It has been two weeks since I attended the day-long institutes at Denton for INFO 5000 and INFO 5600, and one month since I attended training for working the reference desk at Southern Methodist University’s Fondren Library.
Today is my first day on the reference desk without a librarian behind me to answer questions or to guide my responses. What on earth am I going to do when I get my first question?
I never realized how much knowledge is necessary for becoming a librarian. Where things are. WHO people are. Who to ask for specific information, and to whom to refer specific questions. It’s been a long time since I had to reorient myself to a new job and a new field of study.
I learn more every day, and my assignments for INFO 5200 are particularly helpful as I navigate the ref desk and help people find information in the library. But every answer leads me to another question; as I refer a question to the Digital Collections librarians, I want to learn more about what they do and how they accomplish it.
I am setting a goal for myself to learn more about the varieties of jobs here at Fondren Library and beyond. While I am glad to see that we have assignments in INFO 5000 that will facilitate this, I will go beyond to meet people within the departments and learn about how they fit within the broader community here at SMU.
Photograph of Fondren Library at Southern Methodist University taken by Joanna Russell Bliss.
1 Comment
Learning as a librarian: Looking forward while looking back – JRB librarian · July 22, 2021 at 8:41 pm
[…] I think back to the beginning of my internship and this graduate program, I remember being terrified at how much I had to learn in order to do […]
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