Performance Review

Date: 10.27

Time: 10:00am-6pm

Today in the library I had my intern review with my District and Supervising Librarian. We recapped what I learned when it came to reference, outreach, and circulation. I got positive feedback from each of my managers and they were happy I was there—no negative feedback from either the staff or the patrons. The staff commented that they were happy to have me there and that I provided good energy for the team, which honestly felt reassuring to hear since you never really know how you're coming across when you're new. Given that I've only been there for a couple of months, there wasn't much they flagged for improvement. One area I know I can work on is properly weeding books using the CREW method. So far I've been doing pretty well, but there are still moments where I hesitate on borderline cases, books that technically meet the criteria for withdrawal but feel like they might still have an audience. It's one of those skills that probably just comes with more experience and a better sense of what actually circulates in this specific community.

Busy day on reference today as I had over 14 patrons within 2 hours of working. Most of the help was finding books, navigating the DVD section, and pulling up videos for a patron who was looking for a specific movie. The DVD section can get messy fast since people don't always return things to the right spot, so half the time you're hunting through adjacent shelves to find what they need. We're very lucky at our library to have nice, welcoming patrons. Seldom are there any issues, and as of now there's only 1 person who's banned for some obscene behavior—apparently it was bad enough that staff still reference it as a cautionary tale.

The rest of the day was working on a project that involves developing an outreach plan for the age group of my choice. I'm currently figuring out which age, what service, and how to structure the event. I have about a week to finish it and then I have to recommend a service the library doesn't currently have. I'm leaning toward either something for teens, since that demographic seems underserved in a lot of libraries, or maybe early literacy programming for toddlers and their caregivers. The challenge is coming up with something feasible that doesn't require a massive budget or staffing commitment but still fills a real gap in what the community needs.