Reference!

Daily Hours: 4
Total Hours: 86

I spent my shift shadowing at the reference desk today.  I think the most important thing I came away with was the fact that you sure can learn a lot about the information needs of a library's user base in a short amount of time on that desk!  First of all, the reference staff at Goodman don't spend a lot of time physically sitting at the desk.  During my time at Goodman I have heard a ton of talk about the computer situation: they are in desperate need of more computers, but there is no space.  Currently, the computers are set up between the reference and circulation desk, an arrangement that works particularly well (multiple staff members have commented to me about it) because, in general, the computer users at the branch tend to have a lot of small questions or needs.  It's really interesting to see how the digital divide plays out within the branches...  A separate computer lab just wouldn't work in our branch, unless there was a staff person embedded there at all times.

Besides jumping up to provide computer help, I spent a some time helping group of kids and their teacher find books about Wisconsin and information about their local Alderman, who was coming to talk to them the next day.  I also was tasked with searching out Mo Willems books for a last minute display to fill up a space in the children's section.  Now, according to LINKcat, there were multiple Mo Willems books on the shelf at the branch, but it took me 15 minutes to find them since they were shelved in the "Favorites" section of the new organization system MPL has developed for children's books.  The books are supposed to be organized "generally" by author, but really you have to look through everything when searching for a particular title because they are so far out of order.  At first when I found out about the new system, I really liked the idea. It makes browsing a breeze for parents; the forward facing organization makes it easy to flip through and discover new books with interesting covers that you wouldn't necessarily just pick up if you only saw the spine.  I had a conversation with Chris about how the staff has felt about the change and she said that yes, it has been a source of frustration on many occasions because it has made things much more difficult for anyone looking for a certain title.  It's interesting to think about the ways libraries can choose to prioritize certain information-seeking needs. In my mind, the patron's needs should be foremost, but I feel like there are still some kinks that need to be worked out with the new organizational system that could strike a better balance between the needs of"browsers" and people looking for specific titles...

Another interesting interaction we had on the desk today was with a man came to us to ask for help about his bankruptcy filling process.  Chris tried to get a hold of both the State Law Library, as well as the County Law Library, but no one was available at either place.  We looked through his papers a bit more and noticed he needed to fill out another form online, but when Chis asked if he wanted to reserve a computer he said he would need someone to help him fill out everything because he wasn't very good with computers.  So after wrangling the schedule, Chris was able to book a time for him to come in later this afternoon and have an hour of one-on-one help with a staff person.  This interaction led to an interesting conversation about how the branch deals with situations like this.  It really shows the level of dedication to reference help many staff members have at the branch; no official one-on-one help is advertised, but many staff people make a concerted effort to make sure these kind of more in-depth information needs are met, even if it means going out of their way to do it.  Like I've said before, I've been continually impressed with the level of concern and effort that Chris puts into best serving the South Madison community, not to mention her patience and understanding;  it has already taught me a so much about how to be the best "community librarian" I can be in my future career!

Gardening with Kids

Daily Hours: 2
Total Hours: 82

This afternoon,  I was in charge of setting up for the "Gardening for Kids" workshop that was part of the educational series running throughout the summer in conjunction with the seed library.  Beth Hanna from Community Groundworks gave the presentation, talking about school gardening programs in WI and ending with a make-your-own newspaper pot activity.

Unfortunately, only a mother, her two small children, and an older gentleman, who happened to run the Horticulture Club at MATC, showed up for the program.  I had been nervous about attendance numbers all week since I called and left messages for the four people who had registered in advance through the e-vance calendar online.  Plus, today was Rhythm and Booms and all of John Nolen was closed.  There is just always so much going on in Madison!  It's become obvious to me now how much little things can affect attendance; for example, Chis offhandedly mentioned that storytime numbers are usually much lower when the parking lot is full; parents will just go home rather than park far away (obviously a downside of sharing parking with so many other businesses and organizations!).  We did manage to round up a few kids who were already in the library for the pot making activity, so that was good.

There's always a bright side to things though, and I was able to do a bit of seed library networking with both Beth and the older gent; both wanted information to bring back to their respective organizations.  Beth was even talking about doing a partnership mini-garden next season through their kids program where they would grow a plot with seeds from the library and then save them as an experiment.  We did a quick brainstorm of how things would work, possibly an outreach visit from us or a field trip to the library for them, a great opportunity to educate them on all the resources the library can provide beyond the seeds...

Job Mob!

