in General, Libraries/Info Sci

Weekend at Library Instruction’s

I was really stretching for a pun in the title, give me a break 🙂

I had my first ever weekend class over the last couple days. To be honest, I thought I was going to hate it. 6-9 on a Friday night, and 9-5 on Saturday do not sound like a recipe for fun. But the topic of Library Instruction sounded too interesting to pass up on registering. I’m so glad I gave it a chance! I learned more this weekend than in some of my entire semester ‘normal schedule’ classes.

Friday night kind of surprised me – we ended up talking mostly about entering the job market. Resumes, portfolios, web presence, interviews, etc. Very practical, and very appreciated by me. I’d never really considered the need for a portfolio of my work to show employers before. It seems a little more focused towards the academic library jobs, which I’m not as interested in as public, but pulling one together can’t hurt. I’ll add it as a link in the upper right of the site when I’m done; probably in a few days. I also got the idea to put a link to this site on my resume, which for some reason hadn’t crossed my mind before.

Friday night concluded with some discussion of different user groups and how their needs from library instruction differ. We departed, and returned the next morning.

Saturday was a wonderful intro to running library education sessions. We covered the basics of lesson planning, some public speaking issues, more about user groups, had a guest speaker from a school library, and a number of smaller topics.

Saturday was one of those occasions where I walk out of the room entirely fired up about being a librarian and helping patrons out. Both professors are practicing library instructors, with a wealth of experience to impart to us. 8 hours is a long time to sit still on a Saturday, but they made it worthwhile.

P.S. Does anybody have any tips on surviving a few days without hot water? My good ‘ol landlords have struck again.

P.P.S. My brother has started blogging! He’s still working up a theme for the content, but the site is up: www.DeuceNet.com