Day 5: I made it throught the first week!

Well, this was a great first week. This morning though I had to take the stairs to the 4th floor because the elevator was broken. It actually wasn’t that bad. This squat challenge must be doing something for me! There’s supposed to be some rain coming in this weekend from the tropical storm that hit Texas earlier in the week. Hopefully it won’t be too bad because I want to see some sites around the city and get some shopping in because I feel REALLY overdressed when I come to work.

I was invited by the Director of Archives to come to an Opera production called “Grand Night of Singing” and it was absolutely amazing!!! The voices of the singers were definitely grand… the stage presence was EVERYTHING… the music was on point. I am glad that I accepted the invite!

I don’t have much to share today… On to homework I go…

Unbridled Spirit Truth of the day:

Accept the invitation… you just might be surprised at what comes with it!

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by mujerblunt on June 20, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by mujerblunt on June 20, 2015

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Day 4: Looks like you belong here…

Today started out very pretty but then the rain came briefly later… Sarah and I walked to work today. I like her. I don’t know how to describe it… it’s like there’s an unspoken understanding between us. I can tell she’s getting more comfortable around me. I don’t know if it’s the age difference that makes everything easy or what it is but I can see me having a great friend in Cali just like I have friends in Seatle, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and DC. This is a good connection!

Today Judy came into the my area and when she walked in she said “It looks like you belong here… you fit right in!” That made me feel good… I feel like that’s the type of environment I want to work in with all the heads of departments and what not. When I got to work I found Cindy a little frazzled because the update that was supposed to go through last night only did half of it’s job… but don’t system updates always go wrong?? LOL! She finally got her computer straight and then we worked on mines to no success but by the time I came back from lunch it was all working. I worked on a few more authors and then I finally got started on my cataloging project. I will be working on the Samuel Wilson collection. I am not sure who he is but he has a lot of things that he collected and it is now in the hands of the University of Kentucky special collections department. The first thing that I pulled out of the first box I was working on was a book about the Liberty bell and how it was sent to New Orleans. How about that?! Louisiana history in Kentucky!

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Sarah and I met for lunch today and we went to a Korean place that had awesome food but we had to wait a long time for it! Note to self… never go back to that place for lunch!

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There wasn’t a lot that happened today to talk about I just mainly researched a lot of different interesting things. One our way back Sarah mentioned the fact that there were several people who have thought she was a lesbian and I even witnessed a guy calling her sir! We talked about the fact that people are sometimes so ignorant that they assume things that they shouldn’t and don’t’ have enough sense to not let everything they think come out of their mouths. People will always be people I guess…

For dinner we went to this cute little salad and soup place called “Vinaigrette Salad Kitchen”. It was located downtown and the salad was great and I had my first cup of cucumber lemonade.

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I am not back in my room finishing up this blog and getting ready to do more reading of articles for this annotated bibliography that I have to have turned in by midnight on Sunday. Wish me luck folks!

 Unbridled Spirit Truth of the Day:

“The truth is the truth. No matter what others may think or say.”

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by mujerblunt on June 19, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by mujerblunt on June 19, 2015

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Day 3: Getting to know my roommate..

Today was a good day. Less tiring and I actually did a little work. So I woke up this morning and I started wondering about something… when I asked about the dress code I was told to dress for the position that I ultimately want. Well I brought clothes for what I thought was the position that I want but in the positions that I desire to have the people in those positions don’t dress the same way that I do. LOL! Nobody dresses in business casual in the special collections library … everybody is SUPER casual … I have felt over dressed the last couple of days so today I wore jeans with my flats. Does this mean I need to reconsider what position I want in what library?? I don’t know if I am over thinking this or not.

So my Supervisor/Mentor has a lot of health issues. I feel like I need to pray for her. She’s a very nice lady but she worries too much. She was out most of the day today so I didn’t see her until later this evening. We talked my about the Kentucky Writings Project and what my cataloging project will consist of. I am really excited about the Kentucky writes project. This project is something that Cindy is working on to create a database of Kentucky writers with information about them. I am doing the research on the authors to gather the information she needs.

This morning I took a of the Map processing area in the science library where I met the librarian who works there. She’s the cutest little old lady I’ve ever seen. She showed us several different types of maps and explained what they are used for. She even thought enough to take out a map of Louisiana from 1995 to show me the difference in the map then and now. That was really thoughtful of her! I really enjoyed this particular tour. Now maps are basically online and she is trying to get the university to bring students to the library to learn to use paper maps as well as electronic. There was something called “kardex” which is their version of a card catalog for journals and magazines.

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After the map processing tour I was taken across the way to the Fine Arts Library and was given a tour over there. There is a library for almost every department on this campus. My most favorite thing about this library was the book art. There were books on display and they weren’t regular books but they were books used as art. Most awesome thing ever!

I later had lunch with Judy and another faculty member. We went to Jimmy John’s and talked about experience with being on a search committee and the interviewing process for a university and everything concerning that including salary negotiating. It was a great question/answer segment. While walking back to the office I happened upon some black history. So through out the campus there are signs with information about the history of the university. There was a sign labeled “Desegregation of UK” and it had the following spill on it:

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Isn’t that something?! I love reading about black history in other places!

