Chloe’s work experience at Fulham Library

During my work experience at Fulham Library I learnt many things, most of all that there’s much more to the library service then just scanning books and putting them on shelves.

Fulham Library

You are called on to do a lot more, for example when a customers has trouble on a computer you must be on hand to help solve their problem and teach them how to do it for themselves next time it happens.

I was surprised by the different questions that was asked by customers because of all that goes on in your typical library, you need to be able to answer a range of questions on many topics, as I’ve said before. However, the library was different to what I expected; but in a good way,  by doing work experience here has really improved my self-confidence.  I’m not as scared as I used to be when talking to customers.

While on work experience tasks you are likely to do:

• Strict ordering of books
• Helping customers to find books
• Helping customers solve issues on the computer
• Participating in the under 5s session which involves singing nursery rhymes with other members of staff from the library
• Re-label books
• Maintaining the stock and moving items around, so they are best placed.
• Releasing people’s prints and allocating computers
• If your work experience falls around the middle of July then you may be lucky to help sign up children to the summer reading challenge

The summer reading challenge helps to encourage children to continue reading throughout the holiday. If they complete the challenge they get a medal!

In my time at the library I did all of the above. I found that strict ordering books it can be a lot more complicated, as you need to shift the books from shelf to shelf as you find you have to make room.

In the children’s books you tend to notice there’s series to the books and when you finally get them all together it looks really nice and you feel proud of your work. (As shown in the picture below).

Fulham Children’s Library

The staff at Fulham library are very lovely kind and helpful people to work with and I really enjoyed my work experience with them.

By Chloe,
Fulham Library volunteer

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