Placement 1 - Day 2

What a culture shock.

I haven't actually worked a 9-5 day since mid-1966. It's tiring me out but I'm nevertheless finding it envigorating at the same time.


I've been lucky enough to have been accepted for placement at the National Library of Australia (nla). Unlike my little library at school, there's more than just a partially trained teacher librarian and a library assistant on staff. But then again the clientelle base is arguably 21.? million as oppossed to my 750-850. (Of course, according to some of my more recent readings - and I don't have my notes here; so I don't know who in facgt - a school of 750-850 should have [I think: but I'm probably wrong as I'm grabbing these out of the air] 3.5 teacher librarians and about 5 or 6 library assistantgs.

The role statement of nla states;

"The National Library of Australia is the country's largest reference library. Our role is to ensure that documentary resources of national significance relating to Australia and the Australian people, as well as significant non-Australian library materials, are collected, preserved and made accessible either through the Library itself or through collaborative arrangements with other libraries and information providers.

By offering a strong national focus in all that we do and cooperating with others who share our goals, the Library contributes to the continuing vitality of Australia’s culture and heritage.”
http://www.nla.gov.au/library/welcome.html

I've been allocated to the Australian collections' section. I have a corner, a desk a computer a box of unknown materials, a task and a number of extremely helpfull, fulltime, fellow workers.

I am working on a collection of photocopies of quite unusual 16th & 17th century monographs. They are predominantly in Latin but some are in the English of the time and today I found one in German.

My task is to determine exactly what, and how much of it there is of, the monograph I am looking at is. It is sometimes a little difficult to work out exactly what the title is but much more often it is even more difficult to determine who wrote it. I have to search the National Library's database first, then the Libraries Australia database [run from level five here, I believe!] and finally, if that's also unsuccessful, OCLC Worldcat which accesses most of the world's major libraries.

I have to obtain all the bibliographic information for the monograph, enter it on the National Library's database, give it a Voyager Bib Number and assign a barcode. The item will then go off for binding and placing on the shelves or in the stack or in archives as the case may be.

The National Library uses Voyager software. Don't ask!!

I haven't always been able to find what I'm looking for and have independently searched Oxford University's libraries, Cambridge University's Libraries and the British library. I've even gone looking for mention of the work in Google scholar and Google. I've been stumped by three so far but have discovered about nine I think.

So far I haven't seen the reading room or anything else in the library. I'll do that later, when I've settled in a bit more.

I start when I get there - so far 1/4 to 9 but officially at 9 and finish at 5 - but both days so far I've gone way that as I didn't realise that the time had gone so fast. I've even had to be reminded that it was morning tea and lunch times.

I'm finding this 'detective' work quite fascinating and fun in many ways and Canberra is not nearly as cold and miserable as everyone says it is.

More impressions tomorrow or over the weekend.

noel