Hello! My name is Laura and I am a graduate trainee at the law library, along with Rhiannon! I graduated in June from the University of St. Andrews, where I studied Theology and Biblical Studies, which I enjoyed very much!
While I was a student librarian in my school, and spent quite a lot of time studying in the King James Library in St Andrews, I didn’t have any experience of working as a member of staff in an academic library before starting the traineeship. So, there has been a lot of new information and it has been interesting to see what happens behind the scenes in a library that you may not be aware of as a reader. I decided to do the traineeship to find out if librarianship was something I would like to do long term and, so far, Oxford has been the perfect place to start thinking about it!
I’m based in Information Resources in the Law Library, so Rhiannon and I do slightly different tasks on a daily basis. I do a lot of book and serials processing, labelling, shelving, creating the new journal display and spend time on the desk. I am excited to learn a lot more over the next few months, in particular, further information on cataloguing, how the Oxford libraries all work together with the BSF, and the reclassification of certain books in the Law Library into the Moys classification system.
I’m really looking forward to this year in Oxford, it seems like a lovely city (almost as pretty as St Andrews!), with so much to see and do! Everyone in the Law Library has been so welcoming and helpful and it has been great to get to know some of the other trainees during training sessions and by visiting colleges and other libraries together on the way back from training and during our lunch times!
