I’ve been up in Cataloguing until now, but I’m moving down to Interlibrary loans today – meaning I’ve got the ‘sandwich’ year, which I’m pretty happy with. This is not only a change in terms of my duties, but a change in location. Cataloguers are based ‘upstairs’ in the staff-only office, on the first floor. Interlibrary loaners (Loners? Surely that can’t be right?!) are based on the ground floor, in a little office hidden in the short loan section, behind the main circulation desk.

The teams on the first and ground floors overlap in duties to some extent, but often operate independently. All the subject librarians are upstairs in Cataloguing, along with the accessions and labelling departments, and the deputy and head librarians. The team downstairs centres on the desk, and includes user services librarians and a large team of library assistants, some of whom are term-time only. The upshot of all this is that I’ll be in a completely different section of the library from last term. I still keep all my shelving, enquiry desk and late night duties, but I’ll be more likely to be asked to work on the desk if it’s busy.

I’m definitely looking forward to doing Interlibrary loans. It’s a service I used a huge amount during my PhD – and, as I do my corrections, I may need to use again. This means I know a lot about it from the point of view of the user, but very little of how it works in the library, with the exception of issuing procedure. We’ve already had our library talk from the head of Interlibrary loans, so I’ve got more of an idea of how things work, but it’s a new section of the system to learn, and new procedures to follow. Another good way of deciding exactly what I’d like to do in my future career!

There’s quite a big contrast between downstairs and upstairs so far. As ILL is near the circulation desk it’s far more caught up in the ‘hustle and bustle’ of the library, and I find I’m moving around a lot more, and trying to multi-task a lot of the time. This is quite rewarding as I feel more involved in the day-to-day life of the library, but it can be a problem when trying to pick up new tasks! Luckily my previous experience manning the counter on my own at Nottingham forced me to develop super duper prioritisation skills.

In terms of getting settled into a routine, this week’s a bit of a challenge. Mondays (yesterday) I work a late night during termtime, which means I’m on the counter 5 to 10pm, and only arrive in the library at 3. Tuesday (today) I’m at the enquiry desk from 1 to 5pm. Wednesday (tomorrow) I have my interview at Sheffield – more about this will follow, doubtless. Thursday I’m giving a library tour in the morning, and have one of our series of trainee talks in the afternoon. Finally, Friday I’m back down in ILL for a whole day, but the two other members of the ILL team are working late nights, so I’m on my own until 3pm! There’s plenty of support around for me, but I’ll be the only member of staff officially assigned to ILL, so the idea is for me to be able to do all the basics by then to keep the place running. We’ll see how the multi-tasking goes then!

Our colleagues helped out with acting and photography, and then I spent probably-too-long putting together the comic strip last Friday afternoon. We’re pretty proud with the results. I’ve not made a display in quite some time, although I did take a course during my PhD on putting together poster presentations. The hardest bit, I think, was the layout of the display board itself to complement the comic format with other information – we ended up including a summary of what the comic strips showed, and some copies of defaced books. Also – a tip for anyone making a defacing books poster – we had to laminate the comic. Someone with postmodern mischief in mind defaced my face in the ‘good’ comic.

When there’s no proper lift, students can get around the library fine, thank to the paternoster (and, of course, the stairs: we’ve only got five floors). However, the lift is vital for getting books back to the appropriate floor for shelving, and it’s down. We therefore currently have a big pile of books downstairs, where they’re returned, and no way of getting them upstairs to shelve. This makes enquiries a bit of a farce:

Hopeful student “I can’t find any copies of Sociolinguistics – the catalogue says there’s one in.”
Helpful staff member “Have you tried looking in the enormous pile of books?”

Stressed student “I definitely returned this item, but it’s not been cleared off my record!”
Stressed staff member “Have you tried looking in the enormous pile of books?”

etc.

Today we heard that the lift may well be out of order for the rest of the week, but it transpires that Estates are coming to our rescue. They are going to stop the paternoster to get trolleys on and off: I’m not sure exactly how it’ll work, but I’m sure it’ll be fun to watch.

In the meantime, this has really brought to home how important getting books back onto the shelves actually is in libraries. It’s something that’s pretty specific to this line of work – you don’t need to get books back onto shelves a book shop, they just have to worry about the new ones. The main desk downstairs is called the Circulation Desk, and circulation is the very stuff of the day to day running of the library. Even though most of the time circulation only feels like time filler in between ‘important’ tasks, it’s pretty stunning to see what happens when it breaks down.

You also really notice how many books there are when even a small proportion of them are sitting in a pile in one place!

Colchester Institute, while it’s broadly in the same game of academic librarianship, is quite a different cup of tea to a university library. The staff were keen to talk about making their library as welcome as possible for their students, and one of the ways they did this was to make their library as appealing and welcoming as possible – along the lines, in fact, of a public library. It feels weird to admit that the place you work at isn’t that welcoming, but I guess it makes sense for a university to have a more weighty academy-of-learning feeling to it than a place that offers vocational courses. Interestingly, Colchester Institute does have a staff with a large proportion of subject librarians (although on a much smaller scale than here), and it certainly made me think more about the range of academic library posts that were on offer to see it.

Essex Public Library Headquarters made me think in a different way about public libraries. On one hand it was fairly inspirational to see the range of activities supported across the county. The number of books that were passing through were simply phenomenal, and there were lots of interesting projects underway, such as one to provide picture books to nursery schools across the county, various tie-ins with the Essex Book Festival and Year of Reading, and it was staggering to see the sheer number of books that pass through its system. On the other hand, it felt a little under-funded and under-staffed: leavers did not seem to have been replaced, and it really highlighted the budget crunches that this sector has faced.

