Week 8 was the first day of working two days a week on this PFE. This week starts session 2 of this PFE. I now work from noon to 8 pm on one day and 9 am to 5 pm on the other. I took one week off. I should have asked if we could continue with the PFE while we were technically not in class, but it worked out for the best. I cleaned up my ePortfolio, prepping it for my next journal installments, updating where needed, and reorganizing areas that were not noticed during the grading period. I received an email from my PFE library notifying staff that the day before Thanksgiving they will be closing early. This changed my schedule for baking for Thanksgiving and working at my PFE. No one truly wanted to eat my pie anyways:)

Once I identify an item, I make a notation in column A marking the item either FL (Figurative Language Name), Word Family, Letter Sounds (?), Cumulative Story (new category), Wordless (new category), Other (for fun finds); examples of other topics are non-physical disabilities, ASD - Autism Spectrum Disorder, Song, Song with Music, Book with Recipes, Made up Language, Poetry Styles, and Morse Code. The evaluating, identifying, and organizing items into the search criteria is going well. I have an Excel spreadsheet with many labeled sheets. My plan for the other sheet is to search for them using keywords to make sure they are easy for patrons to locate which fall in line with Goal 1 Foundation: 1.4 Graduate explains the principles involved in organization of recorded knowledge and information. Also, some of the items in the other group are already tagged with a label/tag but do not have that sticker on it; one example is the Superhero tag. After noting or tagging the item I copy and paste the item onto another sheet with the matching criteria. This allows me to create the desired lists as I work.

I have timed myself to see if I can complete this project in the 90 hours of this PFE in two different ways. I first used a stopwatch to time how long it takes me to pick up the item, scan the barcode to locate the item within my excel spreadsheet, evaluate the item, label the item either no or with correct marking, then copy and paste item into correct list. It takes me 1.25 hours to complete one shelf. I also observed the number of shelves I completed each day, which is 4. Both calculations grant me enough time to complete this project within the 90 hours.

While working with a laptop and a shelf of books I realized that I could scan the barcode into the Excel spreadsheet. I was punching in the last 8 numbers of the barcode to find the item I had in my hand. By scanning the barcode, I was able to complete 4.25 shelves each day, an increase of 25% faster than before. This is a major improvement during this time sensitive project. The project is moving forward. I love reading books within this collection, well, I love reading the first few pages of the books. This collection has many different titles than my local library. The diversity between the two collections is fun to see. It makes this project refreshing. Some books I get pulled into then feel guilty of taking the time to read them.

I made sure to take pictures to demonstrate evidence of my Goal 2.1 progress. Along with the above pictures of the projects Excel spreadsheet with added sheets labeled with the projects criteria. Here are examples of items selected for symbolism, puns/idioms, onomatopoeia and Book with Recipe which help achieve Goal 2 Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning: 2.1 Graduate locate, retrieve, evaluates, and synthesize information from diverse sources to meet information needs.

I plan on checking the return carts at the start of each PFE day. Because I do not have to keep the items in order, I can take a stack of 5 or 6 items, scan and access them then make another pile of completed work. It is amazing how small changes can save time and increase productivity. After I returned from lunch and opened my project's excel spreadsheet, I noticed that none of my morning work was saved. I thought about emailing the project to me, which I do after every shift, but decided not to email the project for this lunch break. I worked for an hour to figure out how to recover the project back to the time I left for lunch. My recovery worked. I wonder if this has happened before, and I did not notice.