The Ship's Library

(Excerpts from the Ship's Librarian)
I’ve been working long hours keeping the Library open from 10:00am to at least 10:30 pm. I have been able to hire 2 cadets to help me run things, giving me a chance for additional breaks without closing. The Library patrons consist mainly of pleasure readers and of study groups using the navigation table books that we provide to determine where we are and where we’re going. Even though these tables are on the PCs in the Library, they want to use the books! I don’t have many electronic resources since we have no internet, just some specialized digital sources the land library was able to load on the ship library’s network. The rest is done with books. Remember those? It’s like doing reference in the early 90’s. Reference questions have been minimal, but steady. I do everything here; reference, readers advisory, circulation, cataloging, ...

Another duty of mine is as the ship’s Audio Visual person showing 2 movies a night in the Cadet Lounge next to the Library where they can relax after a day’s work. A new video system with a 52” flat screen TV and surround sound was installed days before we left. We have about 350 mostly current DVDs to choose from and the programming is left up to me. The hardest thing is keeping the running times of the 2 films to about 3 ½ hours so I can close as close to 10:30 pm as possible. I also run the occasional educational film for classes held during the day.