Daily Hours: 4
Total Hours: 80

I spent most of the morning at the MATC campus located across the parking lot from Goodman, where every Friday, representatives from multiple neighborhood organizations (Joining Forces for Families, The Catholic Multicultural Center, Centro Hispano, the Nehemiah Center, Urban League, and of course, the Library) come together to offer drop-in job hunting assistance.  The program is only a year old, but they serve an average of 20 people a week.  Most of the organizations involved had been doing some sort of job help in their own right before, but recently they came together, realizing they could be much more efficient if they created a partnership.  MATC provides two rooms, where new job listings are printed out and organized each session, and a computer lab where job seekers can get help with online applications and resume creation/tweaking.  Representatives for local businesses and companies looking for employees will also often set up a table there and interview people right on the spot.  I know I mention how key these partnerships are in the South Madison area in just about every journal entry, but they really are on to something!  And the fact that the Library can function on the same level as these non-profits really shows how librarians can realize their full potential as community and social justice advocates.

Every few days or so,  I have one of those practicum moments that reminds me why I started down this career path to begin with.  My time helping at Job Mob was definitely one of those moments!  I helped a man format and edit his resume for an hour, and in the process I learned his life story,  and I was able to teach him some basic computer skills, as well as even do a bit of Reader's Advisory (he liked Legal Thrillers, so I was able to draw on some of my RA skills from Reading of Interests of Adults).  As I wished him luck as he went off to an interview, I realized just how rewarding the whole interaction had just been.  But that's not to say that there are not frustrating moments:  I was in awe of Chris' patience as she helped a man who couldn't remember his email or password for 15 minutes until they finally got it right.  And then they sat for the next hour and a half taking a detailed personality questionnaire for the job he was applying for.

I walked across the parking lot and finished my shift getting things ready for the Gardening with Kids workshop I will be organizing tomorrow afternoon, choosing some kids books about Gardening as well as parent resources for a display I'll have in the room.  A truly gratifying librarian day!

Social Media, Abolitionists, and Robots!

Daily Hours: 8.5+.5
Total Hours: 76

"Contando Cuentos" Bilingual Storytime
Crafts and dancing after reading Un beso en mi mano (The Kissing Hand)

Today was quite the busy one.  I started off by working on creating and organizing the Facebook google docs folder I will be leaving for the person who takes over social media at Goodman when I am gone, collecting posting ideas etc.  (who knew that July 1st-4th is celebrated each year as "Tom Sawyer Days"?).  Then I helped out with the second of our four session bilingual pre-literacy storytime.  We were pleased to have a great turnout this time, with multiple Spanish-speaking families wandering in because they heard Spanish being spoken.  One woman stayed after, thanking us profusely and commenting how frustrating it has been for her to always bring her children to library programming, but that none of it is in Spanish.  Judging by attendance at this storyhour, there is huge Spanish-language children's programming gap that Goodman could fill, which I will heartily recommend through both statistics and anecdotes in my upcoming analysis of Goodman's Spanish-language services.

In the afternoon I met with Michael to catch up in the moment he was back in the office between the conference he just went to and his upcoming vacation.  It was cool to hear about the conference, Next Library, which is all about library innovation and is usually held in Europe.  He said it was the best networking opportunity he had ever had; he was having dinner with the directors of storied library systems like San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, not to mention getting to benefit from all the forward-thinking initiatives brought to the table by the European libraries.  

In the evening I helped out with the first program in the four part Created Equal film series that the branch in running.  Tana Elias and Chris had written an National Endowment of the Humanities grant for the series, and MPL was was one 473 institutions across the country awarded funding for the program and showing rights for the films.  Local community members, including multiple UW professors are lecturing along with the films and facilitating the discussion afterwards.  Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara, a professor in the Afro-American studies department ran this program, and she made a point of thanking the library for inviting her, saying that she loves to get out into Madison and make those connections between community and academia.  It was great to see how well such a partnership can work, promoting connections between local institutions and providing valuable continuing education opportunities for community members who wouldn't necessarily get access to university resources.  After all, as we discussed at length in 450, and again in Public Libraries, a huge part of the mission of public libraries is the idea of continuing adult education and enrichment, and this program was a perfect example of that!  I also got to meet Tana and chat a bit about social media, a conversation that we will continue next week when I go downtown to Central to meet with her, which I already now will be a valuable opportunity!

Thursday update:  Today I finally was able to get in touch with Ben from BadgerBOTS to talk about the possibility of a Bubbler program in August.  It sounds like things will work out if he can find enough of their high school students who would be able to run a mechanical large-scale robot presentation and hands on Lego robot activity.  It was also good to make the connection for future programming ideas: they have an established 6 week "Robot Club" that they have started running at different locations around the community.  Ben said he'd be happy to collaborate again in the future for such a club during the school year if the Bubbler program proves popular enough this time!

