Thursday, March 1, 2012

Busy Times

Last week was a busy busy week. I had my first solo reference desk shift, as well as one day of filming! My first reference shift went really well. I had a few standard “do you have scissors” questions, but otherwise, real research questions! Initially it was nerve-wracking, but as I was able to successfully help the students, it became less so.  All in all it was pretty exciting, and really nice to be able to concretely help someone else. Since then I’ve had some tough questions, but I am trying my best, asking for help when needed, and taking it question by question.
Filming on Monday afternoon was good.  Unfortunately, we only got three first-years to participate. Nevertheless, three is better than zero, and if nothing else, it was good practice and offered some important insights into what does and does not work. New filming is scheduled to occur on Friday March 2—this time students are being asked to e-mail ahead of time if they’d like to participate. Hopefully, fingers crossed, this will work! If not, it’s back to the drawing board J
I’ve also been working on re-evaluating the children’s book collection with Sunni and Meggan. Meggan and I have made a big excel spreadsheet in order to examine the amount of use the collection has had over the years. Usually Excel and I have an antagonistic relationship; however, I am finding I actually enjoy examining this data. It must be the subject!
Fun facts: here are ten of the most highly used children’s materials here in Musselman Library:

Title
Author
Total Check-outs
Internal Use
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
J.K. Rowling
45
9
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
J.K. Rowling
36
1
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
J.K. Rowling
33
27
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
J.K. Rowling
31
2
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
J.K. Rowling
29
27
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
J.K. Rowling
27
32
The Giver
Lois Lowry
27
1
The Magician’s Nephew
C.S. Lewis
25
0
My world of fairy tales : stories from Grimm, Perrault, and Andersen
Jane Carruth
24
2
The Butterfly Night of Old Brown Bear
Nicolas van Pallandt
23
5


That’s all for now!
Molly

2 comments:

  1. We certainly like our data here in the library. I'm glad to hear that the data analysis is proving to be interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 45 checkouts! I'd be curious to see what shape it's in now. That's a lot of readers for one book.

    ReplyDelete