Opening preparations, NC room, archive storage project, patron research

Friday, March 2
9:00 am -2:00 pm

5 hours
Total hours to date: 43

I started off today by helping Nicole with her routine activities to prepare the library for opening. I helped check in and shelve books from the book drop, place books on reserve as requested by branch libraries, retrieved supplies from supply closet, replenished supply of tax forms and documents, etc. Then, I helped Gale in the NC room. I shelved and filed materials from the previous day. Next, I started documenting and labeling some archived materials that Gale has been meaning to catalog for a while. The project was started in 2009 but has been on the back burner. She has several items that have been donated that need to be documented and cataloged so it can be decided what to do with these items. One of the items was an account/ledger book that was from a grocer in the area around 1910-1916. There is also a first edition of the book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. These items need to be properly stored and categorized, so I will be working on getting this project underway and then instructing one of the NC Room's regular volunteers on how to properly document and record the details of these items so the work can be continued even after I am no longer serving as an intern.

One of my most enjoyable experiences today was helping a gentleman do some of his genealogical research. He came into the library as soon as it opened, eager to research a particular question he had about some of his family history research. I showed him how he could use census data to determine parents' names, children, verify birthdates, etc. His research would have been easy and convenient on a computer, but he doesn't have a computer at home, so he comes to the library. Although the NC room had some materials that helped him, I do wish the library had access to ancestry.com because he could have found essentially the same information, but with images of the actual census documents. Also, I feel like the search would have been faster and easier. However, at this library, there are no computers in the NC room that are internet-capable, and the computers available in the main lobby are sluggish. Of course, I did not express any of these opinions to the patron; instead, we used the resources available in the NC room and I feel like we were successful in finding documentation of what he was searching for. His ancestors have been in the Burke County area for at least 100 years, so the NC room is a great resource for him.