Trainee Job Descriptions

While the graduate trainees at Cambridge libraries work together on this website and attend a coordinated programme of events, we all work for different college or faculty libraries. As these are training positions there is a lot of similarity between our everyday tasks, but there are also individual duties and projects for each trainee. Each library has its own atmosphere and particular advantages.

Christ's ♦ Classics ♦ Emmanuel ♦ Pembroke ♦ Newnham ♦ St John's ♦ Trinity

Christ's College Library: The Job

The College Library can be divided into four parts: the Undergraduate Library, the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Law Library, the Annexe, and the Old Library. The Undergraduate Library and the Law Library contain the materials that are most commonly used by students. The Annexe contains older books, which may be borrowed but are stored in a closed access area. The Old Library, which is an extension by G.F. Bodley of the original sixteenth-century College Library, contains manuscripts and early printed books, most of which were given by benefactors throughout the College's history. These include books given by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the Foundress of Christ's College.

In total, the different parts of the library contain some 90,000 volumes, and provide seating for approximately 60 readers. As well as books, the library stocks a range of periodicals, music scores, DVDs and videos. Christ's Undergraduate Library is open 24 hours a day, and the self-issue system means that the Christ's trainee doesn't spend any time on an issue desk – however, there is still plenty of contact with the students, as they often have enquiries or problems with which they need help.

The graduate trainee is involved in all aspects of the Library, and Christ's also promotes training, courses and visits tailored to the trainee's specific interests. The trainee is encouraged to develop projects according to their individual ideas, and the needs of the Library. The trainee's work can include any of the following:

• Completing circulation procedures, including book returns, reservations, recalls and the monitoring of the security video.
• Dealing with enquiries ranging from student requests and problems, to photograpic and bibliographical enquiries.
• Shelving, and tidying the reading spaces.
• Carrying out induction tours at the start of term.
• Checking faculty reading lists, liaising with Directors of Studies where required, and ordering and receiving new books.
• Aiding with 'Friends of the Old Library' events and lectures.
• Updating and contributing to the Cambridge Graduate Trainee website, the Christ's College Library website, and the Christ's Library CamTools site.
• Assisting with the annual stock check.
• Classifying and cataloguing, using the Library of Congress classification scheme.

The graduate trainee is usually given the opportunity to put on an exhibition in the Old Library. Recent trainees' exhibition titles include 'Diderot et d'Alembert's Encyclopédie', 'Hero mythology in Greek and Latin literature' and 'The Advancement of Learning: Five Centuries of Donations to the Old Library.' Trainees have also contributed to recent exhibitions on Christ's alumni John Milton and Charles Darwin. In addition to this, the trainee takes on specific library projects; recent projects include creating subject guides for user education, starting a new acquisitions display and completing a preservation survey in the Old Library.

Visit Christ's College Library website

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Classics Faculty Library: The Job

The Classical Faculty Library is a collection of books on the Classical world of Ancient Greece and Rome: its literature, history, philosophy, religion, art and archaeology. The library meets the needs of both undergraduates and researchers in the field. The Classics Faculty hosts 300 undergraduates, approximately 40 MPhil students and 50 PhD students at any one time, and also welcomes many students and researchers from other faculties, such as philosophers, historians and archaeologists. The library is an open access working library situated in the faculty building along with the lecture rooms, faculty offices and Classical Museum of Archaeology. The graduate trainee works alongside the librarian, assistant librarian, library assistant and volunteer.

The graduate library trainee's day is varied as they are involved in all aspects of the daily running of the library. Half of the day is spent at the issue desk, where the trainee deals with a wide range of readers and enquiries. The other half of the day is spent in the library office. In collaboration with the library assistant, the trainee is responsible for organising tasks for the graduate invigilators and volunteer assistant. The trainee's work includes any of the following:

• Operation of the issue desk: handling the return, issue and reservation of library items.
• Enquiry work.
• Shelving.
• Library induction tours for students and visiting scholars.
• Ordering and receiving books and resources.
• Classifying and cataloguing.
• General ICT support for readers.
• Work on user education material for specialist resources.
• Managing provision of electronic resources for students.
• Editing the library website.
• Processing periodicals and monographs.
• Chasing missing periodicals from publishers and academic exchanges.
• Book repairs.
• Maintaining security of rare items.
• Fetching from the pamphlet store.
• Binding library materials and theses as requested.
• Sole supervision of the Library when working on a Saturday morning.

The Classics trainee receives training from all the members of the library team.

