Day 8 - March 15, 2007

THURSDAY -- I did not get to the Children's Room today until 5:30pm. I missed the train that could get me there on time. There were last minute invoices and reimbursements I had to process and I did not leave the firm until 4:15pm.

When I got to the Children's Room, almost everyone was there: Theresa, Halla, Cecil, and Arpine. They were preparing for an event the library was hosting, Family Night for Headstarters. It was an event organized for pre-schoolers where parents and their children sign up for new library cards. It was storytelling to start with, then some arts and crafts the families can work on together. After arts and crafts, food was provided. Tonight it was pizza, punch and cookies.

I thought that Theresa would ask me to help out with the event, even just to haul pitchers of punch or give out pizza plates, however, she told me that my job tonight was to help Miss Daisy at the reference desk. I wondered if Theresa asked that I help with the reference desk because Thursdays are normally slow nights but then I want to think that I was asked to sit with Ms. Daisy because they think I am capable of doing it. I was also charged with waiting for Pizza Boy and pay him.

The Children's Room was packed with the Headstart kids and their parents and it became quite a circus when they started serving the food. The delightful smell of freshly baked pizza was wafting towards the reference desk. I had to stop myself from closing my eyes and sniff the aroma. It took a lot of effort concentrating on this boy's question about "The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins." To distract myself from the pangs of hunger, I walked about the stacks to look for the book that was supposed to be in the library. I found it in the back room in one of the shelving carts. The boy was quite delighted about my find.

There was also a girl in 4th grade that needed a biography on any famous woman. She did not know who she wanted to write about, all she knew was that she only had 10 days to write it so she needs a book with more pictures than words. In the beginning she wanted a book on Queen Elizabeth and I asked you want QEI or QEII and she stared at me like "what the heck are you talking about 1 or 2?" So I changed the question to: "you want dead or alive?" :o) Either way she did not want Good Queen Bess or QEII. She saw the book and there were too many words. In the end, I gave her this picture book of Sacagawea and just so she has a second choice, one of Eleanor Roosevelt...both with equal amounts of pictures and words :o)

While the food was steadily being devoured, I had to help the same girl find information about the Washoe Indians. The children's library does not have a book on this tribe in the collection so I gave her a reference book on Native American that contains information on the Washoes and instructed her and her mother to make photocopies. They were hesitant to make the trek to the copy machine and said they will just get information from the internet. I gave them the spiel about not everything on the internet is credible so that her teacher might not accept what they find as a resource. Well, that made them dash to the copier. When they came back, I had the official website address of the Washoe Tribe written on a piece of paper. The mother was quite grateful. As a budding librarian, I felt that young kids and their parents need to know that although one can find everything on the internet, one has to always make sure that the information is credible. That's what librarians are for...right?

I have to say that my 13-14 hour days are really tiring. I'm usually tired and hungry by the time I get to the Children's Room. I have to start bringing a banana or a muffin and eat that during my short breaks so I don't drool whenever I catch a whiff of food in the library. Despite my exhaustion with my 13-14 hour workdays, I don't mind doing this internship at all. I like the people I work with and I find that I like working with children What really made my night tonight is that I got a "pat on the back" from Theresa tonight. She thanked me for a job well done and that she is grateful to have someone like me willing to jump in when they asked for something.