If anyone’s wondering about the sort of work the trainees get up to during their year in Oxford, below are the summaries of the talks we gave at the Showcase. Slides from the presentations can be found on Slideshare. Due to technical issues, Clare Hunter’s presentation has been uploaded as a separate file.
reader services
So what do you actually do as an Archives Assistant?
…and now for a quick word from the 23rd successive Archives Assistant at the Oxford University Archives, or ‘what I actually do and why I love it’!
When people ask me what I enjoy most about my work, I’m prone to say – just like my predecessors, I imagine – that it’s the view from my desk:
I say that mostly because it’s the sort of thing that’s easy to explain in a casual conversation, plus there’s an element of surprise (‘oh, so you’re not hiding away from the world in a basement somewhere?’) But in reality, what I enjoy the most about being an archives trainee with the University Archives is something very much related to the archiving trade itself: it is how well I can get to know the collections. A year isn’t a long time when faced with over 3km of records, and yet I feel that, half way through my time here, I have a fairly good grasp on our holdings.
This has come naturally as a result of my day-to-day duties. One of my main responsibilities is responding to enquiries. Questions range from fairly straight-forward queries about past students to quite complex ones about the University procedures, practices and endeavours. In order to provide answers, I have to carry out research which can take anything between five minutes and a good few hours spread over several days. This has given me the chance to familiarise myself with our holdings and, as a bonus, I’ve picked up some very in-depth knowledge about sometimes very minute details of the University’s history.
My other main duty is processing readers’ requests, which is yet another gateway to the collections for me: when a new reader’s request comes in, I get to delve into the catalogues and locations lists to find the desired item. This gives me the chance to find out what this particular collection is comprised of, how it’s stored, and what format it’s in – which can be anything from strips of parchment protected by an archival box to thick leather-bound volumes, to microfilm and even digital formats.
As I then usually have to bring the document(s) over to the reading rooms in the Weston Library, it also means I get to know the weight of each item quite well!
Finally, creating posts for our Twitter account (@OUArchives) is an excuse to explore those parts of the collections which are less ‘in demand’ and show them off to people who might never otherwise come in contact with the Archives.
This combination of diverse duties has allowed me to feel like I know the collections rather well by now. This is something that gives me quite a lot of satisfaction. In fact, one of the reasons this career appeals to me is how archivists often have a seemingly supernatural ability to answer questions about very obscure particulars of one tiny aspect of human history. (I’m definitely not there yet – but, perhaps, one day…)
In addition to all that, my Wednesday afternoons are usually taken up with varied training sessions (which the Bodleian Staff Development organises for our cohort) and I also attend a palaeography class on Mondays. As you can see, I have been learning a lot, and I am definitely looking forward to the second half of my traineeship here. Stay tuned for more updates!
A Day in the Life….English Faculty Library 03.02.15
8:45am – Lock my bike up and let myself into the library, the library doesn’t open until 9 but the staff all come in a little earlier to open up properly.
8:50am – Banking! Every day I reconcile the float and put the till out.
9:00am – Another daily duty – I check the lapse list and pull items off our hold shelf to go back to the BSF, scanning them through Aleph and packing them into crates.
9:30am – I am responsible for the first reader count of the day (fortunately for me it is usually the smallest count!)
9:32am – If I have any important emails (I rarely have important emails) I will probably start responding to them at this point. Today I used this time to process some DVDs and check in journals on ALEPH.
10:15am – Today I also covered a box in craft paper…. the EFL are preparing to launch a ‘love your library’ competition to celebrate National Libraries Day. The box will be for competition entries. Sometimes you end up doing things you don’t really expect a librarian would do!
10:30am – COFFEE TIME. The EFL is usually well stocked with biscuits, nothing but one sad stale jam doughnut from last week knocking about today. Tragedy. I made do with a vegan fruit bar thing. It wasn’t the same.
