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The last few months have been busy and filled with change, trying new things and looking forward. I have been very fortunate to
have been recently offered a new position of Library Assistant within a NHS library,
which will provide an excellent opportunity to continue developing
skills in health librarianship, a sector which I'm really enjoying
working in.
I've recently been re-reading past posts and thinking about what I have learned during my time as a graduate trainee. Aside from working with knowledgeable staff and an outstanding collection, one of the highlights has been without a doubt, the opportunity to engage with lots of different library services and sectors. I recently visited the Wellcome Library with the University of London library trainees- a really interesting visit which exceeded any expectations I may have had.
The visit involved a comprehensive tour around the library and stores with one of the librarians (one of 70 members of library staff) who gave us a good idea about the content and organisation of the collections and informed us of the projects and resources library staff got involved with. One thing that surprised me about the library was just how much was freely accessible to the public. Once registered, users have access to a wealth of modern and historical materials, ranging from medicine, society and culture. To any trainees outside of London looking for an interesting library to visit, I would definitely recommend it.
This month also saw the opportunity to host a visit from the University of London graduate trainees and give them an insight in to what it's like working in a health library. The head of the library organised colleagues from other health libraries to come and present about their roles and routes in to librarianship. I found the talks really useful as both visitors were working in very different roles within Health information services and it was interesting to hear what skills they thought were important for information professionals working in health. It was good to talk a little about my role and what I have enjoyed while working as a graduate trainee and was a nice opportunity to reflect on how the experience has developed me professionally and personally. Harriet Lam, graduate trainee at the Courtauld book library wrote an excellent summary of the visit which can be found here.
My final project in post will be finishing the exhibition on the life and work of early epidemiologist John Snow with the assistant archivist. We've been captioning, organising and putting together a biography and it will be great to see the exhibition process through to the end. The next steps will be putting it all together and publicizing it to members of the college and the public through the website and Twitter. I'm really grateful for the experiences I've had as a graduate trainee and I'm really looking forward to continuing to learn about the information profession.
