Meeting with acquisitions asssistants

After meeting with Mark, I met with some acquisitions assistants. First I talked with Mary who works in the print journal collection, keep records straighten out online, and answers people problems. She makes sure that people has access to information. The most challenging thing for her is keeping up to date, and not having enough time. If there was anything that she could change it would having enough time to communicate more with people and sharing ideas with them. She is currently working on catching up with the binding, and will be centering information for the interlibrary loan. She also does the reference desk, update records, answer questions through email, website, and face-to-face contact, and provides journals to other countries through HINARI. In the future, she hopes to become a reference librarian because she likes the contact, and is working towards that goal by getting a degree. She has been in the job for 3 years.

Then I met with Jeannette who orders electronic journals through HINARI and EBSCONET. She started off in the circulation department for 21 years, and changed into the collection development. The most challenging thing for her is making sure to get the correct records. On a daily basis she bascially looks at her email, responds to them, and sets up a schedule for the next day. She has been in the career for 44 years, and one of her proudest achievements has been organizing. She hopes that in the next 2-5 years she is retired.

After meeting with Jeannette, I met Melissa who orders books, pays for the books, and catalogs them. Electronic and navigation are both challenges for her. If she could change anything at all in the job, it would be developing more structure and having a clear view of things. She orders books for the historical part of the library, and she says that cataloging is the most difficult. Also she mentioned that having good organization skills and paying attention to details are important traits that one needs for her job. She feels that in order for her to be happy in her job there needs to be a variety of things. She is not working on anything particular at this point other than that she just finished on cataloging books that took a long time since it was a collection. Her acheievements have been learning how to catalog books.