Enquiry Desking

I had my first Enquiries Desk shift today! Most of the questions were fairly basic, like, “Which floor is *insert classmark* on?” or “Do you have a stapler?” Surprisingly though, a fair number of people were not aware of the existence of the library website and assumed they were going to be able to access online resources throught their myEssex page (the student portal which has personalised pages, e.g. for their class schedule and other study-related stuff). And some enquiries were so vague that I had to ask a couple of times and was still not sure what exactly the people were after – maybe they themselves weren’t so sure either…

Anyway, it is good to be out on the desk and actually interact with people, because strangely enough, that is the side of librarianship that appeals most to me. I did some library tours over the past weeks, which went well enough. Only the first one was kind of silly – ten people had signed up, but only four showed up and one went to the loo in the middle of it! Way to go to show your keen interest.

We (that is, me and my partners in crime, the two other trainees) have also been asked to put together a library newsletter. I am curious as to how that will go. Have to keep on top of CILIP news to find things to put in there!