More Seeds and Social Media

Daily Hours: 4+2
Total Hours: 67

After practicing my seed library power point presentation a few times and getting our outreach materials in order, I spent some working through logistics with our contacts at the UW-Master Gardeners.  It's especially difficult because they have one volunteer in charge of scheduling, so she ends up acting as an intermediary between us and the presenters, plus she just took over the position.  One thing this practicum has taught me pretty quickly off the bat was that while working closely with community organizations and services can be incredibly valuable, you are also relying on someone else, their schedules, motivations, interests etc.  You need to make it worth the time for both of you, and the logistics of everything alone takes a huge amount of time!  I've been calling, emailing, waiting for responses in regards to a handful of projects over the past few weeks, and just keeping up with how each contact is proceeding has taught me some important skills.  I was interested to know if there was a "professional timeline" for how to badger people if they haven't got back to you about something, so I asked Michael; he said his rule of thumb is generally email again after a week, call after three days.  I think I'll adopt with that rule as my own as well...

I spent the rest of Monday morning developing the Facebook page for the Goodman Friends Group.  Although I consider myself a pretty capable Facebook user, there was a bit of a learning curve for page creation and general maintenance, so that alone has been a good skill to acquire.  In addition to actually creating the basic page, I combed through my copious notes from the one credit Social Media course I took early in the summer, gleaning some guiding points and revisiting the library case-studies we did. I spent some time clicking around the Facebook pages of the case studies as well as the Friends pages for other branches of MPL.  This week I will draw upon those notes and create a mini-social media plan and guiding document following the tips from the readings, because obviously, for a social media campaign to be successful there needs to be a sense of sustainability.  I'll only be around for the summer, but I plan on leaving a google doc folder for whoever takes over the Facebook responsibility that would detail the inner workings of the page and also have a running list of posting ideas etc.

Today I went to Middleton to give a presentation on the Seed Library for the high school students from Growing Food and Sustainability, a hands-on environmental and leadership education program.  They run their own farm right at Clark St. Community School where they are based and they had contacted us because they are interested in saving their own seeds, along with the community aspect of the seed library.  I really enjoyed acting as a library ambassador out in the community; I can only hope that I get to connect people to library resources at similar events in my future career.  I made sure to plug MPL in general, taking a poll of who had library cards and encouraging those who didn't to get one.  It was also nice to get to connect with the Master Gardner who presented about the actual seed saving process after I gave my part of the talk.  He had given two of the past workshops in our series at the library and we both agreed that the partnership was working out great so far!

Juneteenth and Book Club

Daily Hours: 7

Total Hours: 61

Today was the annual Juneteenth Celebration in South Madison in honor of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.  Every year the event is organized by local community groups and activists, beginning with a parade from the Fountain of Life Church.  The rest of the event is celebrated all afternoon in Penn Park, just on the other side of Park St. from the Goodman Branch.  There are speeches, music and dance performances, and informational tables and activities run by local organizations.  Every year the library has a table at the event, as Chris makes it a seamless part of her work as a librarian to be embedded in the community.  This year we “served” an estimated 80 or so adults and children at the event, signing up kids for the summer reading program at our table in the children’s tent where we had a tick-tack-toe lawn game and an Easter egg musical shaker craft.  It really cool to see how many people Chris knew at the event: parents, children and organizers!

Part way through the afternoon I walked the short way back to the library to attend the monthly book club meeting.  And I have to say, more than anything I have done so far in my practicum, being able get a behind the scenes look at the club has reminded me the most why I wanted to be a librarian.  I love talking about books, and I can’t wait for the chance to organize and lead my own book club someday!  Even though I didn’t particularly connect with the book we read this month, I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and it felt great that Lori (the book club leader) later told me that by the points I brought up and the questions I asked, she could tell I was a natural book club leader.  There were about 11 women there, all over the age of 50 or so.  It was really cool to realize that the conversation had flowed pretty seamlessly for an hour and a half, and Lori never had to do any awkward prompting to keep things going.  I was especially interested in the group dynamics after what Jim Ramsey, the head of Adult Services at Middleton Public Library, said when he came into our Reading Interests of Adults class last semester.  He talked about the different book club member characters like the “conversation derailer” or the “ranter.”   I saw a bit of those personalities and behaviors, and it was informative to see how Lori guided things back on track in a totally non-obtrusive way.  Also, it was cool that some members actually checked out more circus books from our display!  Afterwards Lori talked to me more about the dynamics of the group and how the group selects their books.  Next month we are reading Gone Girl, which from everything I’ve heard about the book, will make for quite an interesting discussion!

Seeds!

