shadowing with jerry

so i spent two hours shadowing jerry (same one from last month) yesterday. i came a bit early so i took over a reference question as heather (another dual degree student) was leaving the desk. jerry let me take some reference questions (the easier ones) and i let him handle the harder ones. it was fun; we talked further about coursework and future changes to the reference desk. they're planning on consolidating the 3 reference desks from floors 1, 6, and 9 into just the first floor reference desk. i told him i was going to visit the NYAM next thursday (really exciting news for me) and write up a paper about it so i will share that with him.

as usual, it's "refer, refer, refer." and on top of that, think of the patrons' time. we had one patron come in and turns out she was only visiting so jerry told me to just fastrack it to the answer. in this case, it's the exception to the teaching rule. another query was for encyclopedia britannica and jerry just simply led her to the section, rather than showing her how to look it up online. it looked like she was in a hurry, but he still managed to turn it into a learning experience by explaining that there are other encyclopedias in the same area. we got a lot of patrons asking about the term paper clinic, which was a small initiative that really took off. jerry showed me one of the emails he gets from the automated system. there are even directions on how to get to the person's office! people don't read! i suggested they put up signs, but jerry just reminded me that people dont read. haha...

one thing i did notice was that jerry knew certain patrons by name because either they come often or they're in his field of specialty. like carol, he does spend time talking with the faculty and finding out what they need in the collection. he told me collection development is a large part of what he does on a daily basis.

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on a side note, i realized i was applying what i learned at the reference desk to help my amazing, wonderful, best friend in the whole universe friend, danielle, find information about strange attractors a few weeks ago. i myself have not looked at dynamical systems in a long time (since calculus 114). so i was digging up information and helping her understand it at the same time. i wonder how much of that was my being a "librarian" and my being a "teacher" because as a librarian, you don't interpret the information that you help the patron locate. you are essentially the vehicle through which they can find what they need. where do you draw the line?