Hello hello, I’m Michelle (or the “new Gabrielle”) and I’m the most recent graduate trainee at All Souls’ Codrington Library.
Despite the enormous, weathered (absolutely amazing!) key I’ve been given –>, I still find myself completely spellbound by this beautiful building and feeling more like a tourist than a staff member. In truth, I’ve found myself here to my complete surprise; being a librarian has always sounded like one of those wonderful fantasy jobs nobody ever gets. Happily proven wrong, I have, for now, two daily jobs to call my own – processing journals that we receive in the post, and documenting books that fellows have borrowed. It’s been a slow but steady start, and later this week I’ll have some time to work (play!) in the book stack, cross-checking shelf marks and shelving order with the assistant librarian following a re-organisation that was done before my time.
On the way here, I studied English Literature and History at Aberystwyth. I then decided I’d rather read medieval French and went onto an MA in Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol. Afterwards, I spent a few months volunteering in a number of museums and archives in Bristol and London and a summer “stockpiling sunlight” before the start of the traineeship. There is something special about being surrounded by bound volumes though, so the inevitable vitamin D withdrawal seems like a small concession. I’m really looking forward to doing as much cataloguing as I’m allowed and racking my brain for any and all excuses to go up to the gallery of the Great Library.
