PORTRAIT OF THE GRADUATE LIBRARY ASSISTANT
AS A YOUNG MAN
Alastair Flett Templeman Library University
of Kent at Canterbury
My first day as Graduate Trainee at the Templeman
Library at the University of Kent at Canterbury was something
of a leap in the dark. Until that point my experience of academic
libraries had, after all, been from the other side. I'd been
a user, not a provider. My 'first day confusion' was hardly
cleared up when I was told that I'd be spending part of each
day in what was mysteriously called Document Delivery. I felt
slightly better when I was told this dealt with interlibrary
loans, though. I'd asked for interlibrary loans as an undergraduate;
now was my chance to discover the chain of events which led
up to the magical arrival of articles I'd applied for by filling
in a form a few days before.
My first few days in Document Delivery rather merged into
a haze of request forms and trying desperately to remember
in which order, and for what reason they moved from pile to
pile around the room. After a couple of days though, I managed
to get into the swing of things and, over the next few months,
office procedure became second nature.
The requests would come flooding in, our first job being to
check them against our OPAC to ensure the library didn't already
possess a copy of the item in question (sometimes it's even
on loan to the person making the request!). Next, if it's
a book, we look at a variety of online sources to make sure
that the book does actually exist, and, hopefully, to discover
that there is a copy of it at the BLDSC at Boston Spa.
Assuming all is in order so far, the next thing to be checked
is the applicants themselves. We have to be satisfied that
they are actually registered with the library and that they
haven't exceeded the permitted number of requests. Finally,
if everything is all right the request can now be transmitted
electronically to the British library via ARTTEL.
The whole process is, of course, slightly more complex when
trying to get hold of articles from periodicals. Then we have
to check various electronic services that the library subscribes
to, such as EBSCO and IDEAL, to make sure that we don't have
any articles in electronic form that the borrowers may have
overlooked. Only then do we check to see what Boston Spa has
to offer. Then, all that's left to do is eagerly await the
arrival of the LASER van to see what it brings and notify
the borrowers of the arrival of their requests.
All this only happens, though, when there aren't any library
users in the office making enquiries. Dealing with these queries
can, in itself, prove quite a time consuming task when the
questions are as diffuse as: can the borrower take books confined
to the library to Switzerland with them? (They work part-time
for the UN); can they make an unlimited number of requests
without any question from us? (They're members of staff);
or why do we charge overdue fines? (The books aren't ours
after all)? Those are the constants of Document Delivery.
However, even during my time here, there have been changes,
most notably UKC joining the LAMDA elib project as a receiving
member. From the trainee's point of view this has proved something
of a mixed blessing. The main disadvantage is having to check
the reference in more places (i.e. the Union List of Serial
for the University of London and the CALIM catalogue for Manchester),
before sending the request. Even more time consuming, is having
to check that all the pages are present and correct when the
articles are printed out. On the other hand though, request
do generally come through quicker, reducing congestion. Most
importantly of all though, it's something interesting to talk
about in interviews for library school!
The five months I've spent working in Document Delivery have,
without doubt, been incredibly useful. It seems that the majority
of library work is encapsulated in one office: dealing with
the public, lending of books, bibliographic checking and the
application of information technology to name but a few. All
that plus the enjoyment and satisfaction I've had in working
there means that, in the opinion of this humble Graduate Trainee,
Document Delivery is the ideal initiation into library work.
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