Name: Jasen ‘Jayse’ Smith

Age: 20

Position: Library officer (Children’s/Teen services)

Qualification: None, I will be training next year for my library technician qualification

Organisation: High Country Library Corporation(Wangaratta Branch)

Previous positions: Cleaner (Hides Bakery Benalla) Front end Supervisor (BiLo Benalla)

What’s great about your job?

What makes my job great? The question should be what doesn’t make my job great. I love everything about it, it’s the staff, it’s the patrons that I have strong relationships with, its my teenage group which I run every two weeks, it’s the preschool story times I do every Tuesday and Friday. My job is fantastic. It also enabled to gain employment with a government run youth website, Youthcentral (www.youthcentral.vic.gov.au), where I’m now working as a roving reporter which has been absolutely fantastic

What’s the most fun experience you’ve had at work?

Moving the library from one facility to our new 3.5 million dollar home was the most fun, interesting, exciting and awesome experience in my life. I learnt about things I had never dreamed I would and did things that I could only do in that time. Also preschool story time every Tuesday and Friday which I run has to be the most fun aspect of my job.

Describe a typical day at work.

Explaining this could be difficult, but here I go. At my workplace there are two shifts you can work. There’s the opening shift where you start at 8.45am in that time you have to turn on computers, log them on, start up all the library catalogue computers, empty book chute, print overdue notices (THERE ARE A LOT!) open the doors to the public and off we go…where as if I started the closing shift which starts at 10am I would come in count the money, see if all the overdue notices have been sent off and then off we go…the rest of the day consists of questions, answers, help on computers, shelving books, chatting to patrons organising story time’s for the following days etc etc

What do you find rewarding and challenging about you job?

The look on kids faces while I’m reading them stories about frogs, fast cars or reading those cool pop up books is just a delight. The challenges of my job would have to be time management and getting people involved. Also, questions the public ask about books and information they would like are quite a challenge.

What are the personal skills & attributes that you need to do this job?

You need to have general knowledge and an interest in current affairs. You need to have quite good computer skills but if you don’t it doesn’t matter because they will give you training on the computers. You need to have good inter-personal skills as you will be working with the public a lot. Also a sense of humour goes a long way in this profession. You don’t need to be a avid reader to be in the library profession as it is not all about the books anymore. It’s a fantastic place to work and I would encourage anyone who is the slightest bit interested to give it a shot. 

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