A Day In The Life Of A Graduate Trainee - Part 1

For my first entry I thought I'd write what I do in a typical day. Hopefully, this will be of some interest and also will give the other grad trainees an idea of what my job involves as we will soon be in the midst of the job swap where we go to other campuses. Here goes guys, sorry for rambling on a bit (readers of this blog will soon realise being concise is not one of my strengths).

6.30 AM. Stagger to the windowsill in my room to shut up my alarm clock. Have discovered this is the only way to wake up and stay awake.

6.45 AM. Admit to self that I really do need to get up now...although five more minutes in bed is so tempting...

7.30 AM. Leave the house, shortly to be devoured by the bowels of the underground

8.30 AM. Emerge blinking into the sunlight - catch the shuttle bus if I'm feeling lazy or walk down Snakes Lane if I'm feeling good.

9ish Whilst waiting for computer to fire up, note down my duties for the day from the timetable on the door of the staffroom. I usually spend 2-4 hours on the counter and I may have the post to do as well.

The first job of the morning is to collect up the requested books and put them on the hold shelf – known as the “pull list”. At Middlesex, students and staff can request books that are already in the library. This is a major help for part-time students and those who don't live on campus, but it can be quite a big job for me! During term time I have 50-100 books to do each day. It can take 2-3 hours on a bad day, but if pushed I can do it in an hour. I tend to do all the books first that are where they should be (maybe 75%) and then worry afterwards about looking in the oversize section, trolleys, searching high and low in various nooks and crannies. You have to turn into a bit of a detective sometimes to try to figure out where students may have hidden books.

For the remainder of the morning until lunch I tend to do the succession of never-ending tasks that most librarians know well - book moving, shelf tidying, shelving...

12 noon -1 PM. The all-important lunch hour - AKA a chance to check Facebook! Usually I bring something in to eat but sometimes I walk to the Mansion Cafe to buy something.

1-3 PM. This tends to be the shift I do the most often at the issues desk as I am busy doing the pull list in the morning. Even though it can get stressful at times, this is the part of the day I enjoy most of all. Sometimes when you’re doing other tasks you can lose sight of the fact that you are here to help the students and staff using the library, and to serve their needs as best you can.

3-5 PM. I don’t tend to have anything specific scheduled for this time, but that doesn’t mean there is a shortage of things to do. For example, I have just started to help checking in the journals. I am still learning and tend to get stuck so end up calling Maryvonne half way through for some help.

If I am out doing work in the library itself, such as re-doing the signage, I tend to get accosted by students a lot. The first question always used to be "Do you work here?" but I must have now gone native as no-one asks me much anymore. It's always good to have someone out there as the Enquiry Desk is only open from 11-3, so at least there's someone there to assist with simple enquiries.

5 PM Hopefully, someone nice will give me a lift to the underground station – thanks should go to Carol, Ele and Rosie here! I tend to get home between 6 PM and 6.15 PM – if I’m lucky, to some lovely home-cooked grub, courtesy of one of my housemates.

So that’s my typical Trent Park Library day in a nutshell. I say typical, but what I really like about working in a library is that no two days are the same. I don't think there are many jobs with such variety, and I'm sure Becky's, and especially Sophie's, days differ considerably from mine.

UCL interviews

Sarah and I both had an interview for the MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL last week. We don't find out whether we got in for another 3 or 4 weeks so fingers crossed.

The interview itself was about half an hour long and more of a conversation than anything. The two women interviewers, Vander and Lucy, were friendly and chatty which made for a relaxing atmosphere. The questions were mostly focused on what I was doing here at Middlesex, why I wanted to study Librarianship and what sort of career I was interested in having. Nothing too nasty at all thank goodness!

Welcome to the Graduate Library Trainees at Middlesex Blog!

Not a catchy title, I admit - may have to think about that. Becky, Sarah and I hope to keep anyone who cares to read this up to date with our adventures at Middlesex University as graduate library trainees.

I am based in the Sheppard Library at Hendon, Becky is based at the CatHill campus and Sarah is at Trent Park.

Unfortunately, we're already four months into our year of training but I think we still have plenty to learn and to write about. I know there's loads of people here I still want to meet and talk to about what they do in their day to day employ at Middlesex.

The big news today is that the HERA ruling on pay scales etc came in and us graduate trainees are getting 5, yes that's 5 more days holiday a year which is very exciting. We're also getting a bit more money which is always nice!