Library Day in the Life: DAY TWO

Most days, the first job of the day is 'communications'. Post, which is pretty self-explanatory, then email which is dealt with (week days) exclusively by the SSL trainee's. Though it appears quite tedious (and sometimes is) its quite a helpful thing to do. As the frontline for a whole barrage of questions about renewing loans (a:you can't by email) promotional bits (forwarded to our subject consultant) and room bookings (see yesterday) it's a quick and intense way to familiarising a range of library policies.

Occasionally we get some more interesting questions: before Christmas we had an architecture student from Bath University ask about the design of the Manor Road building, about which we knew very little (other than it is pretty awful!) A quick google search returned little in the way of helpful information - we did find a picture of the foyer of the building, labelled 'Manor Road is one of Norman Foster's less impressive buildings.' which gave us (and the other members of staff intrigued by our giggling) a laugh but that was about it. In the end it was a case of offering the little we knew (date of opening etc) and asking for specific questions we could forward onto someone more in the know (though we weren't 100% sure who that would be!)

Another morning job that is almost daily, is posting the printed final reminder notices - pretty simple - and the invoices for readers who have ignored even those.

This is equally simple, but is probably one of the most tedious jobs we have. There are three steps to the invoice - first is to check the books haven't been returned by checking the readers record but also by checking the shelves - the longest and most tedious part. Then we have to find prices for the books, and write them on the invoice, and finally add a block to the reader's record to say the reader has been invoiced. It can be a incredibly long process for someone with 10 or more books, and during vacation we had some insane ones: a reader earned over £900 worth of fines from 20 books and we have another at £500 for only 5 or so.

Blissfully, there was only one today, which meant I had time to unwrap my repaired books for Monday, before our project meeting.

Anyone who knows about the OULS trainee scheme will be aware that we are encouraged to complete a project during our year, something which will enhance the library experience available. For our project, Alice and I have agreed to reclassify the SSL thesis section because it is, currently, a bit of mess because the collection has outgrown the original shelfmark system (the SSL absorbs other departmental libraries almost yearly, and each one brings its own collection - not to mention that more are written every year!)

In the meeting was, obviously me and Alice, then the SSL Librarian in Charge, Reader Services Librarian, Senior Cataloguer and Senior Technical Services Assistant. So it was quite a busy meeting, but also really interesting. Whilst I'd been aware how much work would go into something like this, a 'pep' talk from our LiC opened my eyes to a)how much *variation* of work would be needed and b)just how much responsibility would be on our shoulders.

It was also suggested that we might like to look into the policy aspect of the thesis collection as well - such as why certain thesis' are deposited with us when others aren't and how the Bod handles its thesis collection. This appealed to me because I do love a bit of research, and I think it will make a nice (and different) counterpoint to the more repetitive processing that we will be a substantial part of the project.

So all round, despite having little in the way of concrete decisions made, it was an informative and successful hour or so. Then, there a quick half an hour processing and another on the desk and it was time for lunch.

Our afternoon was to be spent in OUCS for training, which made lunch a quickie before walking round to Banbury Road (detouring on the way to pick up some macaroons from Maison Blanc on the way, because I've been craving them for too long.)

In previous years trainees have been given a free ECDL course but that hasn't happened this year (which is good for me as I already have a basic ECDL qualification and found most of it pretty boring the first time round!) Instead we are allowed to attend 3 training courses and we decided on an InDesign course for our first (with the intention of using it to make guides to compliment our new thesis shelving system.)

The course, like all OUCS run, was informative, interesting and (most importantly) well-paced. One of the things I like about OUCS courses is that they give you a coursebook to work through at your own pace, as well as the step by step demonstrations.

Then after a brief stop off at the public library to renew my Simon Armitage auto, it was home for me.