CORY CASTOE

I don’t believe there are any behaviors that I observed in my interaction that I would adopt into my own career path. My perception of the employee was that my question and my needs were not important to her, or at least not important enough to exercise the least amount of effort required. While I recognize that there could be outside influences preventing her from offering better service, I hope to make every patron feel as if my only role is to satisfy their reference needs. Furthermore, I observed that the employee did little more than search the library's OPAC. If she did further research than this, then she did not make me aware of it. I will use this behavioral example in my career to remind me to explain what I’m doing while I am helping patrons search for their information; as well as allowing them access to my monitor throughout the process, thereby allowing them to verify that I am using every resource available to me.

— LIS 5513 Information sources and services

reference librarian interview

march 2020

This reflection came from an assignment where we were to “interview” a reference librarian, asking them for information on a topic that interested us. Throughout this exercise, Goal 1 was consistently reiterated, as one responsibility of a children’s/ young adult librarian is to provide undivided attention to each patron, giving them a sense of community and engagement in the library, which meets Objective 3.