As With All Good Things...

There is an end. Sometimes things come about when you least expect them. My time here in the LCCC library is coming to a close. The economic situation our nation faces and the extreme budget cuts has resulted in the closing of my position. I have had a great time and learned a lot from this experience. I will take it with me where ever I go.

To My Poor Neglected Blog...

Sorry Blog that I have been away for so long. It was never my intention to neglect you, but here I am and now I am going to update you and bring you up to speed.

September-October

Since the mold out break we had a company come in and do a massive clean up. Not sure if it is gone for good, but it is gone for now. The company managed to shuffle the entire collection so the shelves have been in a mess, This took some work and thanks to some volunteer time from Sarah White we have got it mainly back in order.

November

This was a sad time. Our beloved Ms. Vickie moved to North Carolina. She will be severely missed!!! Now starts the search for a new Reference Librarian. Wish us Luck!!!



The Game Night was a big success!! We had a pretty large turnout with plenty of consoles to go round. There was Guitar Hero, Rockband, DDR, Halo, etc. My favorite game and the one that took up most of my attention was a computer game called Spore. I loved it!!! There was pizza, sodas, and brownies all the necessary fuel for a night full of gaming. The students and everyone else who game had a lot of fun.

December

There was only six days and other than the survey and late-nights, not a lot happened.

January

The new semester brought about a lot of changes. Do to the economic state of Florida and the rest of the country there have been some major budget cuts. Our library has been cut to the bare minimum and all of our part time employees were let go, with the exception of myself. These are scary times, hopefully things won't get worse.

In addition to this I started a new semester in school and an internship. My classes are Information Organization, Management of Information Collections, and the Internship. My Internship is broken down into 3 concentrations that teach me areas of the library I have yet to be a part of. This includes Cataloging, Collection Development, and Library Construction and Development. It has been very interesting.

And now we are up to speed. February has just began and we shall see what developes next. Until next time!!!

Beware the SPORE!!!

Oh no!! A nasty learning experience has reared its ugly head....well more like silently crept, spread, or oozed its way around. We have had a mold outbreak in the collection. It was dicovered when Mrs. Vickie found a book in her office that had been covered in mold. While she was explaining to me about how it should be contained quickly to prevent spread we discovered more in some of the back rooms growing on books stored there. We brought our search out of the back rooms and began combing the collection located outside the door for any further signs of spread.

Sure enough there were many books located along the bottom 2 shelves of the stacks that contained mold on their covers. These were primarily older books with cloth covers. After spending some time in among the moldy books, taking down the call numbers, I was left with some sinus pressure, congestion, and a bit of a cough. Nothing serious I hope, just a reaction to being around it. I should be fine later in the day.

To protect the students I marked of the infected area with some caution tape we had stored away. I tend to find humor in everything and the idea of creating a "crime scene" in a library made me laugh. We put a sign up front letting students know about the outbreak and warned them if they had allergies they might want to use the learning lab instead.

Here are some pics:

Things I have learned about this type of situation are:

1. This is actually very serious. It affects not only the books, but the students as well. It should be taken care of a quickly as possible.

2. When something like this happens there are several ways to handle it. It can be expensive and sometime this expense determines the level of care the situation will recieve.

3. Vacuuming the books is one attempt at solving the problem. The other is to remove the affected book from the collection and destroy it. The rest can go through the cleaning process and hopefully the situation is contained.

The containment of ALL the spores seems like a daunting task, but the removal of the books most likely to be affected would help keep spread levels down. A final thought I had about the subject had to do with the future and the new library. This is something that needs to be taken care of before the collection is transfered to the new library. How do you go about this? Do you comb the collection after the outbreak and remove all books that have the possibility of spreading it to the new building? Is this plausible or is this always a constant battle with a paper collection. This thought leads into another and that is who would want a completely digital collection?

Not so Final Thoughts on the LCCC Library

I am back at the Library at Lake City Community College.  I could not be more excited about it.  After a brief stint in New York City I have returned home to learn more about the career I have chosen. 

New York as quite an adventure.  I learned a lot about the differences between giant libraries like the ones in New York and the smaller ones like the library at LCCC.  I went up to New York with the aspirations to work in one of the libraries at either NYU or the NYPL.  When I went to the library at NYU I could not even enter, unless I was a student there.  I could not speak to anyone either so I turned my attentions to the NYPL.  This was equally fruitless.  I began by searching their website trying to locate an office or someone I could speak to about what steps I should take to gain employment.  They had an internet application process with many positions available.  I posted my resume and applied for several different positions I qualified for.  I never heard anything back.  I finally started to notice where my applications were being reviewed and turned down.  This was all I could find out.  No information as to what I needed for the job.  Eventually I managed to make contact with someone who worked in the field and found out that where I was at, I was either overqualified or under-qualified for all positions.  There was no way to know when I would be eligible.  

Seven months had passed by this point and I needed to be involved with a library to further my education.  I began to think about options and decided the best option would be to go back to Lake City, back to Lake City Community College, and back to the library.  In short: HOME.  Whoever said you can't go back made a mistake. :) 

Final Thoughts on the Library at LCCC

I have been very pleased with my time at the LCCC Library. I have grown very close to the staff and the campus has always felt like home from the time I was a student here and worked with the Student Government. Working in the library has helped me develop into a better librarian. I can help people locate the information they are looking for, I understand how to locate the materials both physically in the library and those online. In addition, I have learned a little about collection development and about the funtion of the library to the student and how to plan a new library around them.

After this experience, I feel this library is a wonderful thing for the student body. It goes far beyond the role as a collection of information. This library is completely student oriented and the event that put on by the library are fun and bring the students together. It provides food, drinks, and candy that make studying more enjoyable...or at least not as miserable. :P

If I were going to change anything, it would be to bring parts of the library up to date. Wireless internet and study rooms are highly needed to make this a top notch library. Fortunately for the students this is in the works and this combined with this great staff will provide a superior resource for this campus.

Again, I would like to state how much I enjoyed this experience. It was a comfortable place to work and one I will never forget.

Kudos to Domino's Pizza

The Late Night Study Group at the LCCC Library would like to thank Walter Guy, Manager of Domino’s Pizza, for delivering the most delicious, SIZZLING HOT pizza, at an incredible price! Many of the students contributed what they could afford, but Walter chipped in the most, and fed about 40 students who were studying for tests, completing papers, taking tests online, and faxing information to their instructors.
In the past, the library and student activities have offered free pizza during gaming events, Late Nights, and other library events. This year, though, that is not possible, so we are very appreciative of Domino’s generosity.

We encourage LCCC students to continue giving Domino’s your business!

Late Nights at the Library

Tonight is one of the Late Nights at the Library. The semester is beginning to wind down and finals are on the way. Students are beginning to realize that the work is not going to do itself and there is a limited time to get it all done. We at the library understand this and we work hard to keep the panic at bay. So we open our doors for longer and have provided some brain food: Chocolate and Caffeine (nothing green for us thanks) !!!