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!