Community Library Internship

I began my internship with a meeting with Lee Ricci the director of the Community Library.  I have been "working" at the library for several months as the Preschool Storyteller and am anxious to begin learning all aspects of public librarianship.  I have previous experience working in school libraries and hope my previous experience will enhance my learning here.  In the last two weeks, I have attended a Board of Trustees meeting, a Friends of the Library meeting (I am a member), a workshop on building collaborations between public and school libraries, and working on the PARP (Parents as Reading Partners) program for March.  I have also missed several days due to snow.  Our library closes when schools are closed due to the weather. 

At our first meeting we discussed many of the requirements of the internship, goals and objectives and projects to be completed.  Lee is new to the Community Library and has previously worked as a children's librarian.  We are going to focus on youth services for my internship since my goal is to be a school library specialist.  At our meeting we discussed many ideas and activities for the school breaks, focusing on the February break, providing daily activities for students geared towards the theme of winter.  I will be creating activities to connect the PARP theme Read to Feed during the month of March. I would like to begin connecting the schools character program to the community library creating displays each month that would reinforce the character of the month. We will also begin planning the kickoff for the Summer Reading Program.

Several other areas I will be exploring are learning the Polaris operating system for the library and assisting with collection development of the juvenile non-fiction collection to enhance materials useful for students needing additional resources for school assignments.  I hope to be able to develop some resources that will be useful to our home schooling families and expand on our storytelling times, going to the local Head Start to share stories, poems, finger plays, etc.  I haven't established regular hours yet but will next week.  Many of my hours will be completed during the school breaks as we want to provide activities daily. Right now I am focusing on establishing a routine and organizing requirements for all aspects of the internship and  the 21st Century Leadership Skills Program.