I’m the Evening Technical and Public Services Librarian at the Miller Library at Keystone College, a private, co~educational college in La Plume, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1868, Keystone College was the first institution of higher learning in Northeast Pennsylvania.
I’ve worked here for about 4 months now and I really do enjoy it. The staff is small, only 6 people, so there are a lot of opportunities to spread our wings and be creative with providing services for our students. Right now my major projects involve getting our students connected with us through Facebook and Twitter.
I think the biggest stumbling block may be advertising. Even though we have a board with our Twitter ID and Facebook address on them, I don’t think the students are paying that much attention to it. We’re hoping, at some point, to start providing reference service to our students through those services. I think it’d be an awesome way to help students on days when the library is closed due to inclement weather. Is your library on Facebook or Twitter? How did you get your students, faculty and staff engaged?
Another fun project that I’m working on is creating custom 404 Error pages for the library. I got the idea from Stephen Abram who suggested customized 404 Error pages as a way of redirecting the lost back to the library. Does your library have a cool 404 Error page?
One of the cool things about our library is that we don’t just provide services for the students, but we provide services for the general public as well. In conjunction with the Lackawanna County Library System, we provide books, movies, music, etc for members of the general public. There are several little people aka children who come in with their parents on a regular basis and they like telling me about the books they’ve read or the movies they’ve seen. I love seeing their little faces light up.
Highlight of the Day: A student came up to the desk and asked if we schedule one~on~one tours of the library for students, I told her that I didn’t know the “official” answer to that question but I’d be more than happy to show her around. So after her tutoring session, I took her on a walk thru of the library and showed her where everything’s located, how to use the online catalog (OPAC), printers, etc. As we were walking she told me that she was just returning to school after a long absence and was a little nervous about the modern updates in the library. I told her about my own encounter with the library when I was a returning student and explained to her that we are here to help. The student smiled, thanked me and told me that she’s glad she met me because I made her feel more comfortable with the library. I found out at the end of our conversation that she is the niece of a former co~worker of mine. Such a small world!
Lesson: Sometimes it’s OK to step outside of your “official” job responsibilities because you never know what may be going on an individual’s life and how a kind word or a good deed can help ease their fears. What lesson did you learn today?
The Library Day in the Life Project is hosted by Bobbi at Librarian by Day. For more information about the jobs of librarians and the way that libraries impact your communities, please check out the Library Day in the Life on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.
I will not be blogging for Library Day in the Life for the rest of the week but I will be posting on Flickr and Twitter.