Library Day in the Life: DAY THREE

Ah Wednesdays, historically the most fun of all (week)days. If something fun happens on a regular basis, in my life anyway, it's usually a Wednesday.

In the case of this job it's the graduate trainee sessions which are (most) Wednesday afternoons during term-time and far more fun to talk about than my other Wednesday activities (hour on the desk/emails/post/bit of processing).

Ordinarily we have our training sessions out in Osney, which is nice for me as it's about a five minute walk from my house. This week though, we had a field trip. Exciting!

After a somewhat (okay complete) failure to meet and make the journey with other people in the area, Alice and I set off alone with only the vaguest of ideas of where we were going (took me three attempts to find the right bus stop). Ofcourse in the end, the bus stopped right outside the campus and even I couldn't get lost crossing the road (though Alice will attest that I did try!) Ultimately the hardest part was finding Jess (EFL trainee) who we were supposed to be meeting for lunch.

Brookes campus was....different. Obviously from Oxford, but Jess was quite happy because Brookes was a 'real' university (Campus based, newish, the kind us ex-poly girls are used to). I was less enthused - I found it a bit...depressing, like a cross between a school and a shopping centre (but depressing ones). However as I am considering going to UEA, my opinion probably can't be trusted (definite candidate for the ugliest university ever built.)

The library however, definitely made me feel more at home. Despite working in one of the largest libraries in the Oxford system, it was nice to be back in an actually *big*library (and by *big* what I really mean is 'not subject specific'). Though I paid particular attention to the social science area whilst on the tour, it was great to see books on photography, biology, catering etc.

As well as the tour we had a couple of talks, one about their special collections and one about the work of a subject consultant. The latter was especially interesting for me, because as far as academic libraries go, that's the job I would most like to do. Last term Alice and I collared the RSC subject librarian to ask about her job, what it involves and how she got there etc, and whilst that was great, she said she had quite an unusal way for ending up here, and not one that could be easily replicated. It was good to have these differences outlined, though it turns out they're alot more similar than I'd thought.

The special collections/archiving talk was also interesting but from less of a career view for me. Though everyone keeps saying how wonderful archiving is, how hard an area it is to get into because everyone wants to do it, etc etc, I can't say the thought of being stuck in a darkened room cataloguing day-in-day-out appeals to me that much. Obviously there is more too it, and showing readers the collections seems like a great thing to do - but, to me, the downsides definitely outweigh the good.

Brookes library houses a number of different collections: the national brewing library, the man booker collection for example but the ones I most enjoyed hearing about were the personal ones (mainly catering/food+drink related ones) because I liked the nitty gritty of having to fit to the original donator's preferences (such as the refusal for duplicated books to be disposed of.)

It also got me in the mood for next week's training session, which is special collections in the Bod: I'm really hoping they'll mention the Wilfred Owen archive (even if that is Jess's area) and Alan Bennett's recent donation. *NB: As I am typing this up a week after it was written, I am free to say they mentioned neither. Which is rubbish in one way, but also gives me an excuse to go visit Jess for an afternoon so it's not all lose!

The session ended with a q&a session, during which a question about short (4hr) loans came up - from a trainee who was under the impression that this was something Oxford didn't do which gave me and Alice a chance to show off our 'trailblazing' [;)] library's core course collection (2hr loans which can be booked in advance).

Then it was bus home (during which we had an interesting conversations about guy-brarians and one of the Oxford Alumni trainee's mentioned how weird it was to have so many subjects in one library - which had the rest of us amused) and cheap cocktails for one of the trainee's birthdays.