11:00am – Back to work time! I spent a bit of time looking at the EFL Twitter and Facebook pages to see how our National Libraries Day posts are faring. I also packaged up some books to send back to their correct libraries – almost every day we get at least one college book returned to us, usually cleverly hidden within a pile of our books. I’m still unsure as to whether this is a deliberate ploy by the students (I mean they are a clever bunch) or if they are just a tad forgetful at times. Either way it gives me an excuse to stretch my legs and say hi to the porters.
11:30am – Stack requests! I knew I was forgetting something…. I head down to fetch up our delivery of books requested from the BSF. Two crates today which is pretty standard for the EFL. Some libraries get far more! I scan the books through ALEPH and arrange them on the BSF requests shelf in alphabetical order.
12:00pm – Lunch time…. I ate a very depressing salad which was pretty wilted. I brought this from home though so do not take it as a reflection of the trainee experience! I decided to go for a walk as it has been snowing lately (so it looks pretty outside) and I thought I’d make myself useful by popping to Tesco in town to replenish the biscuit supply ahead of afternoon tea break. I also picked up some chocolates to bribe students to act as an incentive for the competition I mentioned earlier.
12:50pm – I ate two cheese-strings I forgot I left in the fridge and immediately felt a sense of self loathing and regret.
1:00pm – It was my desk duty, so between then and 3pm I was at the circulation desk helping with reader enquiries, issuing and returning books and organising shelving trolleys. Common queries include students requesting materials from our Stacks, help with printing and help to find books.
1:07pm – Settled on the desk I open up a spreadsheet I’m working on. One of my current projects is to take stock of the journals holdings in Stack One, as we will have to clear our out stacks to make way for some planned building works. I have to make a spreadsheet which lists all the journals kept in Stack one and a record of how much space they take up on the shelves. This will help us toward making decisions about stock to withdraw.
1:18pm – One of the porters dropped the post off, it is part of my job to sort through it all. when I initially started I found it really weird opening post addressed to other people but now I don’t mind – unless an item says ‘confidential’ the majority of our post tends to be invoices, new periodicals or advertisements from publishers about new books.
1:47pm – Started writing this blog post…
2:14pm – Noticed a full returns trolley so sorted it out ready for the afternoon shelvers.
3:00pm – Desk shift over! Kevin, our afternoon library assistant always covers the desk between 3 and 5. I took the post back into the office to finish sorting through it.
3:30pm – Tea time. Time for a hard earned biscuit. I had to make the difficult choice between a custard cream or a chocolate digestive. Oh, the struggle.
4:00pm – Back to work for the last hour of the day. I usually use this time to do something technical, like process a few books or periodicals. I looked despairingly at my journals spreadsheet, but decided 4pm wasn’t a good time to go downstairs and start measuring things, so stuck to processing. This involves stamping books, adding their shelfmarks on ALEPH and adding them to our LibraryThing account.
4:50pm – It was practically the end of the day, at this point I usually write up a to do list for tomorrow, finish up any task I’m doing as I can’t stand leaving things unfinished. I may pop out to the issue desk and help decant books left around the library onto reshelving trolleys but i’m not always needed for this.
5:00pm – As it is term time, I didn’t need to do any of the closing up duties as we stay open until 7pm. Those of us not working the evening left, locking the door and putting up the sign to say to enter through the porter’s lodge after 5pm. Home time!
This is an overview of a day in the EFL! Generally I do most of the tasks mentioned every day, although no two days are exactly the same! Once we had a book returned by a pilot in the post who had found it on his plane, and another time we had a strange man walk into the library to hand over some very odd handwritten poetry (we don’t have swipe access like other libraries) so it’s certainly never boring!
A Day in the Life at the SSL
As I have now settled into the Social Science Library, I thought it would be nice to write a ‘Day in the Life’ like previous cohorts have done to give a bit of insight into what being a Trainee can involve!
As there are two of us in the Social Science Library, we share the workload by focusing on different tasks each week. This week I’m concentrating on Technical Services tasks.
