Trainee Profiles 2017-18

Hello, I’m Ceri, I’ve been at the Institute of Historical Research Library as a Graduate Trainee Library Assistant for just over four months. Before joining the IHR, I was a residential library intern at Gladstone’s Library for 13 months. As a history graduate, the chance to be surrounded by history and to work in a historical building is a dream come true. The building is a grade II listed building in a beautiful Art Deco design, something that still takes my breath away every time I come to work and look up.

When I first graduated I was unsure whether I wanted to work in museums, with archives or in a library. I gained experience doing all three! But to me a library is something that has always calmed and excited me – one of the main reasons I wanted to become a librarian is not just because of my love of books, but mainly because of the love I have for helping people. One of my main responsibilities is helping people finding the correct information, or to use resources within the library.

In the IHR library you can find antiquarian books housed with modern books. Another aspect of my job is ensuring books that get left on the desks go back to their own shelf. I like seeing what people have been reading, but also getting to explore the collections by looking at the shelves. When I was in university I loved using the library to research and also shelf browsing – finding similar books that might be useful to my research. Getting to browse and tidy the shelves for my job is my idea of heaven.

My favourite aspect of the job apart from being surrounded by books – is that no one day is the same – I can be rebinding, reclassifying, cataloguing, helping someone with their photocopying, finding information they need, scanning books for virtual learning or interlibrary loan or having a book adventure in the tower (our onsite storage facility). I also get to buy books for the library – at the moment this is supervised and is testing my German language strength but eventually they will trust me to choose books for the collection – I will get to leave my own mark on the library! I am also involved in promoting the library – this can involve anything to writing blog posts, helping to set up an exhibition to promote the library collections, or adding social media posts. Promotion often leads to another chance to explore the collections – finding for example an inscription from H.G. Wells or discovering other treasures in the collections.

As part of the traineeship, I have also been encouraged to attend various courses and conferences such as the CILIP new library professionals’ day, the Internet Library International Conference, the library has kindly paid for me to travel to Manchester to attend a Rare Books and Special Collections conference and also attend an applying to Library School Day, as well as a variety of other courses such as one on social media. I have also been to a various seminars held here at the Institute of Historical Research and at the Warburg Institute.

This traineeship is allowing me to gain experience, to receive support and training. As well as meet up with the other London trainees and gain support and a chance to discuss our experiences with each other.   As a Welsh person, moving to London for this traineeship was an extremely daunting task but I have loved every second of it so far. I feel I am continually learning and have been heartily welcomed into the small team here. I’m not sure whether I want to continue to live in London next year, study part-time or full-time, but I’m certainly in the right place to gain support and advice regarding those decisions. I would recommend anyone who is looking to gain more experience in librarianship to consider the Graduate Trainee Programme!