As I begin my second to last week at NTK, the weight of leaving definitely began to feel much heavier, but so did the need to end my time here with completed projects. With a tour on Monday, several meetings, and the introduction of a couple small, new projects, I was actually overwhelmed for the first time in a few months. This was not because I didn’t feel like I could accomplish these tasks (which was much more the case when I was feeling this overwhelmed back when I first arrived) but because the thought of completing these tasks meant that my time here is truly coming to an end.
Monday I spent only a few hours at work, due to my family being in town, but, that time was spent doing something I had never done before: giving a tour. A group of librarians from Dresden, Germany joined us at NTK and I was tasked with a colleague to provide one of the two tours. I am not a confident speaker (in my opinion) and I definitely was not confident in my ability to speak at length about the library, as I have a very limited understanding in comparison to others, but I knew this was also an important task for me to complete. Being able to speak to a group confidently about a topic that interests you is so important when it comes to preparing for almost any career I may have in the future. With almost two full days of preparation and a great colleague by my side, I think it went pretty well, and I was even capable of talking to some of the librarians following both of the tours. I then spent the rest of the day with my family before they left for Italy the following day.
Wednesday started with a meeting on our CRM project that led to several other meetings for the day that would slightly change my tasks for the final days of my internship. Due to one of my focuses on this project, I have been working with the resources available for users at NTK. As a final project, I was tasked with using the open source tool Moodle to create a guide to using reference resources at NTK. This came off as a daunting task, but I was really recruited to bring some order to the idea. Once I actually got into the task, I realized the most daunting part was the time including all the information will take, which is why I will not be finishing the project. I am creating the idea of order, providing the introduction to each section (broken up by TYPES of reference resources), a list of resources available at NTK that need to be included, a template for the information needed on each resources, and an example from each section. Once this is approved, the task will be passed on and the tool will be available for continued updating once I am gone. It is hoped that the resource will be helpful for staff members that provide consultations to users that may need a better understanding of all the types of resources available at NTK.
My Wednesday ended with a trip to the National Gallery with several colleagues to take in “The End of the Golden Years” exhibit. It was nice to see how the gallery had set up this exhibit and quite easy to follow along with. I learned about artists I had only heard the names of before and was interested in learning about the Austrian art scene I previously knew nothing about.
Aside from these tasks, I spent most of my time tying up ends on my other projects and trying frantically to finish reading some of the works I want to finish before my return to the United States. I did things like make final updates to the Space Use Project (for its full implementation in the next semester) and reading Havel’s memoir to get a better understanding of modern Czech politics, at least from a former president’s perspective.
The week ended saying goodbye to another colleague. One of the things I didn’t think I would ever learn here was how pregnant women are treated in the workplace in the Czech Republic. Honestly, it’s not something I really needed to know, but it definitely provides an interesting understanding to the work culture. This information came due to the fact that we have a few women in our department that are pregnant. Friday we said goodbye to one before she took off for her maternity leave (up to 3 years in the Czech Republic). It was a relaxing farewell with baked goods, conversations, and laughter (even if I know I didn’t understand everything being said). There were some gifts and, earlier in the day, a colleague and I had told her about how baby showers function in the U.S. Trust me, I’d take the farewell party over a baby shower any day.
Raven K 