I worked at the reference desk again on Saturday, October 17th. This time I worked with the always lovely Mindy Van Houten. I know we're only supposed to be blogging about 5 hours working a reference desk, but why do 5 hours when they could use me for 5 shifts? Amiright? :)
It was a lot slower than last time, which was a double edged sword. Mindy and I knew ahead of time we would likely be slow because Ohio State had a football game that afternoon. (For those of you who aren't familiar with OSU, football is big here.) While this left me with more time to interact with patrons and really focus on helping them in every way possible, it didn't exactly give me a lot of new ways to interact with them either.
One of the questions from the interview that I want to return to that I think was incredibly important when it happened was what a rookie librarian should know when they're at the desk alone. This has happened to me a few times and up until this point, I sort of felt like a deer in the headlights. But this particular time I realized I had become a lot more familiar with some of the tools at my disposal and procedures to help them.
For example, I've become incredibly familiar with accessing both print and online versions of consumer reports for practically any item you'd find in or near a household. I've come to realize this is probably a staple of working in a public library. Members of this community are using a lot of our public resources, which is fantastic! Tamara Murray, one of our magnificent IT specialists created a large number of guides to our online resources, and I've found myself handing those out a lot. They give patrons a step by step guide to accessing and logging onto the website and conducting a search, including a screen shot in every guide (there are roughly 20 currently, but we hope to have a guide for all of our online resources in the future).
That said, the best thing about being slow was having time to spend with patrons teaching them how to search as opposed to doing something faster for them by doing it myself. It may take a few more minutes, but with the majority of patrons you can save the patron and yourself a lot of time in the future by providing them with the knowledge to conduct their own searches in the future. I've especially been trying to introduce patrons to the easy process of using OhioLink and SearchOhio, which allows them to order items from other libraries if we don't have them. A surprising number of our patrons don't realize it exists, even though the icons appear on the screen whenever they conduct a search.
Teaching a patron how to conduct a productive search is a much better feeling than doing it for them.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Reference Desk Observation, September 26
I feel I should preface this by saying that this is not the first time I have worked at our reference desk. Because we are so short staffed, everyone has had to cover in other fields. Luckily for me and other library staff, I needed to complete this project anyways, so it worked out pretty great.
My first shadowing experience was on Saturday, September 26th. I worked with Nieca Nowels, the department manager of Adult Services. One of the first things I noticed was that the desk simply said "Ask Here." The old "reference" sign now lays on top of Nieca's desk, a memory of the library jargon that we often assume everyone understands. I think the "ask here" sign makes the desk much less intimidating and makes us librarians more approachable. Less smarty-pants, if you will.
We received our information primarily through two ways: phone and in person. While the library does operate an internet conversation with other patrons, more often than not, it is very difficult to reach a librarian immediately through these ways. With recent budget cuts in the state of Ohio, our situation is not uncommon. I found it exceptionally difficult to always practice good patron service simply because there were so many people steadily throughout the day. If I had been receiving e-mails, texts, and ims, I honestly don't think I could have done even a subpar job at communicating with that number of people. While this is not unusual for this library, especially on Saturdays, the low level of staffing is something we're all coping with.
I think it's important that I share with you who our patrons are. In short, they are everyone. Being in adult services doesn't mean children won't come up with their parents and pose questions, as they should be able to. Westerville is also a college town attached to Columbus, OH, so we have a large number of students. Being the only library in Westerville we also get the majority of its residents, as well as those of the booming suburban areas north of here whom, as of yet, have no closer library. We are swamped, to say the least.
The reference desk is also an area where patrons can borrow laptops and reserve meeting rooms. Although we are located right next to a large tech center (about 15 PCs and 5 Macs), laptops are the desired tool. While it is very easy to keep track of who has loaned out what (we check all items out on their card in addition to keeping their driver's license until the laptop is returned), it still means that a large number of people are waiting in line for requests that don't take up a large amount of time. Unfortunately, if one librarian is on the phone with a patron's question and the other librarian is helping a patron sign up for free computer classes, this can mean that a large number of people line up at the desk. And even more unfortunately, waiting makes patrons angry, which we sometimes hear about.
Like I said, I found it difficult to keep my head above water, much less spend the amount of time with each patron as they deserved. I genuinely felt bad that I couldn't have spent more time with them, asking follow up questions. I felt as if I were in a situation where I really needed to herd people along, especially when one patron attempted to enter a religious discussion with my not-so-enthusiastic coworker.
I'm hoping that the next time I work will be considerably slower so that I can work on two things:
1. Improving my interactions with patrons. Being more friendly and less hurried as well as following through with them until they are completely satisfied.
2. Having the time to respond to reference questions through other mediums, particularly e-mail and im since the library does not currently have a texting system set up.
I sincerely hope it is less frenzied next time!
My first shadowing experience was on Saturday, September 26th. I worked with Nieca Nowels, the department manager of Adult Services. One of the first things I noticed was that the desk simply said "Ask Here." The old "reference" sign now lays on top of Nieca's desk, a memory of the library jargon that we often assume everyone understands. I think the "ask here" sign makes the desk much less intimidating and makes us librarians more approachable. Less smarty-pants, if you will.
We received our information primarily through two ways: phone and in person. While the library does operate an internet conversation with other patrons, more often than not, it is very difficult to reach a librarian immediately through these ways. With recent budget cuts in the state of Ohio, our situation is not uncommon. I found it exceptionally difficult to always practice good patron service simply because there were so many people steadily throughout the day. If I had been receiving e-mails, texts, and ims, I honestly don't think I could have done even a subpar job at communicating with that number of people. While this is not unusual for this library, especially on Saturdays, the low level of staffing is something we're all coping with.
I think it's important that I share with you who our patrons are. In short, they are everyone. Being in adult services doesn't mean children won't come up with their parents and pose questions, as they should be able to. Westerville is also a college town attached to Columbus, OH, so we have a large number of students. Being the only library in Westerville we also get the majority of its residents, as well as those of the booming suburban areas north of here whom, as of yet, have no closer library. We are swamped, to say the least.
The reference desk is also an area where patrons can borrow laptops and reserve meeting rooms. Although we are located right next to a large tech center (about 15 PCs and 5 Macs), laptops are the desired tool. While it is very easy to keep track of who has loaned out what (we check all items out on their card in addition to keeping their driver's license until the laptop is returned), it still means that a large number of people are waiting in line for requests that don't take up a large amount of time. Unfortunately, if one librarian is on the phone with a patron's question and the other librarian is helping a patron sign up for free computer classes, this can mean that a large number of people line up at the desk. And even more unfortunately, waiting makes patrons angry, which we sometimes hear about.
Like I said, I found it difficult to keep my head above water, much less spend the amount of time with each patron as they deserved. I genuinely felt bad that I couldn't have spent more time with them, asking follow up questions. I felt as if I were in a situation where I really needed to herd people along, especially when one patron attempted to enter a religious discussion with my not-so-enthusiastic coworker.
I'm hoping that the next time I work will be considerably slower so that I can work on two things:
1. Improving my interactions with patrons. Being more friendly and less hurried as well as following through with them until they are completely satisfied.
2. Having the time to respond to reference questions through other mediums, particularly e-mail and im since the library does not currently have a texting system set up.
I sincerely hope it is less frenzied next time!
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