Looking forward to week 2 and beyond

So, as we head into the second week, I thought I'd type up a bit of what will be coming and what I'm looking forward to, to organize my thoughts.

But first, something from the first week I forgot about in my last post. The changes I'm making to the catalog are going live as I'm making them. Which is really been an interesting part of the experience, to see the work that I'm doing being presented to the public. This stuff I'm doing is having areal impact on how people will find these resources.

Anyway, looking forward. Next week my supervisor is out, so she's set up some time with various other departments/sections of the department next week. So I'll be seeing the documents department, the conservation lab, and the physical processing group. She's also gone the first couple days of the week after so I'll be sitting in with someone from the serials cataloging group. All this while continuing my work on the Wilkinson bicycle collection - monographs, especially trade publications and those with electronic versions.

Looking even farther forward, I'm starting to formulate my learning goals and those are reflected in what I'm doing this summer. The foremost is getting practical experience in cataloging. This has so far been mostly copy cataloging, but over time will include some upgrading of records and probably some original cataloging. This will also give me greater exposure to subject cataloging and the LC classification system. I'll also be doing some authority work. So, all those will be very valuable and as I have time I'll be getting exposure to a variety of other types of cataloging and library work. Many of these were covered in the last paragraph, but I've also talked to my supervisor briefly about getting some exposure to the more patron-interactive portions of library work such as the reference desk.

Lots going on in this short summer internship, which is great and I've already found it very informative and it has been reinforcing a lot of what I learned in 531. And it's been helping me understand some other aspects of how the library works. For example, I always had some trouble remembering how LC call numbers were ordered. But now that I've worked with them a bit from the assignment side the ordering system makes more sense and is easier for me to remember.