Daily Hours: 6
Total Hours: 54

Today started off with a short staff meeting before the library opened.  The Neighborhood Police Officer, who also has scheduled open "office hours" each week in the library (where he apparently learns a lot about what's going on the area from patrons who come to report things etc.) was supposed to be there answering questions about situations in and around the library, but he didn't show up. The same thing happens occasionally during his scheduled library hours, as he is on call. We talked about some general housekeeping issues, but most importantly we talked about an incident that happened the other evening in library. One of the employees was finally was able to call the police on a patron she had suspected of doing drugs in the library. He had been coming into the library each morning right when it opened and rushing right to the family bathroom where he would spend way too long, never even flushing the toilet. She told him he had to start using the regular men's bathroom, which is where he was caught the other day.  Michael commented that for that reason he never uses the staff bathroom, instead he uses the public one and in the process he "learns a lot."  Just another reason we were going to have the officer come talk at the meeting...

Besides figuring out some logistics for future Bubbler programming (looks like a Fermented Food program with the UW Slow Food club in late June is a go! Yay!) and finishing up my Seed Library presentation I'll be giving next week, I spent the rest of the afternoon working on a resource guide for the parents of the children coming to our bilingual story time.  I really enjoyed pulling together some of the knowledge and resources I have been acquiring during my independent study and actually putting them to use!

Spanish ABC's and Circus Subject Headings

Daily Hours: 6

Total Hours: 48

I started off this morning helping out with the first of what will be a four week bilingual early literacy “storytime” series.  The series was planned (and is led) by a local teacher who teaches in the Spanish immersion program at Aldo Leopold Elementary School.  The experience was especially informative for me as I really have no background with children’s library programming.  But I am especially keen on getting experience with that side of things, because if I end up in a library with a Spanish-speaking user-base (as I hope to), I’d love to do a bilingual story time in the future.  Overall, everything went well and I got a good feel of just how flexible you need to be in planning youth programming, especially for the 3-6 age group (the target group for this series).  Around five mothers and eight kids showed up; we were happy with the turnout, considering it was a really stormy morning.  We sang a few songs, read two stories, and then ended with a cool take-home craft that the kids played with while she put on a bilingual sing-along DVD.  The kids were given ziplock bags with a thin filling of cornstarch, water, and food coloring.  We had them put the bags down on the table and floor and draw letters on the bags.  They were just as excited about popping the bubbles, but I thought it was a cool idea to have a take home tool for the mothers (and fathers) to extend the learning at home.

After the program, I spent some time tying up some loose ends with Kim, the staff person in charge of the Adult Summer Reading Program this summer, planning our first prizes etc.  In addition to creating a template for the Friends group membership cards (and actually significantly expanding my Microsoft Word graphic design skills in the process!), I also did some planning for this Saturday’s book club I’ll be helping with.  In particular, I was charged with the enjoyable task of browsing LINKcat for other Circus-related titles (the book we are reading is Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus) to request so we can make a display of additional reading suggestions for the club meeting.  And, man did linked subject headings make my life easier as I searched for a well-rounded mix of fiction and non-fiction!

Equity, in the Library and City-wide

Daily Hours: 4
Total Hours: 42

Today was a mix of activities to start the week off. First thing in the morning Chris, Michael, and I reconvened to make a final decision on who to hire for the teen position. We took the first part of the meeting to go through our notes on their interview responses and rate every answer on a scale of 1-5. We then added up each candidate's totals and compared our rankings, which Michael informed us is how they do it for the "big time" interviews at MPL as well. We also briefly discussed what questions they had asked us during the interview, and Michael gave me the advice that it can be really advantageous to come with a few good questions for the search committee to show you're really interested and have done a bit of background research. It was interesting to see that we all had ranked the same applicants in the top three when it all came down to it, even though we were struggling to pick the top contenders when we were just informally discussing the candidates. After a few more minutes of discussion we finally settled on our choice for the other position, with Chris declaring that this was the last year she'd be involved in the process; she just knows too many of the kids too well, not to mention the politics when their mothers are involved...


After starting to get up to speed with the Seed Library material for my presentation next week and making some logistical calls about scheduling the accompanying workshops, I biked downtown to join Chris and Michael at the City Racial Equity and Social Justice (RESJ) group meeting. Formed last fall and made up of representatives from various municipal departments, RESJ works towards "eliminating racial and social inequities in municipal government by implementing strategies in three main areas: Equity in City policies and budgets; Equity in City operations; and Equity in the community." In addition to Michael and Chris, Sarah Lawton, the director of the Monroe St. Branch and the Pinney Branch was at the meeting as well; like Michael and I had discussed before, there are some "movers and shakers" at MPL who are really advocating for diversity, not just internally within the library, but City-wide as well. The meeting started of with chatter among the members about the recent WSJ article featuring the leader of the group and her partner after they got married last weekend, which started things off on a positive note. Since they are still a relatively new group, the meeting mainly covered their new structure (splitting into action teams etc.) and what they hope to get accomplished. Right now they are mainly focused on creating community connections and working on tools that can be used as a reference City-wide when departments are developing new policies or making hiring decisions. They plan on joining an alliance of other cities who also have established RESJ initiatives like Portland, Seattle, and the Twin Cities. There was also a presentation about the new economic plan that the City is developing, with the idea to incorporate the standpoint that there is "an economic argument for equity." One part of the economic presentation I found particularly interesting was the discussion of the tax-base competition that Madison faces from outlying suburban areas like Sun Prairie, which could threaten many public services, libraries included of course!