9.00 – I arrive at the library and meet with a member of the SOLO User Group. SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online) is the Oxford University catalogue. Another trainee and I were given the opportunity to join the user group, but during the first meeting a lot of things went over my head! It’s interesting to get some background about the group (and understand the acronyms!) and I also get some useful information about distance learning options for library school.
10.00 – Time for my shift on the Issue Desk. As Trainees we are on the desk for several hours each day. You never really know what you’re going to be asked but I have just about got to grips with some of the more common queries which tend to be regarding issuing book, stack requests (more about them later) and problems with printing. Today I also change a printer cartridge and don’t get ink all over myself which I consider a small triumph.
11.00 – Tea break. Today is the Reader Services Librarian’s last day, so everyone gathers for cake (it was delicious!).
Libraries are run on cake
11.25 – Time to start on my Technical Services tasks. The main part of this being book processing. This involves doing some basic work on Aleph like adding shelfmarks. Followed by adding stamps, security tattle tape and labels. The library receives books that are shelf ready, books from legal deposit and books that we have bought online, and each needs a slightly different amount of processing (definitely no stamps in the legal deposit books!).
Physical Book processing – stamps and plates
13.00 – Lunch. Today I’m reading The Humans by Matt Haig which I would thoroughly recommend.
14.00 – More book processing.
14.30 – Back on the Issue Desk. Around this time, we normally receive our afternoon delivery of stack requests from the Bodleian Storage Facility in Swindon. I check them in to our library and add them to our stack request shelf. Luckily there is only one box today but sometimes we can get loads.
15.00 – Every week in term time we have a Reader Services meeting. This is quite useful for knowing about any new procedures or any other issues that have come up on the desk. Today we’re told about how some inter-library loans can now be taken out of the library and the procedure involved.
15.30 – Journal survey time. The SSL is currently surveying all the print journal stock to see if there is anything we can move out to the BSF or remove to make more space. As our current holdings are incorrect, I am surveying what is actually on the shelves and making a note of what volumes of each journal we have and how many metres of shelving it takes up. It is interesting to see how the design of some of the periodicals have changed over the years when we have volumes from several decades. I spot some volumes today from the 1880s that carry right on through until 2013.
16.30 – Another aspect of the Trainee Technical Services tasks is book repairs. We assess books that are in need of repair to see whether they should be replaced, sent to conservation, a commercial bindery or repaired in-house. Today I repair a couple of books that have a page loose and put them under a very high-tech weight (i.e. a brick) to dry.
Book repairs
17.00 – Just enough time for some more book processing. Some of the books I have been labelling need covering, which means an opportunity to channel my inner Blue Peter presenter to wrestle with what is effectively sticky back plastic and hope I don’t get any air bubbles!
17.30 – Time to go! As its the Reader Services librarian’s last day, we are off to the pub for her leaving drinks.
Not a creature was stirring … ?
In my second term at the Codrington Library what is most striking is how the space metamorphoses in the transition from term to vacation and back again. My re-acquaintance with the library, whilst no less bedazzling, has been considerably less terrifying than our first introduction in September. In coming back to my desk on the 5th of January, which despite its unusual lack of clutter was still very evidently my own, I was able to discern that it was unusually peaceful. In the dark winter evenings, particularly after the students scurried away for the holidays, the space was eerily, wonderfully quiet. This carried through to January but changed suddenly. A month into Hilary term, now that the students have awakened from their winter slumber, the library feels undeniably different and has regained its Codrington “bustle”.
