Well, today presented an interesting situation at the library. Once I got there in the morning, I noticed some of the library workers doing stuff with all of our boxes of new books, and asked what was going on and if I could be of any help. They said they were sorting the boxes by class (call number), which we have done three times now, in order to choose a handful of books to be added to the collection, and the rest being put back in boxes and into storage, as there is not enough room on the shelves for all of them! I thought about it for awhile, and then decided to gently suggest that perhaps we should go through the older books on the shelves now and put some of the older ones in storage, making room for the new books. Margaret, the head clerk, explained that the new books are being saved for the new library. This I would understand if I had any faith that the new library is actually going to be finished anytime soon. As I see it, it could be months or even another year before that library is ready to be used. So, I tried to reason that we should not put things off for the new library, and that we should go ahead and do what we can in our current space. Lobogang said she thought my idea was a good one and that I should run it by Max.

So...I did, later that morning after he had gotten back from a meeting. He told me that all the books should be shelved, that there was no use waiting for the new building, and that there was plenty of room on the shelves. "Yay" I thought. I couldn't stand to see all these new books we just processed be put back in the trailer, it was so nonsensical.

But of course now I feel that I may have ruffled the feathers of a few of the library workers. It's very hard here to communicate with the staff about their vision, or what they want for the library, and yet I'm supposed to be here being innovative and modeling "best practices." I don't want to override any of the library workers styles or quickly dismiss the way they do things...but it's hard to collaborate, and I'm not being given much direction or support.

Dr. Totolo is coming later this week with feedback on my proposed ideas for the internship, and hopefully we can have a discussion with Max about what I should be spending my time on.