picked up the event and posted about it.
• One woman said she regularly checks the Bubbler website calendar for interesting events.
• A couple saw the poster I put up in College Library.
• Another woman's friend told her about the event since the friend knew she was interested in making sauerkraut. 
• By far the most interesting though, was the couple who are traveling across the country organic farming and living out of their van for the summer.  They were just passing through town and saw the poster I had put up at a coffee shop!  And they even said they are going to add a post to their blog about it!

Clean up ended up being surprisingly easy, just wiping down tables and giving the meeting room a light vacuum.  We even had a jar left over to leave for everyone at the library!  I am so happy with how it all turned out, and it's great to see that unique and quirky adult programming can be a success within the "modern" public library.  To think that there was once a time when everyone had to be quiet in the library and no food was allowed!  Look at us now, chopping and fermenting right in the meeting room!  It was a perfect last hurrah and final event to wrap up my practicum experience!

And finally, here are some pictures:

Packing kimchi.

Bradley Meillinger (in the grey shirt), the workshop leader.

"Massaging" the sauerkraut.

Workshop handout and kimchi.

Kimchi ready to ferment.

Sauekraut.

Eat, Play, Art!

Daily Hours: 4
Total Hours: 129

Today was the Eat, Play, Art Event, a collaboration between many South Madison organizations, but mainly run by the Urban League and the Library.  They shut down the parking lot in front of the library and brought in a dance floor and stage, booths, and food carts.  In the past, the Library had money from a different grant and was able to run four similar events through the course of the summer, calling them instead "Eat, Play, Bike."  I really like the whole idea behind the events, the concept of "place-making."  Communities used to "live" and interact more in outside communal spaces, but with changes in transportation infrastructure and city planning etc., we have moved away from those spaces.  So events like Eat, Play, Art seek to reconnect communities to their environments and bring neighbors together.

Many different organizations had booths and tables with fun activities set up like art projects, the MGE power station, face painting, the Bubbler screen printing station etc.  It was great to see the community and so many partner organizations out dancing, eating, making art, and just generally socializing.  And what a nice way for the library to extend it's presence in even further into the heart of the South Madison community!  I thought it was an especially nice touch that they had comfortable benches set up by the stage and dance floor where many of the older residents ended up sitting most of the night watching the children, dancing, and entertainment.  The library was in charge of handing out the free donated ice cream (not the worst task in the world!) and a frozen banana station.  Chris said turnout was good, similar to the events last year, although she was sad they could only do it once this summer.  I was happy to see that the Slow Food Table I helped organize turned out to be quite popular; it was great to see so many kids walking around with plates of fresh vegetables and hummus (either before or after their free ice cream, of course)!  Plus I gave them some of the flyers for the Fermentation program to hand out at the table to further bolster the collaborative relationship.

And finally, one more small moment of happiness: when looking for some sort of library name tag to identify myself, I found one that said "Future Librarian," a title I was proud and excited to take on for the first time!

Here are a few pictures.  Unfortunately, by the time I remembered to run inside and get my phone after rushing around most of the night, things had died down and bit.  It was much more hopping of an event than it looks like in these pictures!

Book Club: Gone Girl

Daily Hours: 2
Total Hours: 125

For this month’s book club we read the sensational and polarizing psychological thriller Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I had avoided reading the book up until now because I saw it as one of those hot new “I haven’t read a book in 15 years but I loved Girl with a Dragon Tattoo!” type of phenomena. 

I had the idea to start the discussion off by showing the two new trailers for the movie version, which comes out in October.  It was interesting to see how novel they thought the idea of showing the trailers was, something I hadn’t thought twice about.  On a related note, they weren’t really that open to the idea of meeting somewhere else  when Lori, the group leader, brought up maybe meeting at a near-by coffee shop, which goes to show that the recent trend of off-site book club meeting places doesn’t appeal to every group. 