Interviews: On the other side of the table!

Daily Hours: 2+5.5
Total Hours: 38

For the past ten years or so, the Goodman Branch has received "soft" money in the form of grant funding from first the Town of Madison, and now the City of Madison, that allows them to hire two teen interns each summer to help with the Summer Reading Program and various activities for children.  The appointment is nine weeks long, and the teens (ages 15-17) work 20 hours a week, making a bit more than minimum wage.  This year, I was able to sit in on the interview process for all 11 teens Michael and Chris interviewed, even getting to ask some of the questions.

First of all, it was a really interesting experience to be a part of the interview process from the other side of things, writing a constant stream of notes as the teens answered situational questions about disruptive behavior in the library, and their experience with volunteering, technology, and working with children.  And of course there was the ubiquitous question about a situation when you dealt with a difficult person.  It was often their first job interview, so that alone was great experience for each of them.  One of the things that Michael was clear about when we discussed what we were looking for in each candidate was the fact that he always wants to give someone from the South side neighborhood a chance with the positions, often a person who wouldn't have as many opportunities to build their resume in the same way otherwise.  This led to a lengthy discussion about how MPL is trying to increase their cultural competency by diversifying their employee-base, an effort that is often hampered by the bureaucracy of the city HR department, which has a huge hand in the hiring process.  But managers from MPL, including Michael, have been meeting with HR and Affirmative Action representatives to better the situation in recent times.

After 11 interviews, we are faced with a difficult choice.  Of course Michael and Chris are keeping my participation in the process at the appropriate professional level.  It is really interesting to see how difficult this decision is for Chris each year, as she has known many of interviewees for years as library regulars and/or volunteers and this makes it hard for her to select only two for the positions.  We talked about the fact that in the past she has advocated for someone to be hired based on the fact that they had volunteered with her for so long, but in the end, it ended up being a poor fit and led to a bit of disastrous summer.  We managed to chose one candidate for sure this afternoon and narrow the remaining contenders down to six, but we will reconvene first thing Monday morning to make our final decision.

Overall, the whole experience has gotten me thinking about all the interviews I'll be doing in a few short months, when I'll be back on the other side of the table... soon enough!

Logistics, logistics!

Daily Hours:  4
Total Hours: 30.5

Today I did some planning research and communication, in addition to meeting with Michael again to firm up some loose ends on exactly what I'll be doing for the practicum this summer.  In particular, we talked more about the Bubbler programming I'll be planning.  It looks like the two events will be:

• A fermentation workshop in July led by interns from UW's Slow Food Club, who already have a presence in South Madison with their work with the Boys and Girls Club in the neighborhood.  The workshop will include background information about the science of food fermentation and will feature kimchi making stations.  All participants will come away with an 8 oz. mason jar full of kimchi.  I have also reached out to the group to have a presence at our Eat, Play, Art event later in July.

• An August program put on by BadgerBOTS, a local robotics group that encourages kids to get excited about STEM related education and concepts.  More details on exactly what the workshop will entail will come together soon.

We also discussed the coordination work I'll be doing with Seed Library over the summer, which will include an informational talk in a few weeks for a high school community gardening group that had reached out to us.  I plan on spending part of next week really getting up to speed with everything related to the project.  One thing I really appreciated in our discussion of the Seed Library was Michael's emphasis on the rationale behind libraries offering this kind of service.  Libraries have always been in the business of information access, navigation, and sharing.  We have always encouraged exploration and self-directed learning.  The seed library is just another way of facilitating those kinds of interactions, encouraging patrons to try something new or expand their existing skills by offering equal access the materials (the seeds), and then supporting the full-use of those resources with educational programs offered each month by the Master Gardner volunteers.  Modern libraries can offer dynamic services promoting new technologies like e-readers but also age-old ones like agriculture!