The little-known open-door policy towards external admissions and the nature of All Souls means that the Codrington largely attracts a very specific type. Insofar as my day is concerned, the private researchers are most noticeable. Their usual interest in early printed material requires the attention of the more senior librarians and thus accords to me the responsibility of acting as frontman for other readers. The fellows, largely self-sufficient, are, to my great surprise, often the most invisible. Thus, it would seem that the presence, or absence, of students stands out most. In here at least, the majority (undergraduate and postgraduate alike) are quiet and fastidious, steadfast water drinkers, and surprisingly choosy about the books they request. The resonant space discourages idle chatter making me, more often than I wish to admit, the loudest entity walking up and down with heavy feet and opening the mockingly shrill bookcases. Yet, in their silent study, they shape the space and my workday.
Musings aside, what has changed? The longer opening hours in term (9.30-6.30) are more productive and more draining than the 9.30-4.30 day in vacation, but the changes, I think, largely pertain to the way that the day is structured. This stems, I think, from the way that the Codrington functions: in large part through the work of very small team, only three of which are full-time employees. In the vacation period we are more able to work together because there are fewer queries to attend to. The workday, in this sense, has the potential for structure. Personally, I had time for book moves in the stacks, looking into postgraduate programmes, reading up on areas of librarianship that interest me, sitting in and paying close attention to the work of my colleagues so that I might learn from observation, and starting my graduate trainee project (hours and hours of looking at manuscript viewers online!).
In term, however, the “division of labour” becomes more evident with each of us taking up more distinct responsibilities based on competence and seniority. The office is public and central to the layout of the library. All tasks are done from this one base, and thus we are always open to interruption. Consequently, during term-time, the “day in the life” of this library’s trainee, the Codrington’s version 9.0., is largely arbitrary, determined almost entirely by what comes through the office door. My “do or die” daily job list is quite short – updating an excel spreadsheet of books fellows have borrowed, processing post and incoming journals and doing the same in the afternoon, more or less keeping up with re-shelving and helping close down the library in the evenings. I have a variety of background tasks and projects as well, including processing acquisitions and presentations, research for the graduate trainee project and making shelf labels for the great library, but for the most part, after the morning tasks, the rest of the day is filled with reader requests.
So far, I have found this traineeship to be, in large part, an exercise of observation. It is very fascinating, however, to work in a library wherein the readers, however quiet and invisible, still have such a tangible effect on the space and workday. The transformation of the library is equally evident as the day progresses. As lunch approaches, we are less able to keep to a single task for very long (they—the students—have clearly awoken) and this often lasts until mid-late afternoon. This piece, for example, was started early but soon became, truly, a “day in the life” blog post. My desk is the first one walking into the office, so I interrupt my task if someone approaches to request a book or sign up as a new reader. There is definitely more shelving as well! That said, finding the confidence to slam bookcases open/closed when the majority of the great library is filled with diligent students is part of another skillset altogether, one I am yet to acquire, so now that I can do that in the relative cover of darkness I should scurry off as well.
Work to do, places to be, people to see, shelves to slam.
Jamie Stokes, Sainsbury Library
So I’m halfway through week two here at the Sainsbury Library (based in the Saïd Business School) and so far so good. Currently I’m sat at the enquiry desk by myself for the first time, and with only one person using the library just now I think it’s safe to say it’s pretty quiet. So far (touch wood) there have been no enquiries, though I feel it’s only a matter of time…
Other duties of the Graduate Trainee at the Sainsbury Library (according to previous trainee Emily who left a very thorough handover including a list of places to eat and get drunk) include putting together welcome packs for new members of staff in the Business School, processing new books and journals, weeding old journals, sorting out overdue book records, mending books, reclassifying books, making shelfmark posters and sorting out a variety of emails. So far I’ve made three welcome packs and done a little book and journal processing, which was pretty fun. I think I’m looking forward to term starting but at the same time I’m pretty glad it’s a few weeks away yet.
