Posted on by Zoe W.

Working at the Campus Library

I’ve been working at the Campus Library for over two years and truly love my job. One of my favorite parts of the job has been getting to know and interact with everyone that works here. Each position in the library has its own duties, while every individual has their own stories.

This post shares testimonies from ten of our amazing Circulation and Reserves Student Employees that have worked between Fall 2015 and Spring 2018. Circulation employees pull and shelve materials, interact with patrons at the Information desk on the first floor, search for missing items, and all sorts of other circulation tasks. Reserves employees assist faculty at the Reserves department on the third floor, pull materials for processing, creates scans for courses, and creates Course Reserve records. All of our student employees assist with the second floor children’s literature displays and with this blog.

Further posts covering the other areas of the library will be coming soon!

Zoe

Jessica

Andrea B

Khabir

Stella

Andrea P

Nora

Emily

Molly

Kathy

If you are a UW or Cascadia student and ever have the opportunity to apply for a job at the Campus Library, I strongly encourage you to seize that opportunity! Open positions will be posted here: http://guides.lib.uw.edu/bothell/employment.

Posted on by libraryvoices

The Perfect On-Campus Job

Hi there!

I hope winter quarter has treated you well so far! My name is Kayla and I want to take a few moments to further introduce myself. I’m a senior at UWB majoring in Community Psych and with a minor in Education and Society. I am also a Student Circulation Specialist at the UWB/CC Campus Library. I started working in the library as a freshman (awwwww) and now I’m preparing to graduate in the spring. Amidst all of the craziness of midterms and spring quarter registration, I have some very exciting news to share with you: WE’RE NOW HIRING STUDENT CIRCULATION ASSISTANTS! In order to give you a better idea of what this position is all about, let me share some of my personal experiences about working in the library that will hopefully encourage YOU to apply:

1) Odds are, if you’ve been in the library in the last 3 and 1/2 years, we’ve probably crossed paths. That being said, working in the library presents so many opportunities to meet new people. The nature of my job is extremely social. I have had so many wonderful opportunities to chat with students and faculty members from different departments on campus. No matter if you’re a Community Psych major like me or working toward a degree in Business Management or Electrical Engineering, any job you look for in the future is most likely going to require you to work with other people in some capacity. A job in the library is a great start to building valuable social skills that will look great on a resume later, and build a network!

2) I get to work on campus! My flexible hours let me work before and after class, which cuts down on time where I would have to be sitting in traffic traveling from school to work (or vice versa). Each quarter my supervisors work with me and my coworkers to put together a perfect schedule that fits with all of our classes. My supervisors want me to be successful in both academics and work, so they do everything possible to custom create a schedules for all of the student. They truly do care about each and every one of their circulation student employees.

3) My job is downright fun and lets me be creative. After all, I’m writing a blog post aren’t I? For those of you who love writing and producing things, you get to do that as a student worker! Also, at the beginning of each month the student employees take turns building displays on the second floor using the books from our Children’s Literature collection. If you haven’t yet seen the one for February, the theme is Black History Month—you should go check it out! I personally get to work on the display for the month of March, and I need to come up with a theme… any suggestions?

4) Working in the library doesn’t mean I’m stuck handling with old, dusty books from the 1950s all day. Okay, there are SOME old books from the 1950s, but our reference librarians collaborate with your instructors and work on purchasing the newest, latest, and greatest materials in relation to your classes. As a circulation specialist I get to process and display all of the new books that arrive, and this is the most fun part of my job! We have an amazing and diverse collection of books with over 90,000 physical titles. And did I mention the UW Library system has around 9 million print volumes? Ya, as a student worker you get to handle a lot of books, and it’s totally awesome.

5) This job has helped me become a more detail-oriented person through daily use of the Library of Congress call number system. What is this fancy, odd, call number system? Well, if you take a look at the spine of any of the books in our library collection, you will notice a series of numbers and letters. That’s what we call a number, and all of the books in the library are organized in accordance to their unique number sequence. How can learning the call number system help you later in life? Aside from building you numerical and alphabetical skills (I know it sounds silly because most of us learned how to count and alphabetize in kindergarten, but trust me, you actually CAN improve on those skills), detail oriented tasks are part of every job/career out there! My passion is to be a teacher and work with people—not call numbers—but the principles and applications I’ve learned through working with call numbers have helped me become so much more perceptive in other areas of my life.

6) A final thing I want to highlight is that I get to be mobile! It may look like the circulation students get to sit in a nice comfy chair all day long, but sitting at the main desk is only half of the fun. When I’m not on the desk, you can find me searching the stacks (i.e. the main collection of books on the third floor) for missing books, retrieving books that have been requested, shelving, cleaning, checking study rooms, performing building counts, or working on other miscellaneous tasks. I don’t like being idle for extended periods of time, so having the opportunity to be on my feet and performing different tasks helps keep me active and alert throughout the day.

I absolutely LOVE what I do and I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to work as a student employee at the circulation desk for the entirety of my four years at UW Bothell. Working alongside some of the friendliest people on campus has been quite the treat. The opportunity to work here has led to building relationships with library staff, reference librarians, and other student workers, and I will eventually leave with so many wonderful memories and lasting friendships. For those of you who are ready to see a new side of the library, build valuable career skills, and have a ton of fun along the way, I highly suggest applying for the position as a student circulation assistant. I look forward to training YOU at your new job!

All the Best,
Kayla