After I told Michael a bit about my comparison of the Fitchburg Library and SMB, and he came up with the idea to have me to do a mini-assessment of SMB's current Spanish-language collection based on circulation data etc. and an assessment of our current Spanish-language services: what we are doing well, what we are behind in, and what services could be overlapping with those offered by other organizations in the area.  I am especially excited about this opportunity as I feel it will dovetail nicely with the independent study I am also doing this summer about Spanish-language services and multi-cultural outreach!

I can't believe that I've reached the 30 hour mark already! Whew!

Block Party, Library Comparison, and Friends Meeting

Daily Hours: 7.5
Total Hours: 26.5

Today ended up being an interesting mix of activities, starting off with joining Chris to walk over to the Multicultural Catholic Center to attend a planning meeting for the Block Party they are putting on later in the summer.  The meeting was a particularly good example of the high level of coordination and networking between the organizations in the neighborhood.  The event will feature performances by local musicians, youth dance groups etc. and the library will be running a game at the event and donating books for prizes.  I observed a few interesting things during the course of the meeting:

• There was a discussion about whether community organizations should have tables or just activities at the event.  But then, everyone came to the general consensus that informational tables really just don't work at these kinds of event; it is much better to get your name out through some sort of interactive game/activity and leave it at that.

• The amount of networking that happened at the meeting was impressive; everyone was dropping names and sharing tips and techniques for outreach etc.  For example, "Do you have any relationship with ____?" was a common phrase bandied around, and Chris shared information about a source of free ice cream donation that everyone was happy to hear about.

I have talked about this before in past journal entries, but the amount of support resources in the area really is impressive;  I was talking to René Bue at the Hedberg Public Library, who I will be working with this summer for my Spanish-language services independent study, and she commented on the prime location of the Goodman Branch, describing the area as almost a "strip mall of non-profits," which it really is!  I noticed that the Catholic Multicultural Center had a computer lab, and I asked her how they all manage to not overlap services.  She said communication is key; they recently banded together to start the weekly"Job Mob" event at MATC because they all realized that they were all doing employment services on some level, but none of them were really doing a good job of it.  So now they have gathered together their resources and all have a representative at the event each week.

Next, I did a bit of library observation, as Michael had suggested.  Since the user-ship overlaps between Fitchburg Library and Goodman, I spent some time at both branches, looking at services, useage, space etc.  What a difference!  Here is a brief summary of my observations:

• Bulletin Boards: the Goodman branch's board is full of resources about community organizations and their services, many of which are multi-lingual (including library event postings), whereas the Fitchburg board totally lacked those resources and only had one multi-lingual advertisement for a library event.

• Spanish-language collections: Goodman has much larger Spanish-language sections.  However, Fitchburg also has a small Hmong and Mandarin section.  Goodman even has a whole shelf dedicated to face-out display of Spanish materials, including a topical section on the World Cup.

• Children's areas:  Despite the fact that it was prime after-school time while I was at both branches, there were only two children reading quietly in chairs in the whole room dedicated to children's materials at Fitchburg, whereas at Goodman there were multiple parents playing with their children using library materials like the dinosaurs and colored abacus toys.

• Noise level: Let's just say that the Fitchburg library seemed uncomfortably quiet for me after the Goodman branch...

• Computer stations:  All the stations were full at Goodman, which they are most of the time, whereas at Fitchburg not even half were in use.  Fitchburg has its own computer lab, whereas at Goodman the computers are situated in the center of the library between the circulation and reference desks.  Despite the fact that they really need more computers, I think that arrangement works well for Goodman, because as one of the library pages told me, users at the branch generally have lower-level technology skills and so employees are constantly helping them with tasks on the computer, so it is easier to reach them and notice when an issue arises that way.

I came back to the Goodman for the evening Friends of the Library meeting.  It was interesting to hear that they have a sliding scale membership fee to take into account the general demographics of the area, which I especially appreciated.  We talked about the results of the book sale (less revenue than usual, but still around $1,000), whether or not to sell bags as a fundraiser again this year (it was decided that we should, but that they should be sturdier canvas like the Fitchburg ones).  Chris asked for $50 for Catholic Multicultural Center Block Party, which was easily approved, and she also brought up the idea of organizing a donation campaign to get people to buy copies of The Fault in Our Stars for the branch because it has been in crazy demand since the movie came out.  I gave a pitch to the group about starting a Facebook page for them this summer, giving them a general idea of how other branches' Friends groups utilize theirs and how I would run ours.  They all agreed to let me take on the project, so that will be another part of my practicum work this summer. I am especially excited about that opportunity since I will get to put into action some of the wealth of social media knowledge I just gained in the one-credit class SLIS offered a few weeks ago!