I ended up exploring librarianship as a career somewhat unexpectedly after spending five years at Liverpool John Moores University doing an undergraduate and then postgraduate degree in Creative Writing. Plan A had always been to write for a living in whatever manner possible, which, after a brief stint as a freelance writer for a dodgy Hungarian internet start-up, led me to work which definitely did not involve writing, in a pub kitchen desperately trying to make ends meet and hating every second of it. Then I saw an advert for an internship at Gladstone’s Library, which was pretty much an excuse to escape from the kitchen and live in a humongous residential library for what turned out to be six of the best months of my life. This involved some awesome people, a really wide-ranging experience of typical (and non-typical) library work, free attendance at a load of fantastic lectures and events, an awful lot of gin, and two free two-course meals a day! After that experience applying for the post in Oxford seemed the obvious thing to do, so here I am.
The only thing to do now is enjoy the rest of the year, get to know Oxford a bit, and prepare for the next step (whatever exactly that may be…)
A Day in the Life of the Oxford Union Trainee
9.15am I arrive and help my colleagues open up the Library. This involves a lot of light switches, unlocking various doors and drawers using a wide selection of keys and provides the rare treat of enjoying a moment or two in the Old Library all by yourself: an amazing chance to glance up and marvel at the Pre-Raphaelite murals and William Morris painted ceiling. If I’m honest, working here has ruined my expectations for workplace interior décor…
I check the returns box for any overnight deposits and scan them in, sorting books for reshelving. Then it is time to check emails and ensure everything is ready to go for when the readers start to arrive at 9.30am.
9.30am During term time, I’m either on desk duty for the morning or afternoon. This gives me a chance to get on with processing and classifying any new books, before adding them on SOLO – a job that is easy to break away from to help students with any enquiries or to loan and return books. Members of the public who wish to visit the murals also come to the library desk as their first port of call. During the vacation, we offer talks to groups on the history of the murals – I’ve recently given my first one, which was quite nerve-wracking but actually very enjoyable once I got into the swing of it! During term-time though, we only allow small groups to visit so that they don’t disturb the readers. Each visitor gets a little pamphlet to allow them to self-guide, or they can hire one of our brilliant audio guides, which will give them a much fuller history.
11.00am Tea! We all stop work for a cup of tea and a chat (and a chocolate or two if anyone has been on holiday recently!) This is great as it allows us to catch up with each other, and to bounce ideas or questions around as well.
1.00pm Lunch. Nom. During term time we can have soup or a sandwich from the Union bar, which is brilliant; however, during vacation time I have to remember to a) make my lunch before leaving home, and b) remember to put said lunch in my bag and actually bring it in to work with me. I am not always successful.
1.30pm Back to work. If I’m back at my desk then there is always lots to do – I have several ongoing projects, such as organising the shelf-labelling (we’ve done some book moving recently), labelling books that myself or the others have added to SOLO, or I might have a new display to create to communicate to our members. I will also take the time to work on entering data into the Union History Database – there are so many events at the Union that this can take quite a long time! So far, I’ve managed to upload three full year’s worth of events – only another 190 years’ worth to go…
2.15pm During term time, we have weekly Library Committee meetings. Made up of Union members, both junior (undergraduates) and senior (postgrads and members who are no longer at uni), this is chaired by the Junior Librarian, an elected officer. I serve as the Minutes Secretary, so every Monday it is up to me to prepare the papers for the meeting. These consist of book lists, DVD lists, suggestions from members, lists of books being considered for withdrawal, and any other agenda items, such as the complaints book, or reports on a particular aspect of the library’s work. I take the minutes during the meeting, and am then responsible for typing them up and distributing them to the committee members afterwards. It is quite a lot of work, but it is great to have so much reader involvement in the library.
3.30pm Tea! You can never have too much tea.
4.00pm During the vacation period I might do some shelving, as our shelver only works during term time. We also do half an hour each of shelf-tidying a week. This helps to keep the library looking fabulous, but also helps us to find any books that have been misplaced, or to re-label any that aren’t easy for readers to see.
5.00pm Home! Unless it is a Tuesday during term time, in which case it is my turn for evening duty. We each do one day a week during the term, keeping the library open till 7.00pm. This is especially useful for the readers in Trinity term when they are studying for exams – I always feel a little mean for turfing them out in order to lock up!
