This week I had the opportunity to help pick up the slack when my mentor went on vacation and another staff member ended up having some personal emergencies. Fortunately, I was issued a key and expanded my work hours slightly so that I could staff the reading room that would other wise have had to close early. The quiet of the summer term meant that I wasn’t thrown in over my head, but it did leave me time to reflect on the challenges of staffing in a small shop.

I kept in close contact with the various staff members working in near by offices and I am happy to say, they kept an eye on me! I made sure to provide daily updates to my mentor and the other staff via email and fortunately, I had plenty to do: moving forward on my projects.

The roofing project demanded that we continue to patrol the floor, making sure that our collections remained safe from dust, debris, and water–a challenge, since we had a couple of days of thunderstorms!