Midway through the year, the library trainee is given the opportunity to put on an exhibition relating to a Classical theme of his/her choice. Recent exhibitions have covered Alexander the Great, the Villa of Papyri at Herculaneum, Slavery in the Classical World and the Library of Alexandria: Life, work and legacy. In addition to this, the trainee takes on a specific library project of their choice with guidance from the librarian. Previous graduate trainees have helped to catalogue special collections, and have worked on material for the library website. These projects are an opportunity for the trainee to pursue and develop a specific personal interest, while at the same time experiencing the day-to-day activities of a faculty library team.

Visit the Classical Faculty Library website

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Emmanuel College Library: The Job

• Shelving returned books.
• Dealing with student queries.
• Processing new journals.
• Processing new acquisitions.
• Assisting with the checking of books lists against the Library's holdings.
• Checking bibliographic details and prices of books on suppliers' databases and liaising with suppliers over the availability of books.
• Assisting with the supervision of readers using manuscripts or rare books.
• Processing new reader records and making library cards.
• Carrying out induction tours for new students.
• Assisting the Archivist.
• Cataloguing and classifying new acquisitions.

The Graduate Trainee at Emmanuel is part of a small team and therefore is able to gain experience in all aspects of the day-to-day running of a college library. There is also the opportunity to assist in the College Archive. The library is open to students 24 hours a day during term time and it operates a self-service issue system. If a student wishes to reserve a book, or request that the library buys one, then they see a member of staff.

The library has a wide coverage of many subjects including law, medical and natural sciences, modern and medieval languages, music, English, history and computer science. There is also a collection of rare books and manuscripts.

There is no fixed daily routine as a rare book visitor or a student urgently requesting a book can mean that each day is different. The Librarian and Assistant Librarian give training for daily tasks and there is the opportunity to go on courses on cataloguing, rare book cataloguing, classification and HTML.

At Emmanuel free lunches are available during term time.

Visit the Emmanuel College Library website

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Pembroke College - Library: The Job

Pembroke College Library caters for the needs of the College's undergraduate population; as such, the shelf book collection contains core texts for all undergraduate subjects from Architecture to Zoology. Most subjects are covered by more than just the core texts, and some subjects are particularly well-represented, such as English and Art. The Law Library is housed in a separate room within the building of the Library. The Library also houses much of the College's unique archival material, which is used by fellows and visiting scholars.

The Graduate Trainee is part of a small team that maintains the Library and delivers the services that the College requires. The main tasks involved in the role include:

• Daily routines: clearing books, returning books, shelving books
• Book processing: labelling, covering, stamping, repairing books
• Cataloguing books: entering relevant data for new acquisitions/donations so that books can be found on the online catalogue
• Front desk duties: dealing with enquiries, helping borrowers, giving library introductions
• Checking reading lists: checking books that are listed for new courses against currently held stock to inform purchasing decisions
• De-accessions: removing old stock from online catalogue, adding withdrawn stamp, etc.
• Web management: updating lists of new acquisitions on the library WebPages
• Ongoing projects: helping with book moving, re-classification, drawing library plans
• General office admin: emailing, answering telephones, printing instructions

The role also provides the opportunity to handle some of the archival material, for example, when dealing with enquiries that concern specific items. The Trainee also has the opportunity to engage in a personal project that is relevant to the Library's collections.

As with the other trainee posts in Cambridge, the training is continuous throughout the year. Training is provided while performing the tasks listed above. More specialist training is provided on particular days by the university computing service (covering cataloguing and webpage management, for example). The Trainee's experience is also broadened by a series of arranged visits to other libraries both in Cambridge and beyond.

Visit Pembroke College Library webpage

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Newnham College Library: The Job

As part of a small team, the graduate trainee at Newnham is given the opportunity to undertake a range of tasks and be involved in all aspects of library work. The main duties include:

• Dealing with enquiries and helping students.
• Looking after the loans and returns on a daily basis: processing returning books and re-shelving them, dealing with reservations, running overdue notices, etc.
• Labelling and processing new books once they have been catalogued; lyfguarding new paperbacks, if required.
• Ordering books, and receiving them when they arrive in the library.
• Classification and cataloguing of new books.
• Checking and pricing reading lists.
• Managing user records: creating, deleting and editing.
• De-accessioning withdrawn volumes. Once volumes have been withdrawn from the catalogue, removing bookplates and labels, stamping with withdrawn stamp, etc.
• Maintaining the library web page.
• Processing book donations once they have been approved for receipt.

The trainee is given extensive training at the start of the year, both in-house and at courses run by the University Library. Training continues throughout the year, with the opportunity to develop skills through the University Computing Service, and there is the programme of visits organised. A typical day will start with emptying the book drops, reshelving the books, and running overdue and recall notices. The rest of the day will be spent doing any combination of the jobs above.

