When the researcher does her own research

The nature of a librarian is to research….mainly for other people.

However there comes times in life when the librarian has to research for herself.

Or if you’re me, your Dad family all the time ocassionaly asks you to research things tvs, triathalon training, good books, for them. And you obey, because, it is in your nature 🙂

Then there comes the time in your life where, if you’re like me, you want to start a family of your own!

Yep, a baby on the way!

And research takes on a WHOLE new meaning!

Being surrounded daily by top notch databases, a PLN full of other knowledgeable librarians, books, and a computer at your fingertips! It’s a great thing! An amazing, very fortunate field to be in!

Yet the tables are turned, when I walk in the door at home (yes, I’m human, I work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and blog on my off time), and sit down to my own laptop and attempt to find the best of the best (with the huz’s help) for my child in the way of books, products, etc.

There comes a time when the reseracher needs to take off her research hat for just a minute, and know that not everything needs to be researched. That children are unpredictable and no matter how much research goes into finding “the best” bouncy seat or swing – hey, guess what, the baby may not care and may not like it lol.

Have your tables been turned? Have you had to take off your research hat when it comes to researching things in your non-work life? How do you turn off your librarian nature? Or do you not?

Tax season memories

I got to talking with a twitter buddy of mine the other day about this and got my brain to thinking, which transferred into blogging!

I know I know, we’re in the midst of tax season – and if you work in a public library, things are in full swing, restocking forms, making appointments for our free tax assistance services , answering (directional) questions, not advising patrons on what to fill out, where, and when because frankly, we aren’t cpas 🙂

However, memories are formed everyday!

Sidebar: I just read that my baby (25 weeks pregnant today) – starts establishing memories at 30 weeks in the womb! A shame they don’t remember enough to tell us when they come out huh. But I digress…

My favorite memory thus far:

Finally receiving our 1040 instruction booklets! Do you have any idea how happy this has made so many people who stop by the reference desk and/or call the reference desk, with wary in their voice, preparing to cringe / gasp / rejoice 🙂

Y’all know I love a good mail call! Working in ILL, everyday can be like Christmas, and during tax season, that is quadrupled with the constant incoming tax forms!

Best memory to-date. More to come I’m sure.

Wait, is it April yet haha!

The time I talked for an hour and a half straight

Yes, I said it, and I NEVER thought that I would be one to talk (think: lecture) for an HOUR and a HALF! IN ONE SITTING! What! That’s like a whole college / grad school class period! That is LONGER than a high school class period!

Needless to say, I was um kind of impressed! And I owe it to the awesome students in my Introduction to the Internet class yesterday!

I haven’t taught this class in a while so I spent a few days earlier in the week brushing up on the power point presentation and prepping how I would toggle between the different screens (firefox vs IE, blogs, news websites, etc.). And I swear in going over it all, in my head, at my lil desk, it did NOT take an hour and a half – this is the FULL time alloted for both the class AND the practice exercises. Gyah!

And, I got to thinking that maybe I was a motor mouth or the students weren’t as inquisitive the last time I taught the class, but it did not take that long and actually timed out rather well with a good 30 minutes for them to work on the ‘Internet Scavenger Hunt’ that we had prepared. This time they had to practice a bit after the class was over and I reiterated that they can call or set up a one-on-one appointment with our reference librarians if they have additional questions as they are going through the exercises.

At any rate, the students were great – it was a FULL class! 22 total I think! Which is sweet considering we have 24 computers! And they were so gracious with their questions and encouraging words at the end, coming up to me to tell me how much they learned and appreciated my teaching! Wow! THAT is why I went into this field – I swear it is the most rewarding field EVER!

So next time I’m teaching Introduction to Twitter – I made the presentation in power point myself  – first time since grad school- 33 slides (yesterday’s class was 29 slides) – so maybe we’ll allot 2 hours just in case / depending on the turnout? Oh AND I’m teaching Introduction to Email on February 11 a couple weeks before my Twitter class.

Shew, between tax season, classes, and collection development, this librarian is on her toes! And lovin’ it!

 

It’s still tax season right?

That was a joke – of COURSE it is still tax season – and we’re still getting questions about where the forms are, and we’re getting more and more forms in everyday, but still not everything yet.

