Life is more exciting when you work with other people

This week is my week to work during the day at the library. Hooray for dinner at home! Hooray for going to bed before midnight!

And hooray for interaction with co-workers!

Things I have learned since Monday:

• Mergent Online (business database) is releasing a new version of their database starting in January, with all sorts of cool new features. We had our representative from Mergent come to teach us about the new site, so I also learned more about using Mergent in general and (frequent reference question topic that I had no clue about) that there are two kinds of bonds: corporate and municipal.
• I will be working with 138 first year students who are in a pilot program as a result of the SACS review and our college's new QEP (quality enhancement plan). Basically, the program is exploring ways to help our students become better speakers and writers during their four years here. One way they are doing that is by offering special resources and programs, first to a small group of students and eventually (the italics are important) to all. With the pilot students, they are tying in QEP programs with their English and History required courses this semester, and I am going to get to do three workshops with them over the course of the semester! I'm very excited to work with a group over the whole semester and hopefully get them to become regular library users.
• I'm also going to get to work with a task group for the consortium we are a part of on designing online tutorials that can be used at all consortium schools. (OK, I knew about this last week, but our group had a conference call to get started, so I know a little more about what we'll be doing.)
• Our online catalog is getting a facelift (actually via a project from the consortium) that will make it more user-friendly!

It's kind of amazing what working at the same time as everyone else can teach you.