Saturday, June 14, 2014

Library Books Read-A-Thon Day 6: Volunteering at the Library

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Welcome to Day 6 of the Library Book Read-A-Thon. This week is just flying by.
Here's how far I am in City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare. I'm going to pick up another couple of books this morning. This readathon couldn't have came at a better time. I'm hoping to read about 150 pages a day this weekend. That would put me at 440 in City of Heavenly Fire by Sunday night. I think I can do it. 

Today I'm here to talk about being a library volunteer: my experience. I know a lot of bloggers that are librarians and I think that would be an awesome job to have someday. My dream is still to be a teacher. After two weeks of Kinder Camp I can't wait for that dream to come true.
While I'm waiting to finish college, I have been volunteering at the public library in my college town. I first started volunteering at the library in November. I started out tracing and cutting paper for craft projects. We made a lot of different craft projects. The nice part about this is that it wasn't a hard job at all. I was stressed out from school constantly. College students I bet you could relate. I was just going crazy with all the stress, but every Wednesday I would drive down to the library and watch the stress float away. I would stop thinking about college and just work with the other volunteer that came at the same time. We would talk and laugh and continue to get those art projects together. Second semester things changed a little bit. The other person I volunteered with starting coming on Mondays so she would get the craft project ready with her time there. I still came on Wednesdays so there wasn't as much for me to do. I often shelved books. I loved learning how to shelve books and I have to admit I enjoy shelving books. Shelf reading wasn't my favorite, though (checking to see that the books were in order). I worked in the children's section so books were rarely if ever in the right place. I also had more free time second semester and I decided to spend it at the library. Thursday at 3:45 were program day. I helped out with one of programs each month and that was the Science Time program. One month we built boats out of random objects, and another one I helped at was weather related. I also helped at craft day once in a while.We made a bunny balloon for Easter (except you aren't allowed to call it Easter). I had so much fun getting to know those kids. We also had an end of the year carnival which was a lot of fun. The great thing about volunteering is that it is flexible unlike most jobs. If I couldn't make it one week, then I would just email Joyce, the lady I volunteered for, and she would say okay see you next week or tomorrow depending on the week and what was going on Thursday. Literally my volunteer experience at the library is what I looked forward all week, so I didn't cancel often and my friends knew how much I enjoyed the library and were very supportive. The sad news is that Joyce ended up moving to a different library in May so when I come back next fall I will have to meet a new person to volunteer for. I hope she is as nice as Joyce. I won't be getting a job the Fall Semester and maybe this is a weird reason, but I go home most weekends during the Fall Semester to watch my hometown college play volleyball and a job would get in the way of my driving time too much so my parents have agreed that I can find a job second semester if my course load isn't too much. Since I won't be working again, I'm excited to go back to volunteering.

Let me know have you ever volunteered at a library and did you enjoy the experience? 

Update your progress below. If you are using a different post for each day link up below. If you are using the same post for the whole week you should already be on the list. I'm going to use the same linky list for the entire week. Come back tomorrow as I talk about Purchase Sugggestions.

4 comments:

  1. That is great that you volunteer! I am always excited when someone wants to volunteer and we tend to give them the same jobs as you do, the paper cutting and if they are comfortable with it-shelf reading and shelving. It really helps to have those extra volunteers and it frees us up to do planning, ordering, reference work, and all the other thousands of tasks we do each week. We actually do use the holiday names at programs and I always specify when we are doing Halloween, Easter, Christmas, 4th of July-Independence Day, etc. crafts so that if someone is uncomfortable they can skip it (This usually applies to Halloween, since I am in the Bible Belt). We focus more on the commercial aspect of the holiday though to make sure we really don't make someone uncomfortable religiously. I started out as a high school summer volunteer, so I know that volunteer connection is also important in finding and training future full time librarians. My volunteer time helped lead me to decide to become a librarian. Maybe a page position or part-time job will open up at your library and you could work there!

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    1. I would love to work at the library. I enjoy it so much. Because this library works with the Headstart program they are not allowed to say they actually holidays, but we do celebrate the more commercial aspect. I think it would be fun to be a librarian at some point in my life, but for now I want to be a teacher.

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  2. I've always wanted to volunteer at the library, but I've always been to chicken to actually do it.

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    1. Go in and ask. It is the most fun you will ever have.

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