As I think most you know, the three trainees at the Bodleian move around throughout the year, thus having the opportunity to experience lots of different aspects of library life. I have started my placement in Reader Services. As a trainee you are a ‘peripatetic’ team member, so you are trained to work in all four of the main reading rooms (Lower Reserve, Upper Reserve, Lower Camera and Upper Camera) in the Old Bodleian library. In a normal week I’ll spend time in at least three of these reading rooms and often also on the Main Enquiry Desk. Throughout the day we get three breaks; one in the morning, one at lunchtime and another in the afternoon. Lots of staff spend their breaks in the common room or in the staff canteen which is called Duke Hungry’s!
My favourite part of my placement so far has been the time I’ve spent on the Main Desk. I really enjoy the variety of questions I get asked and get a great feeling of satisfaction when I can help a reader, especially if they’ve been having trouble with something for a little while. However, I still find some enquiries tricky and I am constantly thinking on my feet to try and think of ways to solve problems or answer questions. The ladies who work there full time have been incredibly helpful and slowly I feel as though I’m finding my way through the vast address book of contacts- at least if I’m familiar with this then I know who to pass my difficult enquiries onto!
This Tuesday I spent half my time in the Lower Reading Room and half the day in the Upper Reading room. The Lower Reading Room specialises in Classics and Patristic theology, both heavily used collections. Duties on Tuesday included receiving deliveries from the stack, shelving stack books, answering reader queries, taking staff-mediated photocopying orders and shelving new journals after recording them in our hand catalogue. Lots of our stack material is currently stored in Cheshire so there are often queries to follow up about this material and journal ordering can also be quite confusing for new readers (and often for me too!)
The Upper Reading houses graduate English and History collections and is a very busy reading room. Deliveries are often very large and can be quite complicated due to the nature of material requested (periodicals, large items, antiquarian material, multi-part volumes). Again, I spent most of my time answering queries, which sometimes involved phone calls to the stack. I always feel like I’ve had my daily exercise quota when I’m working in Upper so it’s nice to be able to go home and have a relaxing evening!
Although I enjoy the variety of working in lots of different places and it has provided a great opportunity to get to know lots of readers and staff, I sometimes miss being able to get to know readers well and I always have to remember to complete any tasks I’ve started or let regular staff members know of any queries they may need to follow up when I’m not there. It is interesting, because although most of us spend some time on the desk, I have had a whole three months exclusively in this role.
I think I will miss the reader interaction and the ‘people side’ of things a bit when I first move to a ‘behind the scenes’ role but I am looking forward to experiencing different aspects of library life.
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