Brentwood Library Internship Week Two

This was the day where I first observed the Monday story times. In these events, the librarians start off with an opening song, and then they progress to reading a picture book. Then there will usually be two or three more books and songs until the librarian moves onto a craft or snack.  The story times generally have a theme and they must have one of the Racing to Read qualities. The Racing to Read program is a program to get children more excited about read and has qualities like loving books, telling stories and learning letters.  This was a rather unique day because there was a terrible storm that caused the lights to go out in the library.   

             

   On Wednesday, I was able to attend a staff meeting. In this staff meeting, they discussed what they called reconsideration. This is when someone sends in a complaint about one of the items in the library, and then someone has to review it again. The woman in charge of this brought in some complaint sheets and passed them around, so I was able to see some of the complaints that people had about certain items. Most of the complaints were overruled. Next, the staff discussed building onto the library. The plan is to gather people’s stories to get possible donators emotionally attached to the library, so they will donate money. Lastly, the main maintenance man for the library system came in to talk about the air conditioning and heating problems in the Brentwood Library. For the rest of the time that day, I worked on story time plan. I set up in the back office and began researching themes, songs, books and crafts.

             

   Thursday was a very quiet day, so I dedicated all of my time to my story time plan. My supervisor, Charity, introduced me to something called Toddler Tubs. These are large, plastic tubs that have books and games inside to a certain theme.  These are pre-made story times that are kept in case someone who had been scheduled to perform a story time cannot do it. In this situation, one of the other librarians would get one of the Toddler Tubs out and use that for a story time.