Goodbye to our Trainee Librarian
On Friday we said goodbye to Peter Czosnyka, our Graduate Trainee Librarian.
In this farewell blog post he describes his year, his plans and his daily routine. You can compare it with the diary of Pat, our College Librarian, here.
Is it August already? Yes, I am afraid it is. This can only mean one thing, my traineeship at Pembroke College Library is about to end. Sad times, but all part of my plan. The staff and members of Pembroke made this year wonderful, and the memories that I take away from this place will stay with me for ever. If you are reading this and you are a member of Pembroke or you work for the College, then I would like to thank you. Thank you for making me feel a part of this community. Thank you for a wonderful year.
'What is this plan that I am talking about?', I hear you ask. It comes in two parts. I am going back to Anglia Ruskin University to finish my PhD, The Toy Soldier in Britain 1945 to 1972: A Cultural History. Yes, I am writing about toy soldiers and it is great fun. I also have a part-time job at the Marshall Library of Economics during term-time; this is my link with the libraries at Cambridge and at the same time a source of revenue. The deadline for my project is set for 2017. As soon as that is out of the way, I will go to library school. I have my sights on a MSC in Information Management; this is a prerequisite for working in libraries in the UK and the rest of the world. My interests are in special collections, reader experience and art libraries. There are now quite a few universities offering this course, but I have hopes of going to University College, London. It was the first University in the country that offered a professional qualification in librarianship.
Perhaps you would like to know what a day in the life of a graduate trainee librarian looks like? Yes? Good.
My day starts at 6.30 am with my cat Jack waking me up. He has a very assertive meeow – it works as a perfect alarm clock.
By 7.40 amI am on my bike, gliding into Cambridge. Upon arrival in Pembroke I head for the library, where I am greeted with smiles from Pat, Trish, Sue, Chris, and Jack.
Mornings are usually taken up with book shelving, housekeeping tasks, and answering readers enquiries in person, by phone or e-mail. If we are running a special project then we also focus on that. My most recent project was digitisation of the Thomas Gray Commonplace book, which will soon be available on line.
As part of the training there are various courses running throughout the year on librarianship and information management, as well as library trips. One of my favourites was the recent visit to the Cambridge Conservation Consortium Workshop, and the Whipple Library. Many thanks to all librarians and library staff that had organised the training sessions and tours for the graduate trainees this year.
The day is done by 5 pm, and I jump back on my bike to head homewards.
What makes a good librarian? Work in a library would not suit everyone! To my thinking, an ideal candidate would be a person who is good with people but not a chatter-box, a good listener but not a stone wall, a person who is vigilant but aware of the need for private space. Someone patient, kind but fearless, vigilant, precise and aware. In a nutshell I am trying to describe a person who is happy to act as a personal guide for people who seek information and knowledge – a lighthouse that guides scholars into friendly gentle waters of sense and steers them away from the rocks of ignorance.
Find out more about Cambridge's Graduate Trainee Librarians on their blog.