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June 7, 2005
My first class at Reading Public Library
I was nervous. It's true. And I'm sure for those of you who know me, it's hard to believe. Freakish even.
The first time I taught a class as an O-fficial librarian, I was teaching kids at Watertown Public Library about building web pages and playing with news aggregators. It was definitely a different crowd, and there's a different style to take with the ferret-like attention span of a tween actually choosing to take a class and learn something on their own time, and not because they have to. There was some concern on my part to see if I could hold their attention, but not too much.
Last night, I taught my first class at Reading Public Library, in my first real official position as a real librarian. As corny as it sounds, I was overwhelmed by the love of it all, of being able to do so much of the librarian stuff I'd been looking forward to. I had prepared my handout and my notes like I was giving an oral dissertation, even though I had planned my classes so that I could give a really easy one first, just to get my feet wet.
It was a small class, 3 people (the lab only seats 6 individuals, 12 people if you double up), on the entirely unsexy subject of using the library catalog. Everyone was impressed by the handout (I'm such a cheese whiz about that kinda stuff), and very pleased at how I'd tailored the class to everyone's questions and needs, making it flexible enough for everyone to learn as much as they can.
Best of all, I had *fun*. Teaching patrons how to use the library catalog was almost like giving away trade secrets (even though I know full well that it's not). One patron was thrilled with being able to search for items in her native language of French using the *advanced* features, another was happy to know that she could receive her hold notifications in email, and the third was impressed with the power a PIN for a library account can offer a patron in mastering their library item fate. No one got frustrated, everyone worked through their mistakes and got right back on track. And I got to pimp the library like nobody's business.
I've got 3 other classes on tap for this month, one on using the internet to research and plan vacations (or just be an armchair tourist), one on job hunting online, and one on how to get your own free email and use it. My plan is to take Jessamyn's presentation style sheet, make my handouts into HTML presentations which can be nicely printed out, and put them on the library web site. That way, people in the classes can follow along on screen, and patrons who can't or don't want to come to the classes can use them as tutorials at their leisure. These presentations will be the seed content for a sort of "community continuing education" section of the site, where I can list classes at other places nearby, and point to useful online education resources.
So yeah, I'm loving the teaching part of my job, way more than I anticipated.
June 7, 2005 10:31 AM