I think Gone Girl was a good discussion pick because it was so polarizing.  There were a wide variety of opinions on the book, and we all got to have our say.  And speaking of everyone having their say, a great moment happened right at the end of the meeting, when one of the members specifically pointed out that Lori was one of the best book group leaders she had ever had, mentioning how good she was at letting everyone have their turn to talk.  We all clapped and you could tell Lori really appreciated the positive feedback.  And then another member agreed, adding that they all really like hearing what she has to say about the book, and that she should share that more!  Lori responded that she doesn’t usually like to impart too much because she feels like it is the group’s book club, not hers, which I thought was an interesting point of view.  I think striking a balance between facilitating and participating will be an interesting aspect of my (anticipated) future book club duties.

Job Mob!

Daily Hours: 2
Total Hours: 123

Chris had family in town today and so she took an actual day off (as Michael put it: "a day off in which she actually wouldn't come in to the library" because she comes always ends up at the branch on her off days to finish up one project or another), so I volunteered to be the library representative at Job Mob and go with out her.  Neither of us could make it last week and apparently they really could have used the extra help.

Today started out slow, as most people who came in were there for interviews with Diversified Personnel Services.  But I ended up spending a very enjoyable hour and a half helping an older Latina women one-on-one with basic computer skills.  She had been in Chris' Intro to Computers class earlier in the summer, and wanted to learn how to use a flash drive and better use email.  She doesn't have a computer at home so she has to come to the library or MATC to practice, which makes it difficult because she said she often forgets what she learns each time.  I would have enjoyed the interaction on any level, but it was especially great because I conducted the whole lesson in Spanish!  One interesting thing I realized right away: my "technology Spanish" was really lacking, there were so many specific vocabulary words I didn't know, so I sometimes I had to do a lot of circuitous explaining to get at the word I meant.  "Technology Spanish" goes hand in hand with "Library Spanish," important, specialized vocabularies that are so valuable in meeting the information needs of Spanish-language patrons!

Reference Shadow

Daily Hours: 3
Total Hours: 121

I spent the morning shadowing Michael on the reference desk.  In addition to the usual computer help questions (which make up the majority of reference interactions at the branch, rather than reader's advisory etc., says Michael), there were a few interactions of note:

• A man said he had heard that the new Edgewater Hotel was looking to hire a lot of positions.  We were able to find the listing for the open interviews they are putting on at MATC this week and print off the application from their website for him, but beyond that it felt good that we were able to refer him to Job Mob this Friday, where he will be able to get personalized help on his resume before the interviews.
• A man in suit walked in and Michael jumped up quickly and rushed over to him.  I soon realized that he was the director of the Goodman Foundation, which, as referenced in the name of the branch, has given a multiple grants to the Branch.  He was in the neighborhood for a meeting and decided to drop in and see how things were going at the Branch.  He also asked Michael if there were any pressing needs at the Branch since he was planning on meeting with the MPL Foundation next week.  Since I've been thinking about the library "elevator speech" for this week's class session, it was interesting to see it happening right in front of my eyes on a very professional level.  Michael thanked him again for all he had done for the library, and talked about the success of the iPad animation station and how the money from the foundation had partly led to the hiring of our new teen librarian.  Michael specifically mentioned the need for additional money in the collection budget, which was funny because he and I had just been talking about the dismal state of MPL's collection funding a few minutes before.  He then walked him around and showed the new interactive "end caps" in the children's area (the Goodman Foundation has a particular interest in children and education).  Goes to show, you never know when you'll have to give that stump speech!

Since it was a slow(er) morning than usual, we had some time to talk about reference usage trends, which lead to an interesting conversation about public library databases.  The main databases that get utilized are Consumer Reports, the business-related resources, and the homework help resources. But, that said, according to Michael, they hardly get used by patrons, which he thinks is partially due to the extremely clunky MPL website design.  We looked at the page, and I definitely am in agreement.  The main link to get the database page ("Research & Discovery") isn't a particularly intuitive name and the organization structure for the links is pretty poor information architecture as well, all of which doesn't bode well for patron self-exploration,  I'll be interested to see how these trends in database usage continue to evolve during the course of my career!

