Day in the life of a graduate trainee at Hendon

Right then, to Hendon, where the library does seem to work in a different way to Trent Park and Cat Hill. I think the main thing with Hendon is that it's bigger and very departmentalised (I don't think that's a word). The different departments all work very much within their own areas and for me, being in the on-campus customer services department, this means that my work can sometimes lack the variety that Sarah and Becky obviously experience.

I have found, however, that offers to work in other departments are very well received so although I know you guys are only here for a week - my advice would be to get as involved in all aspects of the library as you can by talking to lots of different people. Everyone here is incredibly helpful and friendly and willing to talk about what they do which is great.

So my day starts at about 6:45, with an aim to leave the house at 7:45 for the long ride up the Northern Line from Clapham South to Hendon Central. This is fairly painless, actually, and gives me plenty of opportunity to read which is super.

On arrival at work, I usually do an hour of shelving. We're meant to do this between 9-10 every morning but if something else comes up then I work it into my day whenever I can. I like to check my emails in the morning first thing so normally I do more like 9:15 - 10:30. After this, it's back to the desk and work varies - I have been helping out with the expired or canceled hold list recently. This is generated off Horizon and involves pulling all the expired holds off the shelf at the transaction desk and then if there's time, looking for stray ones on the main shelves. It's remarkable how many expired holds somehow work themselves back onto the shelves without being checked in.

I do 2 hours work on the transaction desk a day which is usually made up of two sessions, one at around midday and one in the afternoon. This is probably similar to what you guys do except involves checking books in and out with RFID and a LOT of password changes. I enjoy this part of the day and always feel energised afterwards which is good as lately I've been spending my lunch hour in the gym! Interesting decision, I realise, but there's not much time in my day to exercise given the commute and getting married in June has proved a powerful incentive!

The afternoon is usually made up of various tasks. The longer I'm here, the more varied the tasks have become. I'm helping Jamie Halstead with a nursing blog that he runs off his library subject pages. I update the blog with any relevant articles that have been recently published. I've also been involved in the running of a library help desk in the Hendon quad which was aiming to take the library out to the students to showcase everything we do and it seemed to work quite well. I've been attempting to collate the statistics that were gathered which has been keeping me busy recently.


I hope you guys have a great time here, I'm sure you will.