This was a short week at work, due to some holidays that allowed for a long weekend. Still, the early portions of my weeks are often the busiest, which allows me to do more cultural things throughout the end of the week. I had three conversation courses this week along with reading up on current political situations in the Czech Republic (my historical theme of the week) and working on building on the Space Use project I’ve been working on. In our mini training this week, we had a lovely discussion about the craziness of scientific publishing, open access, and the difficulties that all libraries face in trying to provide information for users (especially in the academic setting).
I met with two of my three regular conversation groups this week and got to sit down with some of the Turkish interns for a bit. I enjoy getting to sit down with my first group on Mondays because all the guys have such interesting lives (though they are often the ones that are hardest to get into a group because of their busy lives). My other group was mismatched from my second Monday group and my Tuesday group (who did not meet this week). They seemed much more comfortable talking with one another, which is nice, because I often have an issue with the men in those groups talking at all. Then, our Turkish interns asked if I’d sit down with them. One of their goals is to improve their English speaking skills while they are here (as they understand the language quite well). This led to a different approach in our “conversation”. They were working on sentence structure this week, so they were asking me questions so I could answer them. Of course, they need to work on speaking too, so any question they asked, I made them answer as well. It was actually kind of fun and we learned a little bit more about each other.
With the hope for the Space Use Project to expand and the knowledge that two of the three on our team will be gone by the end of the summer, this week was spent creating materials for later expansion and bringing in new helpers. Tuesday my colleague and I sat down with the Turkish interns to bring them onto the project as observers. They then shadowed us on our last few observations of the week so that they can begin doing observations themselves. While we have only begun doing this on two of the six floors of the library, it was suggested we begin creating the materials for the other floors as well. I finished creating the materials for three of the remaining four floors and updating the workflow document. The final floor is going to take a little more collaboration. Still, this step allows for the original group to create all documents with the same ideas in mind, but then allows for the expansion of the project and the bringing in of new colleagues to be done in a more consistent way when the library is prepared to move on with it.
Raven K 