The trainee is also able to undertake project work in areas of particular interest. Recent projects have included upgrading short catalogue records of English literature books and cataloguing a collection of nineteenth–century children's literature.

Visit Newnham College Library website.

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St John's College Library: The Job

St John's College Library is made up of two distinct parts – the Working Library which provides resources for current students, and the Old Library which contains rare books and special collections of the College. It is one of the largest college libraries in Cambridge, with holdings of over 100,000 volumes, and serves approximately 800 students. The graduate trainee is part of a large library staff team of currently 14.

The graduate trainee's working day is very flexible with direction largely provided by the trainee themselves. The graduate trainee is involved in both the day to day running of the library as well as special projects dictated in part by their own interests. Work which trainees cover during their time at St John's, and then do varying amounts of depending on their interests, includes:

• Cataloguing and classifying: The graduate trainee is taught how to catalogue to international standards (AACR2) and classify using the Library of Congress classification scheme.
• Rare books and special collections: There are plenty of opportunities for working in amongst the rare books and special collections, either on special projects, or just generally learning how to handle and care for rare books and manuscripts, and answer academic enquiries
• Issues, returns and enquiries: The trainee is often responsible for covering the issue desk where they deal with issuing and returning books and act as a first contact point for students and visitors to the Library.
• Shelving: The library assistant is primarily responsible for daily shelving, however during particularly busy times the graduate trainee is expected to take on a share of the shelving.
• Biographical enquiries: The graduate trainee is able to take on some of the biographical enquiries that the College receives. This involves various tasks, and can prove very interesting.

The graduate trainee is usually given the opportunity to put on an exhibition in the Library's exhibition space, which generally relates to special collections material. Recent trainees' exhibitions have covered Johnian medics and medicine, the diaries of Cecil Beaton, collections of Hugh Wharton Gatty, paintings and works of Samuel Butler, and the Grand Tour. Furthermore, if you are interested in rare books you will have the opportunity to pursue a project in the Old Library. Previous graduate trainees have helped to catalogue special collections and index the images within our manuscript collection.

The trainee at St John's College is able to experience most of the aspects of library work found within an academic library and is free to pursue interests which they develop during the year while contributing to the daily running of the Library.

Visit St John's College Library website

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Trinity College Library: The Job

Trinity College Library is the largest of the Cambridge college libraries with a total bookstock of some 300,000 volumes and ten full-time staff. It comprises the Student Library, where the modern collections are held, and the Wren Library, which was completed in 1695 to the design of Sir Christopher Wren and houses significant manuscripts, rare books and other special collections.

The trainee at Trinity is fully involved in the everyday running of the library as part of the staff rota as well as having various individual responsibilities to fulfil. These include:

• Desk Duties: These duties ensure that days are varied with sessions on the issue desk in the modern library, as well as the reception and readers' desk in the Wren Library. During the Issue Desk session the trainee is responsible for circulation functions, user services, answering enquiries in person and over the telephone, making appointments for readers to use the collections in the Wren Library and any other tasks required. In the Wren Library the desk sessions include reader supervision, enquiry work, the processing of reproduction orders, registering rare book readers, and checking manuscript material after readers' use.
• Cataloguing and Classification: This year the main duty of the trainee has shifted from serials management to cataloguing and classification of new books. Training is provided both through cataloguing courses at the UL with the other graduate trainees and sessions with the Assistant Librarian on the particular software used at Trinity. These sessions also help the trainee get to grips with how books are classified. For most of the year new books are restricted to those requested by students and staff but in September it can be extremely busy.
• Supervision of the Law Reading Room: The trainee is solely responsible for the day to day supervision of an offsite law reading room, which involves shelving law texts and new journals as well as removing and replacing out-dated textbooks.
• Rare books and special collections: There are many and varied opportunities to work with the rare books and special collections, including fetching and checking materials and dealing with various enquiries. There is also the opportunity to work on special projects with these collections depending on interests, for example previous trainees have been taught how to catalogue older works.
• Clerical routines: Filing, labelling, spiral binding and photocopying are among the regular duties of the trainee.

Work on a special project during the trainee year is also encouraged and can vary according to the interests of individual trainees or to ongoing projects within the library. Previous projects, for example, have included an exhibition, the digitisation of manuscript images, large-scale item record creation, and the identification of manuscript and rare book items in the collections for the development of current on-line databases.

Training is provided throughout the year. Usually, the first two weeks are spent with the out-going trainee to enable the newcomer to find their feet. Thereafter training is provided on a number of staff duties, cataloguing and classification, acquisitions, archives, collections management, and so forth by various members of the staff. Additionally, there are relevant courses and talks provided by the University and other organisations in Cambridge and beyond which the trainee is encouraged to attend.

Visit Trinity College Library website.

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