winter part 1- library books

this mini-series is about my life as a student, in which i attempt to leave PCC and move on to PSU. firstly:
who likes libraries?! i do!!


(here's a video of me peforming one of my songs for the first time at my own birthday party (and no, we didn't practice). it's about library books. and it's called "library books". and let me tell you, it's a hit, and one very cool moment in my life was meeting john r. from half-handed cloud when we played with them, and having him say "what's that one song..." and sing part of the chorus of this song to me... haha)

i've been working at the PCC library since i started school there in fall '04. it's my first and only real job i've ever had. at the beginning it was kind of scary cuz i had to help patrons at the circulation desk, and check out books to them, and i was really shy about it. i got more comfortable with it after a little while, and now it's just normal to me and is totally easy. in the beginning i also did normal stuff like shelving books, and shelf reading (ugh), and lots of random jobs).

by spring 05 i was helping out with the Summit books processing. (we share books with 30 other academic libraries in oregon and washington, like psu, u of o, seattle pacific, etc.) and that was pretty cool, i got to work in the back more, and it was less hectic than helping patrons out front. basically there's two parts, 1) (our books) we send out PCC books to patrons at other libraries, which they read and eventually (hopefully) send back to us, and then, 2) (other books) our PCC staff and students can put items on hold from other libraries, they are sent to PCC from the other libraries, and eventually we send them back.

it's so awesome, it means that PCC patrons (PCC is a pretty small library comparatively- even though we have 3 campuses) can have access to way more materials than we have at our own libraries. and it's not just books, they send videos, dvds, cassettes, LPs, microfichs, periodicals, cds, laserdiscs, (PCC just got rid of our collection, maybe we still have a player though).

so it's a really helpful thing for students and staff, and i love libraries in general. i've enjoyed being able to see cool books that come in from other places, and check out books i've needed from other libraries. it's also just been fun and interesting to work with books, and learn about how library holds work. i've mainly just been doing Summit processing, because i'm the main Summit person right now, and i have been for over two years. my boss, who is totally awesome, is in charge of me, and PCC Summit, but i'm the one who does the majority of the dirty work- i've also had 2 other helpers, and we just trained a replacement for me (sniff sniff, i'm going to miss my job). sometimes i help with library displays and do other random things.

it has been a great job, i've had to grow up a lot from it, learn how to deal with lots of different people (coworkers, pcc staff and students, angry patrons, etc.) and sometimes i've had to do stuff i didn't really want to do (it builds character, haha). anyways, it's a little sad because at this point i'm leaving and i know my job really well, and i know the PCC collection pretty well. libraries are complicated, there are always missing books, books that are in the wrong place, and books that have wrong labels, or that have something wrong with their records in the computer.

a lot of what i've liked about the job is figuring out little problems, and for some weird reason, i love looking for missing books. libraries intend to be really ordered, but they are pretty chaotic most of the time. haha. if only they had a full time staff position for me, it would be really cool. i love highlighting hold slips, and using the date stamper, and recycling as much paper as possible. what's super cool is that PCC has been ordering local musician's CDs. there's a lot of cool music, and having cds by alan singley and please step out of the vehicule, the snuggle ups, etc, is so exciting!!

if i get work study- i hope i do!!- i can work at the PSU library. my boss talked to someone there, and they said i could work there. i've never actually been to their library, but i know it's huge (6 stories) and at PCC we have 8 circulation staff people, and they have like 45 staff members, so it has to be a lot bigger. and also they have about 75 student workers. i'm not sure how many we have, but like 20-30? anyways, so yeah, i think it would be cool to work there. pcc is so small, i've learned a lot about different parts of the library (i sort of know how to do some of everything), but at PSU they'd probably just send me to go shelve books for a few hours, i don't know. even if i help with Summit, i'm sure it'll be way different. they send out so much more than PCC does. but i'm sure it would still be fun, and maybe i'll make friends with other library nerds? and all i have to do is learn about the library of congress shelving system (cuz PCC still uses dewey decimal) haha.