Jyväskylä libraries are often visited by schoolchildren to learn about working life. One of them kept a diary for a week about her visit.
Jyväskylän kirjastoissa käy usein koululaisia tutustumassa työelämään. Yksi heistä piti viikon ajan päiväkirjaa tutustumisjaksostaan.
Monday 5.2.24
Today on Monday the 5th of February. Working in Jyväskylä pääkirjasto, I started off getting a tour of the place. It had more floors than I expected. I was mostly working on the 2nd floor which I think is the main area of all places in the library.
My first task was returning the books that have been returned by the readers. There were about 100+ books that I returned. I think it was the easiest task I’ve done today. I don’t quite remember what I did for the second task but I think it was putting books onto shelves. In my opinion shelving books is a hard task if you’re a first timer such as myself. Books are divided by genres, then by the first letter of the last name of the author, then comes the first name and then the title of the book. It was pretty confusing, because sometimes I read the wrong letter or mix up the alphabetical order.
Then came my 40 minute break which is also my lunch break. After that I did my third task, or fourth? I put new books on display and then picked reserved books. It was also really hard. Finding books is much harder than putting the books back. Some are on display, in the wrong place or even lost. I took a 15 minute break, after then when the break was over we went to look for books that weren’t in their usual place. Of all the books in the list we found all of them except for two. After all that I scanned them all, so they can be put in the right place.
In the picture: Returning piles of reserved books.
It also depends if the book has already been received, returned or if the person has canceled the reservation and doesn’t want to borrow the book anymore. To be honest I don’t feel like canceling an order anymore after that, because of the hard work of someone trying to find the specific book for you. After all of that this is my last task to write a dairy of my day-to-day experience working here. Time really flies by quickly. Well then I’ll check back in tomorrow. I hope I do something different and interesting next time!
Tuesday 6.2.24
It is now Tuesday 6th of Febuary. Today I did a little bit the same thing as last time. In the morning I started scanning the reserved books. I actually did a lot of scanning today. It’s one of my favorite tasks, because it’s very easy thing to do. Then I also picked up some books. Somehow I managed to find almost all of them. It kinda gets easy when you know where the shelves are. I also put some books into white trolleys. Then just about 13.00pm I got to see them shipping books that are suppose to be delivered to other libraries in central Finland. Also I forgot to mention that I got a tour of the 3rd floor before lunch break. It’s a really quiet place and full of private rooms. The 3rd floor is mainly music related and the most quiet place in the library. Things today went nice and peaceful and I’m getting the hang of working here so far. That’s it for now. See you on Wednesday! 😀
Wednesday 7.2.24
Wednesday February the 7th. Today in the library I did some different tasks, I took out the new books and returned them. After a new book has been published and sent to the library they put [them] into a special place where. I call it the newly arrival books. It’s a place where they put new books and then take them out after 9 months has passed. And since some books had been there for a long time my task was to take the not so new books anymore to the section where the other old books are. It was easier than looking for reseved books, because there were only a few shelves, but they can also be taken by the costumers and borrowed it. After I’d taken most of the books in the list, I took off the stickers that says ”new” on it and returned the books into the returning machine.
When my lunch break had ended I met my Opo [teacher] and he asked me about my work. After we finished talking I continued my work. So the next thing I did was pick out books for an exhibit at the 3rd floor. You can find it somewhere near the foreign language section. The theme I went for the exhibit was Valentines day related. It took me almost the whole day to finish picking out books for the exhibit. I really enjoyed doing that, that’s why I took so long. I also asked some costomers if they had any recommendations. They were really helpful and found books in different languages. I also wish I could read the ones in different letters. They looked really interesting to read. Some of them were the books I want to read. Maybe I’ll borrow them after the exhibit has been changed. But yeah I had fun doing that task and made my day. I’ll write again next time!!
Thursday and Friday 8.2-9.2.24
It’s the last day I’ll be working here in the library. Friday the 9th of Febuary. Yesterday I didn’t have the time to write at the last hour of my shift, so I’ll be writing the things I did from yesterday and today. Yesterday I had a tour of the 4th and the storage area. In the fourth floor I got to meet people who purchase new books. They mostly deal with new books that had arrived in there. For example this one task I did is taking new books and scanning them and and see if there are any resevations already. If there were no reservations you get send the books to other libraries and when there are still spare ones you get to decide which library to give an extra one.
Then after lunch I continued working on the exhibit on the 3rd floor. I got to decorate it more, like putting valentines related stuff. We went to the basemant also know as the storage area. There you can find all of the books that don’t really fit the upstairs shelves or are just not really interesting to read nowadays. There are mostly historical books, old magazines dating back from somewhere in the early 1900’s, but there might be still older ones in store. But yeah back to my task. We went to take some stuff for decorating. We brought back the stuff that I think was very interesting. In the end I did an origami though I only got to make two since my working days was over. I was also supposed to make a poster for the exhibit but I didn’t have time so I did it today.
At first I did some normal scanning work for some reserved books then next I went to the 4th floor again and met one of the workers here. She helped me make a matching theme poster for the exhibit. After that I finished making the poster and printed it. The exhibit turned out really nice, I really like how it turned out and I enjoyed making it too. So then the next task that I was given was to pack the books that are going to be sent to the big book storage in Kuopio. All of the books that the library doesn’t need anymore goes there and other libraries that need them can have it. So it’s like sharing one book to another one who needs it. I like that a lot since books can be really expensive and borrowing is really the only way you can keep your money to yourself.
So then I think my last task was picking reserved books and after that I had a little break and then had a talk with the one who helped me throughout this week and got my tet-certificate. I thank all of the staff here, they were really kind and they helped me when I needed help and also thank you for having me here to work for one week. It was fun working here and I’d like to work in a library somewhere in the future again. That is all, thank you for reading this diary of mine!
Kallellaan kertomuksiin 