Day 10:Reference

I have discovered the one weakness with this blog software, if you read the posts from the home page, you are never seeing an entire blog and you also don’t see the feature picture at the top change. CLICK ON EACH DAY INDIVIDUALLY!

Today started off with a department meeting. Alan Johnson was pointing out that an upcoming objective included doing the “right” stuff. If anyone could come up with a better word for “right,” he was open to it. I thought it hilarious that he had no trouble with the word “stuff.” Then, he made sure we knew that he was aware he was quoting lyrics from a New Kids on the Block song. Somebody in the front row suddenly sang, “Oooh, Oooh, Oooh, Ooooooh, oh.” After the meeting, I approached Jay and asked, “Jay, was that you singing the ohs?” He said “Yeah, and I know. That was Hanging Tough, not The Right Stuff.” I said, OK, just wanted to make sure that you knew.

I worked the reference desk from 9:30 until noon with Michael Landon. It is impossible to be bored around that man. We talked about my upcoming capstone project and when I explained it, he showed me several examples of what NOT to do. Which is always a good way to learn. He also helped me with some of my genealogical research. So nice. If you think you might have European Mormon Pioneer Ancestry, or know someone else who might, go to BYU’s site Mormon Migration. It has ship manifests, voyage accounts, all kinds of things. Larry Skidmore taught me about it. Oh, yeah. Michael and I helped patrons, too. The main reading/reference room has beautiful floor to ceiling windows down one entire wall. Here is the view from those windows.

View from main reading room onto Main St. and and North Temple St.

After lunch, I continued checking reference and archival sources for a chapter of the book Brittany Chapman is editing. I used the open stacks for about 45 minutes and then was in the closed reading room studying microfilm of digitized archival collections for the rest of the day. Let’s just say that next week when I begin processing a collection, I will be happy to be touching actual paper, again. However, it gave me great pleasure to help Brittany with this task and I gained good experience in fact checking and using the catalog. Here is the view from the closed reading room.

View from the closed reading room, looking through the lobby and out to the street.

I knew reference work was really going to put me out of my element. It was challenging to try and learn how to use a new library and help others to use it all in the same week. And, while I really wasn’t able to help much, I learned about the processes of phone, e-mail, and in-house reference and I was humbled by how much the different librarians that I shadowed all week tried to help me and by how knowledgeable they truly are.

By the way, happy V-Mail Stationery Anniversary (1942), today! More Archiventures next week!