"Own the Night" Teen Party

Daily Hours: 5
Total Hours: 19

The "Own the Night" Party is an event for kids in grades 6-12 in celebration of the end of the school year.  I was surprised to hear that the Goodman Branch is the only branch who puts on such an event!  The branch closes at 5:00 on Saturdays and it reopened last night at 5:05 to teens only.  Jesse Vieau, the teen librarian for the entire MPL system (although the Goodman Branch will be getting their own teen librarian in July) had brought a car load full of electronics down from Central, including DJ stations, an Xbox, a Wii, and iPad animation stations. Nate Clark from the Media Lab at Central was there running a green screen station where the kids could have their photos taken and photoshopped onto different backgrounds.  There was a table full of free pre-pub books for the kids, as well as a craft table.  There was also pizza, chips, cookies, and juice, which were all devoured by the 40 or so kids who came to the event.  Despite the fact that Jessie had gone to the middle school earlier in the day and told some 200 kids about the event, Chris said that she knew almost all the kids as branch regulars.

As youth services isn't my area of expertise, it was interesting to observe all the elements that go into putting on a successful event.  I think one of the best things about the organization of everything was having so many spaces for kids to enjoy the activities that best fit their liking.  Some kids quietly used the computers for the entirety of the event, one kid stayed glued to the DJ station with his headphones on for the whole three hours, others only played video games, and one group of girls stayed at the craft table almost the whole time, making duck tape flowers and beaded bracelets.  Thinking about space usage in libraries, it was especially impressive to notice how all the different events could take place at the same time (and each be pretty loud in their own right) but they never overwhelmed one another with noise.  One of my favorite parts of the night was hanging out by the animation stations and watching how adept they were at making the videos, intuitively learning the technology and then teaching each other little tricks.  Everything ran pretty smoothly, besides one incident towards the end of the night when one kid was getting too rough and Jesse had to escort him to the door and make him leave the event.  In what I thought was a clever move, Chris made signing up for the summer reading program a pre-requisite for being entered in the drawing at the end of the night.  As I helped kids sign up on the computers, I was surprised to learn that for the last few years the summer reading program for kids 6th grade and up has been run completely online.  The graphics and cool interface of the account pages were pretty neat, and I look forward to seeing how the program plays out this summer at the branch.

At the end of the night, we started putting things away and taking stock of the state of the library after 40 kids had free run of the place with food in their hands.  As there is no janitorial help over the weekends at the branch (!), we spent the next hour emptying garbages and using the carpet sweeper to tackle the remnants of the chip war that apparently had taken place unseen in a corner of the library.  As we cleaned, Chris commented on how nice it was to just leave at closing time and then walk into a clean library each morning when she worked at the downtown library in the past.  She also talked about the teen events with food and games she used to run each week in the summer in the past, in particular how she used to make all the kids sit at a table when they ate (it's those little things you don't think about when planning the big-picture program that you can only learn from experience!).  But what I found most interesting was that fact that she said twenty years ago, she was the first person to establish teen programming at MPL when she rocked the boat by going out and getting a grant for the weekly events.  And just look at how far things have come since then, iPads, DJ stations, and all!

Adult Summer Reading Club Planning

Daily Hours: 3

Total Hours: 14

Today I met with Kim, who is taking on the Adult Summer Reading Club responsibilities for the summer at the branch.  As the process is new to her as well, we met and went over the file with all the information from last year's program.  With the feedback from the woman who ran the program last summer, we talked about what businesses in the neighborhood we'd solicit prizes from and for what amounts, and also how we plan on distributing the prizes each week.  I've never seen an Adult Summer Reading program in a library before, but I really like the idea of encouraging adult leisure reading; it's a fun mode of adult library participation!

The entry and sign up box had been out for a few days on the reference desk and there were already a handful of entries.  We realized that there was really no signage or advertising yet, despite the fact that Central had said they would send some over.  As the first drawing is already set for next week we decided to take matters into our own hands, so I took some art supplies and made up a sign to draw more attention to the box.  One thing about working at a branch library that I have noticed on multiple occasions already is the bureaucracy that can be involved with "branding" an entire library system from the top down.  From stories I have heard, the branch libraries have to be pretty assertive to get their advertising needs across to Central so they can go on the Facebook page etc.

I also helped a bit with some final book sale set up.  People were browsing and buying starting right when we opened at 10!

Book Sale Setup!

Daily Hours: 6
Total Hours: 11

Today I jumped right into things, baking a batch of rhubarb lavender muffins in the morning to bring in for the Book, Bake, and AV sale the Friends of the Goodman Branch group is putting on tomorrow and the next day. I spent the first part of the afternoon making signs for the sale, and then the rest of the time with the Friends volunteers and Chris (the Friends group liaison) sorting through the many boxes of books that had been donated since the last sale in December.