After getting back to the office Cindy was back from the doctor and eating lunch. After she was done she came over to my desk and we talked about everything that I was going to get working on. She invited me to a cataloging problems meeting in the morning that I am of course going to. She left some RDA cataloging information on my desk to read through to refresh my memory and she printed out a few more authors for me to research and tomorrow we will talk about my cataloging project.

After our talk I read a little about RDA and then I started working on the authors. I only got through 1 and a half. I happened upon some more black history… Remember earlier I said that I found the sign about the desegregation of UK?? Well, one of the authors that I was researching today is Doris Wilkinson. She is a native of Lexington and she is awesome based on her bio but the thing that I was the most excited about is the fact that not only is she still a professor at UK but she was also the first African American student to Graduate from UK following the Brown v. Board of education decision, as a member of the historic class of 1954. She graduated three and a half years later. I LOVE it!! I am going to ask Cindy tomorrow if she can set up a way for me to meet this lady! I love history… especially history involving minorities! It empowers me! I really hope that I get a chance to meet this lady!

Tonight Sarah and I had a chance to go actually grab dinner together. We went to Sav’s which is a West African food place. I ordered a baked half of Cornish hen with salad and read tea and she ordered peanut chicken with plantains. Everything was really good. The best part of the evening was getting to know my roommate. I learned tonight that her parents are refuges of Vietnam and she is the youngest of 4. She lost her Mom last year and she’s pretty focused. The guy at the restaurant we went to eat at tonight asked us if we were really good friends and we were like we’ve only known each other for 3 days. lol She is pretty cool and I look forward to getting to know her more this summer. Hopefully this will be a lasting friendship throughout our library careers.

Dinner at Sav's West African Cuisine

Now I am back in the room and I have 2 assignments to work on before I go to sleep… it was a good day….

Unbridled Spirit Truth of the Day:

“History is yet to be made… New leaders are being born everyday. Your mark on the world around you has yet to be made. It’s up to you to make it happen!”

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by mujerblunt on June 18, 2015  •  Permalink
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Walking, Bunnies, Email and Tours…

This morning my roommate and I walked to work. It took us exactly 15 minute using the route that was given to us. We left 30 minutes early just in case we ran into problems but we did good. We actually got to the library 15 minutes early so we went and to get breakfast. One our way, I saw the cutest little bunny rabbit hop across the path! I had never been so close to a rabbit before outside of a petting zoo. I got a smoothie from starbucks (which I need to stop doing) and by the time we were done it was time for us to report to our areas. I went up to the 4th floor to my area where me and Cindy C began to work on getting me set up at my desk. It took about 15 minutes to get my email account set up because the instructions on the wizard were not clear. We made it through most of the steps until we got to the part of the wizard that talked about receiving email… The instructions asked if I wanted to send my UK email to a different address however if I didn’t they could just send it to the UK email host. I was instructed to make a selection but there was only one selection to make which was already selected and that was to have my email forwarded to another account which I did not want to do because both my personal and my school email are out of control! Cindy made several calls but nobody was at their office and one person was at an SLA (Special Libraries Association) meeting in Boston. Finally she got in touch with someone who let her know that I was going to have to forward my emails to a personal address… All that after getting kicked out of the system 2 times! After all of that I finally got set up. Cindy had to leave for a Dr’s appointment and I was told that I was going to take a tour of a storage area in a library that is across from us which also housed the School of Library and Information Science. I was able to see several rare book collections even one that was a Nazi Collection. A large majority of the rare books that are housed in these libraries were donated by people who apparently were really wealthy. I’m so impressed with how well kept a lot of them are.

After the tour I was invited to Meagan (Sarah’s mentor) and the crew for lunch at Qdoba. We all walked over and when we got there someone pointed out a sign that said that today and tomorrow you can get a Mid week Buddy Pass by buddying up with someone and you could get a buy 1 get 1 free deal. Best thing ever because Meagan and I teamed up and she paid for lunch! We all got our orders and came back to the library break room and ate together. After I was done I went back up to my floor to start working on gathering information about the Kentucky Authors that Cindy left for me on my desk. I spent more of my time researching a guy who was from Kentucky and he had his Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees in History and he was also a language interpreter and a lieutenant in the Navy and still had time to write a whole bunch of books and publish several articles. I can tell you now that if the area of research is interesting enough I might get too caught up in the research and miss the deadline. LOL!

At 3:00 I was the meet the internship coordinator with my roommate for a tour the largest library on campus and it is also considered the Main library… William T. Young. It. Is. BEAUTIFUL!!!! We spent 2 hours touring the library! Not only is the library massive but the collection is massive as well. Study areas, reading rooms, staff areas, an auditorium, 5 floors, doors that come down when there is a fire… Quilts by Kentucky native… this library was just awesome! Judy, who was giving us the tour, said that she was working in this library when it was built so she took part in the designing of it. This library is the best library I have ever seen on a college campus… not saying I’ve been to very many colleges but you get what I am saying…

One our way back to King Library, where we are working, we saw couple more bunny rabbits hopping across the walk way… I’m simple… little things make me happy so naturally I turned into this big kid when I saw the rabbits. I followed one to get a picture. Judy said that it is normal to see rabbits hopping around campus. I’ve seen a lot of animals up here that I wouldn’t normally see at home like these rabbits, chipmunks, there are even ground hogs that get killed regularly apparently on the side of the road. This environment is set for vulnerability, abundance, comfort… any time a rabbit can hop freely without being afraid of dying at the paws of some other animal it has to be a super safe environment. It was a good day… I’m tired but it was still a good day. Now it’s time for this class in a bit….

