Library Week in the Life 8

Okay, so I officially suck at keeping my blog up-to-date, but after reading all these amazing #libday8 blog posts which have completely and utterly put me to shame, I have decided to write a summary of my week, aptly named "Library Week in the Life 8."


Monday:

After 2 hours of "Information Sources and Retrieval" lectures at UCL, I spend the rest of the afternoon working on my essay for Historical Bibliography. I'm writing about William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, and as a lover of all things Victorian, you can imagine how happy I am to just sit down with a pile of books and do the research. Yes, I'm one of those people who love reading and learning about stuff, but unfortunately, it's the writing up bit that I don't like, and sadly, my essay isn't going to write itself! Nevertheless, my research has given me some ideas for my dissertation, so all things considered, I feel like I've had quite a productive day.

I head off to Picadilly Circus at 5pm, as I work as a Casual Evening Assistant at the London Library. I was a Graduate Trainee there last year, and I absolutely LOVED it, so it's nice to still be working there. I work until 9pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, so it's quite a long day for me (especially as I commute in from outside London!!) It's worth it though, as the experience is invaluable. I love that each evening is different, and today was busy in the sense that we had lots of books to retrieve for members who had requested them from home, as well as several face-to-face enquiries. As always, I try to spend the first half hour checking the circulation desk and enquiry desk emails, and fetching any book requests that have come through. Around 6-6.30pm, I usually get down to the dirty work, and have the joyous job of shredding or recycling the paper. Having just written an essay about the prospect of a paperless library, it seems highly unlikely that that will EVER happen at the London Library, given the amount we seem to go through! Whilst I'm sorting through all the paper, I am also serving people at the desk, helping them with their enquiries and issuing/returning books.

About 7.30pm I cover for the Receptionist on duty so that she can go for her tea break. This involves letting people in and out of the library, issuing locker keys, visitor passes, and dealing with petty cash when member's want to buy things like pencils, notebooks, and even photocopying cards. Not only do I have 2 buzzer systems to negotiate when on the desk, but as was the case this evening, the phone rang 4 times in the space of 15 minutes! At 8pm, I quickly rush off for my tea-break (or in my case, my microwavable dinner!) as I'm staaaaaaaaarving! At 8.15pm, I'm back on the desk, until 8.45pm, when we start the "shut-down" routine of turning all the computers off, and clearing books from tables etc ready for reshelving the following morning.By 9pm, I am ready to go home, and I make my way back to Waterloo for my journey. More often than not I fall asleep on the train - one of these days, I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up in Portsmouth Harbour!!!!

Tuesday:

Today is another busy day for me. I have 3 hours of Management lectures at UCL from 10-1pm, and then 3 hours of Manuscript Studies 2-5pm. The latter was quite a "full-on" session this week - we were studying all different types of scripts, and we even attempted to read texts from as early as the 6th Century! Needless to say I think a lot of practice is needed on my part, but I'm really enjoying the challenge so far! At 5pm I once again head to the London Library for my second evening shift of the week. Today is MUCH busier than yesterday. I have an induction booked for 6.30pm, which involves showing prospective or new member's round the library, explaining how the catalogue works, how to search effectively, how to access the e-resources to which we subscribe as well as a general tour of the place. The building is huge, although it doesn't look it from the front, and it's quite a difficult place to navigate your way around until you've been there a while! Believe me, I carried a map in my pocket for the first month there as a Graduate Trainee!!

When I got to work, however, it turned out that I had an impromptu prospective member induction at 6pm, followed by a pre-booked induction at 6.30pm. By 7.30pm, I'm exhausted - especially as both tours involved me walking up several flights of stairs and talking constantly (although for those who know me, you'll know this isn't usually a problem!) I cover Reception, have dinner, and head back to the desk in time to serve a few members, helping a few to find their books, and before I know it, it's that time again, and we're starting to turn everything off for the night!

I have to say, being busy certainly makes the time fly, and I enjoy having lots of things to do. By 9pm, I'm DEFINITELY ready for bed. Fall asleep on the train again, but thankfully don't miss my stop. Get home around 11pm, and crawl into bed, ready for my alarm to wake me up in 7 hours time...

Wednesday:

Today, I'm off to Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in North Greenwich, where I currently work as a "Study Zone Library Assistant." Ravensbourne couldn't be more different that the London Library. It is extremely modern and high-tech, and it runs foundation and degree courses in subject areas such as film-making and fashion. The "Study Zone" is nearly always full by the afternoon, and this is partly because students are actually encouraged to eat, drink and chat in the library (yes, really!) Although I was quite surprised at first, I can see the reasoning behind this; in my opinion, anything which actually gets students into the library in the first place, and encourages them to work can only be a good thing. As long as they are respectful of the books and don't cause too much disruption, I don't see there's problem. In actual fact, most of the students use e-books rather than actual textbooks, so the books aren't usually even in danger! ;)

Today, I have been working my way through course reading lists and making a note of all the books we have, and adding the books we don't to our basket on Dawsons. Due to a recent campus move (and book move), many items have been lost, so the library collection is being updated so that it can offer an effective service and provide for the teaching and research needs of both the students and staff. Surprisingly, there are a LOT of books to go through on the reading list, and this actually takes up the whole day. By 5pm, I have added all the necessary books for the BA Fashion & Lifestyle Products, and feel, unsurprisingly, a great sense of satisfaction.