But this past Tuesday, January 18, tax season really went into full swing at my library! Why, you ask? Well, my library offers AARP and VITA tax assistance to our patrons – for FREE! It is a wonderful service and I think that our patrons are super lucky that we offer it – and they know it, and they sure do appreciate it as well!

But with this lovely service, comes an outpouring of phone calls to set up appointments for the two agencies. And the fearless reference librarians (yes, we are fearless, I said it), are taking phone calls and signing people up in person in our little ‘Tax Appointments’ binder (hmm I should get a picture of this) 🙂

I’ll admit, Tuesday was c-razy, with a capital C! We made so many appointments – and made so many patrons happy, it was great! The rest of the week was pretty steady – or maybe I’m just used to the flow – but I know that Tuesday night I came home and fell asleep at 9:15pm! (and I’m not blaming it on the pregnancy, it truly was a chaotic but productive and fulfilling day) 🙂

Does your library provide free tax assistance to your patrons? Do you make the appointments or is it all done online or through an automated service?

 

A few tax sign pics, oh and some snow!

After my post this morning I quickly stuffed my camera into my bag to take some much needed pics of our set up, and of the snow today!

Thankfully, everyone who could, made it in to work safe and sound. Our reference department all made it in- booyah!! It was a quiet day aside from the phone ringing off the hook because we started registration for our computer classes this morning – at 9am — we didn’t open until 11 – and two of our classes plus alternates totally filled up by the end of the day – which was 4p today! Patron-wise, we had a few come in, use the computers, and check out a few books, but pretty much a ghost town. The weather is looking to get icy / sleety / and a lil more snow overnight, so we’ll see what tomorrow holds!

Here is the “bread crumb with your eyes” trail o’ tax signs and tacked on to the end – snow pics! 🙂

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

ps- loading pics / slideshows is TOTALLY easy on wordpress! WOW! I love it!

The time it snowed in TN

I thought moving from NY to TN I would encounter less snow. However, having been here for a year, moving in the snow, having my first weekend of work canceled due to snow, everything icing over, and then having a flood in May (fortunately both work, home, and the huz and I made it through just fine), I have been seriously proven wrong.

Mother nature is at it again and brought us several inches of snow again last night. Again, fortunate that our home is nice and warm, and that work is moving along, despite a delayed opening and an early closing.

So if you’re out there in this snow (and soon to be ice I’m sure), please drive safely – and if you use mass transit – hey, more power to ya! Fortunately (at 5 months pregnant) I do not have to drive in this and my amazing coworker is picking me up and taking me home today. Shew!

Despite going to undergrad in PA and graduate school in NY, I am not accustomed to driving in snow, I can do it, but I don’t like it one bit.

Stay warm and safe out there fellow librarians!

Tax signs revisited

Funny enough, the day I posted about our tax signs, we ended up doing some shuffling around since the placement of the one sign was a bit too large for its spot. We since moved that one closer to the door to the department, and created what I like to call, a bread crumb trail for the eyes. The big black and white sign is now as you enter the department with an arrow pointing right, which leads your eyes to the top right of a shelf with another arrow and a smaller sign that says ‘tax forms’, which leads your eye to yet another same sign on the far left of the shelf behind it, pointing directly to the tax forms shelf, where a red framed sign says ‘tax forms’. Maybe I’ll start a tally of how many times I get asked where the tax forms are – you know, now that we have the new layout 🙂 Plus, librarians love stats right! 🙂

Pictures would be helpful in this post huh! I’ll have to remedy that 🙂 Stay tuned!
https://stacksleuth.wordpress.com/page/2/
stacksleuth.wordpress.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-26
50077
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:NQYIE76UVND76HBZFLB6TMJXA7ODPAIK
<urn:uuid:b09f8901-b441-4fce-9aae-0ef0008b1186>
2017-06-23T08:26:04Z
192.0.78.13
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:SKW7PC6KVC627UAJDPZR553LF5Q4YX5N
<urn:uuid:56ba1ec3-d680-4a00-875f-15c4cfb50ad8>
https://stacksleuth.wordpress.com/page/2/
length
response
<urn:uuid:ba585091-4a46-40d6-a0c3-cc1a4fa3bf25>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-183-66-206.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-26
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf