Director and Administrative Staff

It took my a while this morning to get through this due to a password problem, I visited HR, Stephanie, and IT.
While I was in Stephanie's office, I asked her about the autographed poster. She took it off of the wall and showed me that it was autographed by Mary Badham who played "Scout" in the movie, To Kill a Mocking Bird, with Gregory Peck. The book was chosen a few years ago as a county-wide read, On The Same Page. Ms. Badham made an appearance and signed some posters, Stephanie received one of them.

Materials Management

Their office is across from ours and I sort of knew what they did, but now I have a better idea.
I have used the home page numerous times to locate a book through Marina and have clicked through "Find a book and more" and "suggest a title" to suggest ordering the Murder She Wrote Series, a documentary, and an Italian cookbook I had seen on the Martha Stewart Show.

External Relations

This was interesting to see how a program progresses from inception to production. I have met these people, but I didn't know what they did.

Payroll Room

I visited the Payroll "room". Tony made it fun to watch with his golfing. Because I have been using the electronic timecard for over a year now, this was nothing new, but it was interesting.

Deputy Director

I was in the Deputy Director's "room". I learned about federal and state laws, as well as confidentiality and how it effects our library system. There are 7 boards members who can serve 2 consecutive 5 year terms, they are: Kathleen Campanella, Todd Herring, Gilda Hogan, Keir Knight, Nancy Lynch, Richard Soisson, and Joyce Muller. I work in the outreach department and there are 13 staff members and 5 substitutes. I have met all of them, so I spoke with Kim Smithson who works in HR. She is telecommuting today. She helps new employees wade through the masses of paperwork. Handicapped services are available to anyone who meets the criterier for disabilities, these might be vision, hearing, or learning disabilities. Challenges to library materials, one such book was "A Girl's Survival Guide to Sex", apparently a teacher and several parents were concerned about the content of the book and that it is readily available to children under 12 in the children's section. It is located in the children's section even though some of the content is very explicit. It was decided that it should remain in the children's section because that was where it was designated by the Library of Congress and the Assoc. of Libraries.
(Personal note: I looked through this book myself, wanting to see what the hub-bub was about. It went into explicit detail about topics that I never would have talked to my child about or allowed them to view even as teenagers, such as: oral, anal, and homosexual encounters. My own feeling was that it was inappropriate for children.)
Risk takers network - are ideals that are suggested that are "thinking outside of the box". In other words, suggesting, or implementing ideas that aren't traditional, but might work better in the library system. I remember one idea at one time was to have a "drive-up" window, like a bank, to pick up requested material.

Orientation Board

I transferred to the Bookmobile in the middle of July, and I am now beginning the Orientation Board.

Summarizing

This journey was interesting in that I learned that I wasn't as computer stupid as I thought I was. Now I can at least carry on a conversation about technology and know a little bit about what is being discussed.