Working at the Oxford Union is wonderful, because though it is a relatively small space, the fact that we lend our books means that it is always busy with readers. Being part of a small team has also meant that I have been able to get involved with lots of different areas of work, so I feel that I have learnt an awful lot in quite a short space of time. I will continue to work here for the next two years, whilst studying for the MA at UCL – and I’m really looking forward to it!
A Day in the Life (Emma Jones, Jesus College Library)
9am I compose myself after my attempt at a power walk while checking the emails and arranging book hold requests. Then it’s time to scan in and reshelve the returned books. I put anything inappropriate left on the desks overnight (empty bottles, odd socks etc) in lost property, which as term goes on begins to resemble a contraband amnesty box.
10am After a quick check of the environmental conditions in the historic Fellows’ Library, I collect the post. There are often book deliveries which need processing, classifying and adding to the catalogue. If a book request comes in from a student and there’s enough time, I dash out to Blackwell’s bookshop or find it online.
11am It’s term time, so I sit in one of the reading rooms to answer queries. I’m also there to keep a tab on noise levels and behaviour, but it’s exam time so there’s a self-policed moratorium on chatter, tomfoolery, and breathing too loudly.
12pm As part of an ongoing project, I’m looking through some of the old, low-use books we’ve earmarked for weeding. I check SOLO to ensure that there’s still an accessible copy of each book in Oxford and then withdraw the College’s copies. Getting rid of books used to terrify me, but now I secretly enjoy it. More shelf space for new books and fewer irrelevant books for students to browse through is a win-win situation.
1pm Lunch! As Joanne at St John’s mentioned, free lunches are one of the perks of working in a college library. They even have Yazoo milkshake here. As always, it’s something delicious.
2pm Now it’s time to deal with some book donations. We’ve just finished with some German texts kindly left by a graduate, so today I’m going through a list of works which have been offered to the College’s specialist Celtic Library. As someone with only a smattering of Welsh and no knowledge of other Celtic languages, checking spellings and revising search terms to find these obscure texts can be slow work. But how many other people can say they’ve been looking for a book about medieval Cornish drama today?
4pm Some guests are due to visit the Fellows’ Library next week, so I’ve been asked to find some rare books to display which match their interests (agriculture, apparently). I search SOLO and look through a shelf list of uncatalogued items, before going to inspect the condition of the books and look for engaging images of land surveying and silkworms.
5pm Home time.
Day in the Life – Archives Assistant (Emma Harrold, Oxford University Archives)
8.30-10.45: Enquiries
I start the day by reading emails and printing new enquiries. The amount of enquiries we receive varies and there can be anything from none to seven or eight in a day. Some enquiries can be answered quickly, whereas others can take hours of research into our records to answer. The University Archives holds the administrative records of the central University and these records date from 1214 to the present day. The colleges in Oxford also maintain their own archives, and this means we sometimes refer enquirers to individual colleges for certain information as well. (http://www.oxfordarchives.org.uk/college%20archives.htm)
Enquiries are related to various aspects of the University, such as the examination systems at different times in the University’s history, past syllabus’ and requirements for degrees, information relating to departments, University buildings and ceremonial and non-ceremonial events. One of the most frequent enquiries we receive is regarding past members of the University, often from a descendent of that person or researchers looking into prominent figures who had previously been educated at Oxford. For past members up until 1891 we hold printed volumes, and between 1891 and 1932 we have a card register. The sort of information we have, dependent on when a person was at the University, can include their college, matriculation date, some biographical information, degrees and any University scholarships or prizes.
At the moment, including one of today’s enquiries, we have a lot of interest in members of the University who served in the First World War due to the centenary. For this I check the printed volume we hold which includes information about members of the University who served in the war, such as when they joined up and where they served.
