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First week at St. Antony's College Library


Starting my apprenticeship In Oxford I decided to arrive a few days earlier so I could get settled into my new temporary home and explore the city.

My first two weeks begin in the St. Antony’s college library where I work together with Aimee the Librarian and Jessica the librarian assistant.


As an easy introduction to get used to the library my works consists of a few continuous and fundamental library task. I shelve the returned books into our stacks. Doing that I also get a good overview of the Library Classification that is used within the library.


Throughout the term the library will get reading lists from the different departments in the University of Oxford with the books that the students will need to read in the different classes/studies.

To check that we have all the books needed for the coming term, we double control the books on the list with our collection on the online-catalogue Solo and acquire the books if we don’t already have them.


The new books that Aimee acquires will then go to Jessica who catalogues them and then come to me so I can apply the shelf mark and the library stamp on every 100 page.

As I personally love to keep my books as pretty and unharmed as possible, I was rather horrified at the thought of stamping every 100 page in a book. My poor books at home would cry. Seeing as the books belong to the library and not myself I stamp them dutifully.


One of my regular tasks in the college library is doing the morning round. I will go through all the college library rooms and check if everything is in order. Because the library is open 24/7 for the students there will often be books left on the table that no one is using. I will shelve these books and generally bring order to the students working place if they are not using them anymore.


I have the freedom in the day to organise my tasks during my work hours myself and can generally very easily create a well-balanced workday where I alternate between work in front of the computer and tasks where I have to walk around.


At the end of the week I go home to relax thinking altogether that yes, it was a pretty good first week.


Ps. Now I am aware that my first week was almost 3 months ago but I think that’s just a testament to my dutiful work ethic and not a sign of my blogging time-organisation skills. :)

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