Practicum Hours 37.5 - 42

Busy day today. I came in an hour and a half earlier than usual to attend a virtual presentation on The Blended Librarian. I found it pretty interesting, and, owing to my familiarity with educational software (Blackboard), I understood what they were talking about. I even had opinions about it, although I kept my mouth shut because I thought it would be a tad presumptuous to suddenly interject my opinion. The discussion after the presentation was actually as interesting to me as the presentation itself, since I am familiar with most of the librarians in attendence, and it was interesting to hear their opinions about the issue, the problems they face and the opportunities they see.

After the presentation, I had a meeting scheduled with Vanessa Middleton, which worked out well, since she was one of the moderators for the virtual presentation. Which discussed a number of aspects of instructional librarianship, and about what is expected of her. I let her know that I found the presentation quite interesting, except that the emphasis placed on having LIS students taking Instructional Technology courses was a bit disheartening. I'm almost graduated, and have studied really traditional aspects of librarianship during my time at WSU -- Collection Development, Evaluation, Science & Tech Resources. She assured me that while IT courses would be helpful, I should be able to pursue that aspect through continuing education, or on an as-need basis. Considering the amount of technological change, this makes sense.

Also in our conversation, I mentioned that I have done a lot of work in Endnote, particularly when compiling bibliographic lists in my Intensive Online Research class. She suggested that I might be able to assist her in teaching one of the drop-in classes that she teaches on Endnote. I would like to do this, because I think this would be helpful to me to see how another librarian approaches these instructional sessions, but I probably won't apply it to the fulfillment of my practicum hours, since I don't know how fair that would be to Veronica. I may just assist Vanessa gratis.

After our meeting was over, Veronica logged me into the virtual reference system so that I could look over the types of questions and answers were typical. Veronica called me in when she received a covetted chat reference question, which turned out to be a fairly standard explanation of how to do a search in ERIC. After the question was answered, though, the system froze up, and Veronica had to reboot, meaning that the question wasn't logged as it should have been. Apparently the chat application has been changed, and it still tends to be tempermental.

After that bit of fun, I walked over to the Science and Engineering Library to Speak to Nancy Wilmes, who is in charge of Research Support for WSU libraries. Apparently Information Service is divided up three wats for the libraries at WSU: Paul Beavers (who I have met with) is IS director, and is divided between Instruction (for which Vanessa is responsible), Research Support (Nancy's responsibility), and Reference (Rhonda McGinnis, the only one I haven't really talked to). Nancy was extremely helpful, having collected a packet of helpful materials for me to help understand what her job entails. I found it very helpful, and liked her a lot. For her part, Nancy offered to keep me abreast of any job opportunities she is made aware of, and invited me to a presentation next week, for which Veronica is one of the presenters.

Once I got back to Purdy-Kresge, I let Veronica know that I was going to attend the presentation, and I altered my schedul appropriately. She let me know that my computer was finally configured for printing, so I printed the mathematics book review I found and gave it to her, and then left for the weekend.

Song: "Girl Wants (to say goodbye to) Rock And Roll" By Go Home Productions.
(A BRILLIANT mash-up of:

1. The Velvet Underground: "Rock and Roll";
2. Christina Aguilera: "What a Girl Wants"; and
3. The Communards: "Never Can Say Goodbye".

Good, Good, stuff, that.