Welcome Aboard!

As I embark on the road to library school and librarianship I thought it would be fun and useful to begin a reflective blog to record the journey and any interesting discoveries along the way!

With Library Day In The Life Project  – round 8  just around the corner, I’ll be starting my blog by sharing a little about my experience in the library as a Graduate Trainee.

Before that – a little about how I actually became a Library Trainee:

In a past life I worked as a primary school teacher but after four years, I decided the teaching profession wasn’t right for me and began thinking about diversifying into another area.  Librarianship appealed as a match to my interests and skills so I decided to gain some experience as a volunteer and see if it worked as well in practice as in theory.  I volunteered at the University of Sunderland library for four months and had a fantastic introduction to library life – meeting with different departments, shadowing various library roles and taking part in a marketing project to promote library e-books!  I learned a lot in a short time and happily confirmed my interest in the profession.

After a little research I decided on the traineeship route into Librarianship as I believe it provides a solid grounding in core library activities, professional support and training and a great way to meet and learn from others in the profession.

CILIP website is a great place to learn more about librarianship and Graduate Traineeships in the UK.  I also follow them on Twitter and it was through there that I saw my current post advertised!

I also found the blog post:  ‘You Want to Work in Libraries?’  by thewikiman very useful!

Although I have only been a trainee for three weeks, I’m thoroughly enjoying it and  hope I’ll be able to give an interesting and useful insight into the role and expectations of trainees in the early stage of a traineeship, for those who may be considering applying in the future!

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  1. #1 by Jen on 27/02/2012 - 6:00 pm

    really excellent blog posts, gives a great insight into the world of the library trainee. I’ve been lucky enough to be invited for interview for the 2012/13 traineeships. Any advice or insights on the interview would be greatly received – I’m really looking forward to it, if a little bit scared :)

    • #2 by Louise Cowan on 27/02/2012 - 9:02 pm

      Thank you – I’m glad you found it useful! :)

      Congratulations on the interview, I’m sure you’ll do great! College and Bodleian interviews are probably a little different but during mine I had to complete an Excel based task, plan Facebook updates for a term and talk about a topic of my choice for about five minutes.

      I don’t really remember any of the questions but the librarian tweeted about this blog:
      http://www.attemptingelegance.com/?p=1448
      before my interview. Its an interesting read :)

      Best of Luck! And enjoy it!

      • #3 by Jen Gallagher on 01/03/2012 - 7:46 pm

        Thanks so much, it’s great to hear interview experiences from anywhere – I can never remember any of the questions after an interview! That’s really interesting that you had to plan Facebook updates – did you have warning of what your tasks would before the interview day?

      • #4 by Louise Cowan on 02/03/2012 - 8:54 am

        No problem :)

        I was told in advance to prepare for the talk/presentation on a topic of my choice and was also told that there would be some kind of ‘test’ or ‘task’ but I didn’t know what that would be.

        The facebook updates was an interesting challenge – I was glad I’d looked at the library’s social media sites before the interview!

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