The first day of our internship was a very much anticipated day, not only for me but for my classmates as well. For each notification of our OJT group on Facebook, I was at the edge of my seat, waiting for that one announcement that I have been waiting for. It was a week after our LIS181 orientation when a new notification for our Facebook group popped up on my phone. Finally, it was about to begin: our journey as librarians in-training.
June 15, 2017 - THURSDAY
We were asked to arrive at the UP Main Library Conference Hall by 9AM. Being the overly-excited person that I am, I have already prepped myself an hour and a half before the expected time even though it would only take me 30 minutes to arrive at the library. Everyone was at their finest outfits as we were also required to be in our formal wear for the orientation. For me, this is one of the biggest adjustments I had to make. I have never been comfortable wearing long pants and dress shirts no matter what the occasion is. I am most comfortable wearing my usual shorts and t-shirt but I do know that as we begin to embark on our professional journey, we all have sacrifices to make.
Everyone was already present before 9AM, I guess no one wanted to be late and leave a negative impression on our facilitator. While waiting, the class had laughs discussing different matters under the sun. It was nearly an hour of waiting and we thought our facilitator had somehow forgotten us when she arrived.
Mrs. Annelyn Lim is our OJT Facilitator, she has been taking this position for many semesters now. I can see how knowledgeable she is about the situation of interns as she was able to answer questions I have not even asked out loud. We were reading the syllabus, the guidelines, our schedule ad most importantly, our groups. This is an integral part of an intern's experience as this can decide whether your experience would be enjoyable or not. It was a good thing that I knew almost all of my classmates in the internship so it really did not bother me whoever my groupmates would be. But regardless, I was even happier to find out that my groupmates would be Edward, who I have been a consistent classmate for many semesters now and Tricia, who also fulfilled her NSTP requirement in the same public library as mine. I wasn't too excited though when I found out that our first section would be the one dreaded by most librarians: cataloging.
It's no secret that I am not good at cataloging. During my cataloging classes, I remember getting very confused of all the different conventions and how each has its own scheme a librarian should be familiar with. Now that we are the first group to undergo cataloging, I will admit that I was quite tensed. After our orientation, we were given the time to have our lunchbreak and come back 1PM to our respective sections.
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After a meal which none of us really enjoyed because we were too scared, we separated ways as our group headed to the cataloging section. It was what I expected the cataloging section to look like: gloomy. After we logged in and had our cards signed, Ma'am Annie provided a quick lecture on cataloging or as I would like to call it: a crash course of LIS61. We were taught about the RDA, MARC21 and the little things that the UP catalogers do that is quite different from convention. She summed up RDA into one simple sentence: "What you see is what you get" which means the information you will supply is exactly what is found on the resource. For MARC21, she had taught us about the identifiers of each tag and when you should use them. For every lecture she gives about a specific topic, a quiz would then follow to test our knowledge on the matter. I can say that I did okay on the quiz but I have also learned a lot. Ma'am Annie's crash course utilized the entire four hours of our first afternoon shift. Although it was not a waste because I was able to remember the things I have learned from descriptive cataloging a few semesters ago.
We bid farewell to each other as I headed home with excitement for my first full shift the following day.
- Sam, That New Librarian
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