10.45-11.10 Break
11.10-11.45 Imaging Request
Today, along with a couple of past members enquiries, we also had a request from Imaging Services. An enquirer has ordered photographic copies of some of our material, and this is done through the Imaging Services department based in Osney. To complete this request, I locate and extract the relevant items, package and label it and will send it out with the courier in the morning. I also update our loans register, which keeps a record of all the material being loaned to different departments.
11.45-13.30 Duke Humfrey’s Library
Part of my role is also to make our records accessible to readers. Material from the University Archives is viewed in Duke Humfrey’s Library in the Bodleian Library. Our material is stored in the Lower and Upper Archive Rooms (in the tower of the Bodleian Library), the Examination Schools and also out in the Bodleian Storage Facility in Swindon. When readers request to view items, I then either order it back from BSF using Aleph, or find and carry it to Duke Humfrey from the Exam Schools or the tower. This week a reader has ordered quite a lot of material to view, which means several trips back and forth from the Schools to Duke Humfrey to carry it all up.
13.30-14.30 Lunch
14.30-17.00 Cataloguing
In the afternoons, if all the enquiries are finished and no more material needs to be moved up to Duke Humfrey’s Library for readers, I usually work down in the archives in the Exam Schools. There I have been cataloguing new accessions to the Archives. The first collection I worked on was a series of graduate student files, which we accession every year, and involved making sure they were organised alphabetically, checking they were in the right series (ie. the right year), boxing and labelling them. Now I have finished that I am working on some files from the Events Office, which relate to non-ceremonial events in the University. This includes appraising, describing, labelling/boxing and allocating reference codes to the files and then adding this information to the existing Events Office catalogue. Once finished, it will be moved to spare shelving in the Archives and its permanent location added to our location lists so it can be found in future.
17.00 Finish
Library Trainee Day in the Life (Emily Delahaye, Sainsbury Library)
Hi everyone! Last year the trainees blogged about a typical day in the life in their respective libraries so I thought I would do the same – this is what my day as a trainee generally looks like!
8.30 am – Arrive at the library and settle in. Once a week I open up the library – this involves picking up copies of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal to put in the library, emptying the book return box, sweeping the library for lost property and books left on desks, and checking that all the lights are switched on and that there is paper in the printers.
8.45 am – The whole team helps to shelve books that were put into the book return box overnight. If its term time, then we can have quite a few shelves of books to sort through, but everyone working together makes this quite a speedy process!
9.00 am – 10.15 am – Every day I spend four hours on the enquiry desk, either in the morning or after lunch. If I’m on the desk in the morning, I first sort through all the emails in the library inbox, forwarding them on to the relevant people or responding to them myself. When the post arrives there might be new issues of journals or new books for me to process and label, which is a task I quite enjoy.
10.15 am – Normally on my morning break I will go down and get a coffee in the excellent cafe we have in the Said Business School.
10.30 am – 1.00 pm – After my break I will continue to work on the enquiry desk. During term time I will be mainly dealing with student enquiries. Typical enquiries I receive include: how to find a book in the library, how to get access to one of the electronic databases we subscribe to, how to use the printing system and how to order books from the Bodleian Storage Facility (BSF). Around this time in the morning, the books students have previously ordered from the BSF will arrive, so I will check these in and lock them away securely.
1.00 pm – 2.00 pm – Lunch break!
2.00 pm – 5.00 pm – In the afternoon, if I’m not on the enquiry desk I will be at my own desk in the library office. During these hours I work on various projects, such as helping with the reclassification of parts of the library to the library of congress system. Otherwise, I might be uploading files to the library’s student project database, where current students can read their predecessors’ dissertations which helps with writing their own. Recently we had a book sale in the library, so I spent some time making a list of everything we were selling, so we could keep track, and also taking pictures of the books so we could advertise them to students.
I’m over half way through my traineeship now and I’m still really enjoying working at the Sainsbury Library – my colleagues are very encouraging and have often let me be part of the work they do, which has given me a detailed insight into the world of librarianship!
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