Circ and Serve is the latest blogging project by Mary Carmen Chimato. Mary is the head of access and delivery services at North Carolina State University Libraries. Prior to her current position, she was the head of access services at Stony Brook University’s Health Sciences Library. She received her MLS and MSIS from Drexel University and her BA in history from Stony Brook University. So far she has spent her entire library career in access services and believes it is truly one of the hardest, yet most rewarding places to work in a library. She can be contacted at marychimato AT gmail.com
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Circ and Serve 
is there a feed?
okay, it’s me again, answering my own question. I went to wordpress.com and it says just add /feed/ to the end of any wordpress blog. Cool!
https://circandserve.wordpress.com/feed/
it works!
Just wanted to say thanks for the blog. Being new to Circ and ILL (1 year anniver) I look forward to hearing more about what works and doesn’t work and the major issues. I am still new enough to not even know the major issues.
Joanie
All hail the brave circulation staff-I worked circ in a public library for two years, and while I loved doing Readers Advisory, manning a circ desk for 8 hours on a Saturday can really wear you out!
But until the last print item has left the building, there is no doubt that the Circ/Reserves/ILL staff are the frontline troops. And even if print disappears entirely-which I somehow doubt, at least in this decade-there will be a need for good customer service.
So, from a cataloger working at this same great university, you ARE appreciated, especially by someone who has been there.
See you at the desk-Jennifer
I’m glad to see a Circ blog. Looking forward to what you have to say.
A co-worker sent me the link to your new blog. I think it is great that you are putting your mouth where the money is! Everyone in Access Services needs to know that they are more that just the left-overs in the library. We need to be proud of what we do, or we can’t do it well.
Congrats on your blog. I share your name and just wanted to say hello. I have my name on Google Alert, because as a writer I like to see where my work appears, and I keep getting information about you. I was born in New Jersey. My father’s family is from Anderson, South Carolina…any relatives from there?
They let you do readers’ advisory at the Circ desk of the public library? I am nearly done with my MLIS at SJSU, but the public library where I work certainly does not let circ staff do readers’ advisory in any official capacity (I suppose occasionally we do talk books, movies, music CDs with some of our regular patrons as they circulate said items).
We are supposed to send all reference and readers’ advisory questions to the professional librarians at the Ref desk. Consequently, I probably had better reference skills when I was an oncall, when I worked on the Bookmobile, and when I worked at a branch too small to have a Ref desk (and where the one librarian, the branch manager, was not always there to answer said queries). And some of our Circ staff have Masters’ Degrees — this is a very overeducated sort of college town, with a lot of bright people working the Circ desk down at the public library. Nobody works 8 hours of Circ in one day, though. They have 3-4 hours off desk doing the many support activities.