Fermentation Display and Job Advice

Daily Hours: 3
Total Hours: 118

I started off the morning by addressing the comments on my Spanish-services project that Chris had sent back to me.  She had suggested that I add a few other resources including additional Joining Forces for Families offices in the vicinity and Briarpatch (homeless youth services).  I have to say that I learned my lesson on one thing: I am embarrassed to say that I had only included Catholic church services, not thinking that other denominations would also offer Spanish-language ministries.  Once Chris mentioned that she thought there were a few other churches offering Spanish services, I found a handful more to add to the list.  How silly of me to have not thought outside the stereotype box, an important lesson in multi-cultural outreach!

Next I consolidated a job-seeking display in order to make room for a display for my fermentation program.  I requested a bunch of fermentation cookbooks etc. through LINKcat and will add them to the display as they come in, but for now there is a poster for the program and some general books on preserving food.  Then, when the day of the program comes along I can just move the display into the meeting room where it is being held and attendees can check out the items that catch their fancy!

The rest of the morning was spent in an impromptu meeting with Michael.  Since he was currently deep in the application review process for the hiring process for his current position, we got into an extended discussion about what he looks for in an application, in particular a cover letter and resume.  I was particularly interested to hear what he had to say from the other side of the interview table after Tanya's job search talk last week.  One tip that stuck out to me was to include the job code (if there was one) at the beginning of the cover letter, not just the title of the position.  And simple things like saving your related documents as .pdfs and with consistent and relevant titles like "Poletti Harp CV" and "Poletti Harp Cover Letter" etc.  Also he gave me the advice to start looking for jobs even earlier than December of next year (the timeline I had heard before), since even just applying is good practice.  With our cover letter exercise and this mini-mentoring session today, I've been thinking even more about going out into "the real world" of libraries soon and how that will all play out.  Always good to start thinking ahead!

Last Bilingual Storytime and Spanish-services Wrap Up

Daily Hours: 6
Total Hours: 115

Today was the fourth and final session of the Contando Cuentos Bilingual Storytime series.  But, as I mentioned before, the library will be contracting with Araceli again in the fall for an eight week session since the demand was clearly there!  We had to compile our attendance statistics for a report to Chris and they were as follows:

Week 1: 10
Week 2: 15
Week 3: 20
Week 4: 19

What's so great is that in addition to returning kids, there were new families each week!  For this final session, we made a display of José Luis Orozco's books and CDs and printed out our final resource list along with a reading list and bilingual summer reading program worksheet from the Latinas for Latino Lit organization.  Chris happened to have a stash of Spanish kids books to give away, so every child was able to take a book home as well!  Today focused on counting, since we read Se venden gorras, the Spanish translation of the classic Caps for Sale.  Afterwards the kids made bean bag caps from nylons filled with rice.

Reading Se venden gorras

Making our "gorras"

Araceli connected me with the resources she'll be using for the next series, the majority of which came from the curriculum that the King County Library system (which serves the Seattle Metropolitan area) uses. I kept coming across their name in my independent study work, and I already knew they were doing a good job with their Spanish-language services, but this program further proves that fact. The coordinator of the program has made a Pintrest page that highlights some of these early literacy "fiestas."

For the rest of my morning at the library I added and edited various events in the MPL calendar and met with Michael to catch up after his vacation. We both agreed that the area we will focus on for the rest of my time at the library will be spending time at the reference desk, since that is one of my learning outcomes that I have barely begun to meet, with only 2 hours shadowing last week. It has been so crazy at the library for most of the summer, with him downtown most of the time for interviews and the branch chronically understaffed, that it has been difficult to schedule effective shadowing time. We planned for two mornings next week, and he also gave me a brief lesson on ILL and using the World Cat Catalog. I look forward to getting more familiar with additional resources next week!

Then, in the afternoon I came home to work on the final part of my Spanish-language project: my recommendations. Here is a brief summary of what I came up with, drawn from all I have read in my independent study:

• Posting a sign on the door saying "Se habla Español"
• Posting a Spanish DDC chart by the non-fiction collection
• Considering adding Fotonovelas to the collection
• Offering English Conversation Clubs (ESL class needs are already well-met on the Southside)
• Collaborating with the Play and Read program at Centro Hispano for future Bilingual Storytime outreach
• Outreach at middle school and high school ESL classes
• Planing a Día de los Niños/Día de los Libros celebration
• Now I look forward to further distilling the knowledge I've gained over the summer in my final paper in a few weeks!