What I enjoyed most about the experience, besides getting to interact with the lovely ladies from the Friends group, was doing mini-"aboutness" assessments of each book. I was brought back to LIS 551, having to do some quick thinking about how to categorize each book. It was interesting to see that our organization system was based on the BISAC subject heading system, which had me thinking more about the advantages of public libraries switching over to the system for their entire collections. I don't want to say that I've jumped on that boat entirely yet, but I am currently on the dock thinking about getting on board at this point. One thing that I really liked was the fact that Chris made a point of separating out Street Lit from the rest of the Adult Fiction and Spanish-language materials from both the World Languages section and the Children's section. Just another way she's always thinking of the community's information needs!

Sidebar: I've been to quite a few library book sales in the past; I once even ended up buying a bag full of books at one in Napa, CA while I just happened to be driving through town on a road trip. But I have never been to one that is also a bake sale. It made me think of this NPR article from their series on libraries last summer:

"Vermont, for instance, brags that it has more libraries per capita than any other U.S. state. Some of them are remarkably quaint. In Ludlow, one library is a white clapboard Victorian, slightly frayed, ringed by lilies and sitting by the side of a brook.

'It's very small,' says Julia Baldwin, a volunteer with the local Ladies' Aid society. The group is the one and only reason this public library exists, even though it's open just two hours a day, and only in the summer.

'No paid librarians,' she points out. 'We function on donations, book sales, bake sales ...'"

Well, I sure am glad that the funding for the Goodman Branch isn't reliant on our book and bake sale, no matter how delicious all those sweets looked and how many Janet Evanovich and John Grisham books we have for sale...

Getting My Feet Wet

Daily Hours: 5
Total Hours: 5

Today was the official kickoff of my practicum, a whirlwind of information but all of it exciting!  Michael and I started by looking at some general data about the community the library serves using the Madison Neighborhood Indicators Project site, which is great resource for general community analysis as well as specific grant writing numbers.  Basically, a crash course of the data shows that the neighborhood is around a quarter each of White, Asian, Latino, and African American residents, which makes for one of the most diverse user communities of any of the MPL branches.  In general, median income is about half of the city median, and the unemployment rate is a percent higher than Madison as a whole.  Parent education levels are drastically lower than rest of the city, and kindergarden preparedness is only a third of the city wide levels, which prompted Michael to talk about the "education gap" facing the community in South Madison.  One of the statistics that surprised me especially was the fact that 90.0% of students in the neighborhood are considered "economically disadvantaged," almost double the average for the city!

Next we spent a bit of time looking at circ stats and program stats for the branch in comparison to the rest of the MPL branches.  Michael talked about how he used the stats in the past to reorganize library materials, for example, moving the Spanish-language collection to the high-traffic AV area to make that user population feel more welcome (instead of leaving it hidden away in the awkward area where it was previously).  He also talked about changing the look of the children's area, including facing more books out, after seeing how low their stats were in that area.  They will be also adding interactive shelves to increase play in the area, something I am excited about seeing put into action later in the summer.  But as much as we looked at the circ numbers to get a feel for things, we also talked about how limiting those kind of statistics can be if the "movers and shakers" solely rely on them as a measure of success in a changing information landscape, a theme I have seen woven throughout multiple courses here at SLIS.

We also talked about the importance of community partnerships in the neighborhood and just how many resources there are in South Madison (Urban League, Planned Parenthood, MATC, Boys and Girls Club, the Catholic Multicultural Center, Centro Hispano, Joining Forces for Families etc.).  I am especially excited about seeing these partnerships in action and learning more about effective community outreach strategies.

In addition to meeting other branch employees, we also talked a bit more about what I'll be tentatively doing this summer, which may include:

• Planning 2-3 Bubbler Events
• Helping with a Spanish Pre-literacy Program
• Helping with Seed Library Programming and Outreach
• Helping with adult programming like the Created Equal Film Discussion Series and computer classes (if Chris Wagner has enough time to put on the latter this summer)
• Helping with outreach work: tabling at the Juneteeth event in Penn park, attending Neighborhood Resource Team meetings
• Helping out with a major weeding project later in the summer
• Helping out with the Eat, Play, Art event in July
• Shadowing and then working on the reference desk
• Getting trained in Koha
• Getting trained in E-vanced, the "back-end" of the library public calendar
• Going to a Friends of the Library meeting
• Going to a board meeting

 I spent an additional hour after I got home looking at the neighborhood data a bit more, doing some background reading of the Bubbler documents Michael shared with me, and just generally trying to process all that I'll be taking on this summer.  As digging deeper into community outreach and needs is a part of my learning objectives, I definitely planning on looking at the data in more depth and connecting it to the circ data in the future.

Whew!