The Mysteries of Secret Shopping and Student Training!

In 2011 the Reference Department at the Glenn Hubert Library (HL), Biscayne Bay Campus, Florida International University (FIU) moved to a joint ser-vice desk with the circulation desk. Shortly after the move reference librarians became concerned with the misinformation that the circulation department’s work-study students sometimes provided to patrons. As a result, we felt a Secret Shopping program would be a good method to evaluate the information provided. Furthermore, it was seen as a method of improving customer service and com-paring the self-perceptions of service to patrons’ perceptions.

Grey Slate

GREY SLATE is a collection of poems that focuses on the natural world in order to explore the mysteries of life with the intent to create a meditation on what it means to be a human being interacting with this world. Inspired by John Keats’ theory of Negative Capability, GREY SLATE does not seek to explain, but to dwell in the mysteries it explores. The poems are tied together through similar images or ideas in order to mimic the way the mind works as it jumps from thought to thought. GREY SLATE also mixes different types of poems: from haiku to sonnet to paradelle, and from lyric to narrative to prose poem. GREY SLATE hopes to inspire readers to take a break from searching for truths and indulge in the beautiful mystery that is life with no need for answers.

Hallelujah Shoes

HALLELUJAH SHOES is a collection of poems, many grounded in the landscape and vernacular of rural and coastal North Florida, and steeped in a sense of place, loss, and the difficulties and mysteries of the human condition. Written mainly in free verse, the collection also contains poems written in traditional and nontraditional forms: abecedarian, haiku, sonnet, noun, and theatrical play. Section one is dominated by the narrator’s relationships with family and culture—their demands, dramas, and allures—and the conflict they create with the narrator’s desire for autonomy. Section two focuses on the narrator as she makes her own way in the world, exercising independence yet still subject to the emotional undertow of childhood experiences. Section three locates the narrator in the present, back in Florida after many years away, with knowledge of the transience of life, but taking joy where she can find it.