Chelmsford Public Library on the other hand seemed to be thriving on the changing world of librarianship. It housed a number of services which tied into the library ethos, such as a Learn Direct centre promoting skills acquisition and the county’s Answers Direct service, a phone service which answered complex library queries from across Essex. The Answers Direct offices also included a homework help instant messaging service, which was particularly interesting for me, given my PhD topic of homework technologies.

All in all, then, these were valuable experiences, and a great way to get a picture of the range of library careers that are available to me. However, I’m yet to be convinced away from a career in university libraries: I think they’re where I’m most useful and where I feel most at home.

There are obvious downsides to working weekends, but I’ve got mixed feelings about this. In my old job I was an ‘access assistant’ which entailed working the hours which the core library staff didn’t support: 16.45 to 21.15 twice a week on weekdays, and alternate Saturdays, although there was a member of the core staff on with me 16.45 to 19.00 on my weekday shifts. In my current post the core staff work weekends on shifts, meaning that the load is spread. I can see the upsides of both systems. If you can get the same staff working at weekends they have a far better idea of what’s going on, and can provide a more professional service. But on the other hand, when I chose to work unsociable shifts in my old job this was a conscious choice on my part – in fact I was pleased to be able to work at those times. This meant I was far more enthusiastic and happy about working at those times, and didn’t feel put upon, as I sometimes do now when my weekend shifts come up.

This all ties into the professionalism debate in librarianship. I’m about to embark on training to become a professional librarian, but in my time in libraries I’ve fulfilled various roles and provided a lot of help as a library assistant. The thing I like about weekend shifts in my current job is that there are genuine librarians on-site whenever the library’s open. However, I wouldn’t knock the level of service I managed to provide as the sole member of counter staff in my old post. Part of the reason I was able to help people out was because I was a PhD student at the university, and knew my way around research and the library system, it wasn’t my job to know as such. However, with staff of a high standard willing to work unsociable hours, is it always necessary to have a qualified librarian on-site? I’m afraid I’m going to cop out, and say that I really don’t know.

So, having experienced my fill of the library’s departments (at least the ones we get to actively experience) I suppose I ought to jot down a few thoughts. The first is something that has come up a couple of times in this blog before, and that’s the idea of circulation. The great thing about switching between departments is that you get to see the links between those departments. I’ve never worked in acquisitions, but as soon as books are ordered and received, they come straight through to be catalogued. They get labelled – okay, so I miss this step! – then I get to shelve them, issue them on my circulation desk shifts in the evenings and weekends, and then they come back to me to shelve again. In addition, having worked in interlibrary loans, I now know what it’s like when other libraries want our books, and how we deal with researchers with wider needs than we can serve through our books and journals alone, which is pretty central to my interest in supporting research. I’ve got a much wider appreciation for the system of libraries than I had before I worked here, even though I was behind the desk in a library before.

In addition, I think I’ve picked up some pretty cool skills here. Not a lot of graduate trainees get to catalogue, and while I’m not sure that’s terribly heartbreaking (and although cataloguing’s not my dream job) it’s illuminating to understand cataloguing at a certain level, and I’m sure it’ll stand me in good stead in library school and future job interviews. Getting enquiry desk experience has given me oodles to think about in terms of how to interact with library users, and again is something really important to have on my CV. I keep on saying that this post has been a great preparation for library school. I’ve still got 4 months before I’ll find out how true that is!

Of course, this is a good opportunity for me. Getting to see three departments instead of two adds another feather to my cap (or line to my CV) and accessions is the only section of the library I didn’t think I was going to see. It’s interesting to see the books as they come into the library, to get a better hold on how the financial side of things works, and to perfect that age old librarian skill of stamping books with the library’s name. This is something that my book collector brother would probably consider particularly nasty vandalism; apparently library books are a complete disaster from a collector’s point of view, with all the stamps and stickers and labels and suchforth.

So far it’s been a good experience, and I’m beginning to settle in to the extent that I’m feeling useful: I can get a book ready for cataloguing and pay and send off invoices, which feels like a significant contribution to the department. The end of term’s approaching, so when we move to termtime hours and off our late-night circulation and enquiry desk rotas I’m going to be in acccessions for significant periods of time. But there are still library visits and the annual stocktake to provide plenty of variety, so it’s not going to be all accession posts from now on!

Ooh, final news, our posters from the public library are on their way! Lots more to do!

The good news is that I’m pretty good at driving a computer already. Since I was a child I’ve been confident in my ability to pick up new technologies – I’m a digital native, if you will, although I’m slightly too old to be one according to some definitions! Heck, a large part of my PhD took place within a computer science department. However, taking the ECDL is a good way of proving my competence with standard packages: I worked out it’s around 12 years since I touched Microsoft Access, and using Firefox and webmail has put me out of touch with Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook. It’s also the kind of qualification that seems to tick boxes for library employers, and shows a commitment to professional development. Lastly, I am picking up some stuff that I didn’t know by browsing through our training software. My learning point of today was that Powerpoint can create a folder with a presentation and a Powerpoint viewer to transfer presentations to a computer without the necessary software. I never knew this before, and given its somewhat bewildering name – Package to CD – wasn’t likely to find it in a hurry.

So far I’ve taken three modules (for which feedback from the examiner was positive) and I’ve got four more to go: communication and presentation software tomorrow; spreadsheets and databases on Thursday. At the moment I’m just hoping I don’t have to retake any exams – there’s only so many ECDL papers I can take before I’m going cross-eyed!

In other news, it’s looking like my PhD comments from my supervisors might turn up soon, and the reading list for my librarianship course has arrived. Perhaps it’s a good thing I’m taking the ECDL exams so quickly… only four weeks to go in the traineeship, and only seven weeks to go until the start of my new course!