Unbridled Spirit Truth of the Day:

Pay attention to where you are, you never know what blessing might be waiting on you. Some environments are orchestrated in such a way that you get what you want without having to pay for it yourself. It’s ok to have ” every now and then.

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by mujerblunt on June 17, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by mujerblunt on June 17, 2015

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Day 1 – Intros, Tours, Meetings and Hot Browns…

Today was a pretty long day but I made it through. Today I began the first “work day” of my internship. It actually turned out to be more of a meeting all the important folks type of day. I got lost attempting to find somewhere to park to get to the meeting place for 9. Luckily Judy was able to find me and lead me to the right place. Upon parking we walked to King Library on campus where we met up with 2 other librarians and walked over to the temporary eating area (which was a PRETTY NICE temporary eating area). One of the librarians that we met was the woman I would be working with this summer, Cindy C. and the other lady, Meagan, was the person my room mate would be working with. They were really nice ladies… Very welcoming. Cindy bought me a smoothie from Starbucks, and my roommate’s mentor bought her whatever she wanted. We went over to a table and sat down and chatted it up. We discussed what else was happening today and were given choices as to what we wanted to do. Of course me and Sarah wanted to do everything!

Sarah missed her flight yesterday and didn’t get in until after 12:30 AM and so everyone was concerned about her alertness but she did awesome considering she was coming all the way from Cali! That’s a 3 hour fast forward. I wouldn’t have been any good if I was in her situation.

After our “mini-meeting” we went back to King where Meagan started but did not finish a tour of the building with us. We had a lunch date for 11:30 and we had to cut it short. We went to a local place called “Ramsey’s” where we met Sarah’s other mentor. I ordered a yogurt chicken sandwich with broccoli and a drank a glass of water. For dessert I ordered a black bottom banana pie that was GREAT!

We finished up lunch and went back to the library where our tour was finished and I met with Cindy C. She’s a nice lady! She told me that she’s working on attempting to get a database of Kentucky authors together and other history and would like to get that going however if I was interested in cataloging she could give me a project for that. She has tons of ideas but not much execution of those ideas and what she wants to do interests me so I told her I wanted to help her. I was shown where my desk would be and I have a real desk this year! A real area… last year in DC I was stationed at one of the patron computers the whole summer and my mentor was not very social.

Once Cindy C. and I finished talking Sarah was coming up to our floor to go with us to a meeting at the State Library of Kentucky. The meeting was a group of librarians who work together to make the Annual Book Fair happen every year. They were coming together today to look at books by local authors and chose which authors they would like to invite to this year’s book fair. Apparently the book fair isn’t very big compared to the Louisiana book festival. Cindy C. told me that only about 200 people came on last year. I had that many at my Attic Treasures program last year and that’s not even a statewide event. That bothered me on so many levels. Like why would a book fair in the capitol city only have 200 people in attendance… what is outreach like up here and why are there no young people on this committee??

Anyway, Sarah and I helped select authors and then when we were finished with our selections the meeting was over. Afterwards Cindy C. took us on a wonderful tour of the country sides of Frankfort, Kentucky. We saw several horse farms, which I can’t wait to visit, a castle, the state capitol building and I even saw a pretty deer randomly run across a road. Apparently up here that is a norm. Cindy C. even told us that in the evenings in certain parts of Frankfort you can see the deer grazing on the side of the roads on the top of the hills. I bet that is a beautiful sight to behold!

We ate dinner in Frankfort at this placed called, “Gibby’s where I had my first “Hot Brown”…. Why oh Why did I get it?! Not because it was gross but because it was so unhealthily GOOD! It was ssssooooooo Good! So what is a “Hot brown” you ask? It is basically a turkey sandwich with the tomatoes, and bacon on top and then it is drenched in cheese! I really can’t eat those too often or I will be as big as a house when I get home! tonight before I go to sleep I’m definitely getting a workout of some sort in.

I learned a lot today… I learned that my roommate’s Mom died on last year and my roommate graduated from Grad school on Saturday…. I learned that my Supervisor has bad knees, no husband and lives with a sister who goes to a ghost hunter and chiropractor…. I learned that the University of Kentucky is a MASSIVE University that seems to be thriving in more than just basketball!

Unbridled Spirit Truth of the day:

– There is always room to grow… There are no limits. As I have toured the campus of UK there is construction EVERY WHERE… whether it is building new facilities to fill empty spaces or old buildings being torn down and rebuilt … the one thing I can take away from today is that improvement is necessary if you want to be the best.

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by mujerblunt on June 16, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by mujerblunt on June 16, 2015

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