Tonight is my first evening NOT at work, so I enjoy sitting down to relax, and just catch up on all the trashy TV I've missed! I also start on my BSL Level 1 Sign Language Homework. Yes, as if working two jobs and doing a full-time MA isn't enough, I've also paid to do a British Sign Language course every Saturday for 30 weeks. At the end of it I'll have a qualification, and it's something I've always wanted to do. If I go into academic librarianship, I'm also hoping that the ability to converse with the deaf will be an asset - and you never know, it one day might come in useful!

Thursday:

I'm back at Ravensbourne once more, continuing with the reading lists. Today it's Digital Advertising & Media. I manage to add all the books into the basket by about 3.30pm, and then make a start on some cataloguing. I process a couple of recent DVD acquisitions (all Hitchcock), and then move onto some of the shelf-ready books that have just arrived from Dawsons. Thankfully, these don't take very long, and before I know it they're on the shelves! There is, I should probably mention, a small backlog of cataloguing that's on my "To Do" list, so that's something to be getting on with next week I think. These are books that need to have catalogue records created from scratch - if I'm honest, this is one of my favourite things to do! It's so satisfying creating a good cataloguing record, and it means I can put everything I have learned from my Cataloguing & Classification module at UCL into practice!

In the evening, I went to see The King's Speech with my boyfriend. The world premiere of the play on which the film was based was being shown at our local theatre in Guildford, and we had great seats (this was probably made better by the fact that IAN MCKELLEN WAS SAT TWO ROWS IN FRONT). YES REALLY. Another late night for me, but thankfully, tomorrow = lie-in!

Friday:

Today, it's back to the essay. With little time to get all my work done, I have to be quite disciplined and pro-active. I finish my essay, proof-read it, then submit. The deadline isn't until next Tuesday, but it's nice to have it out the way (as much as I enjoyed writing it!) The saying "if you want something done, ask a busy person" is certainly true in my case - somehow, I always manage to get things finished in time!


So...there you have it! A week in the life of a librarian. Busy, yes. But I wouldn't change it for anything.

A little bit of cataloguing....

Yesterday, I finally got the chance to put some of the theory I learned in my London Library cataloguing training sessions into practice - hurrah! It's been a long time coming, and I honestly thought I would have forgotten all things related to MARC21 and AARC2, but it turns out that somehow, I've actually managed to retain it!

Over the past couple of weeks, I (along with the other graduate trainees) have been examining the London Library's extensive fiction collection, and attempting to categorise our holdings into author nationalities. With a fair few spreadsheets covering lists of Australian, Canadian, Pakastani, Ghanaian, Malaysian, German, French, Spanish and Hong Kong authors whose books we possess(to name but a few), the aim of the project was to transfer this information into the item record as an LC Subject heading, so that if a library member were to search our OPAC with a wish to view our german fiction holdings, for example, this would now actually be possible.

After being briefed by the Head of Bibliographic Services, I set about acquainting myself with the Library of Congress Authorities. In order to make our fiction collections searchable by author nationality, I had to first find out which "authority record" to use. For those unfamiliar with the term, an authority record, according to the Library of Congress:

"Is a tool used by librarians to establish forms of names (for persons, places, meetings, and organizations), titles, and subjects used on bibliographic records. Authority records enable librarians to provide uniform access to materials in library catalogs and to provide clear identification of authors and subject headings."

I started with my list of German authors, and by typing in a variety of possible formations - that is, German authors, authors, german - I finally found that the authorised heading to use was the latter: "Authors, german." The next stage was to then transfer this information into the London Library item record (which also meant braving the cataloguing module on Aleph for the first time as well!)

Having opened up all records relating to Heinrich Boll, (he was by chance, the first author I started with!) I began adding in the LC subject heading that he was not only a twentieth-century German author, but one who also wrote fiction.

For the London Library, this information must be entered under a 650 field, with a second indicator of 0, which marks that the heading I was using had come from the Library of Congress Authorities. Under subfield a) I wrote Authors, German.

I then created another 650 field, so that I could also indicate the book in question was fiction. Under subfield a) I wrote "German fiction", and because I knew Boll was a twentieth-century writer, I added under subfield y) 20th century.

The first record I created can be viewed here.

If you scroll to the bottom, you will see that these headings now appear on the item record. SUCCESS!

Now, this, to me, is an extremely good idea. I can't tell you the number of times I've dealt with members who would simply just like to know which American authors, or French authors we stock in the Library. Although time-consuming, it's definitely a worth-while project, and will hopefully offer a much broader search for members who would rather browse, than specify exactly what they are looking for.