Interview with David Henry Ward

As part of this program, we plan to interview librarians who are familiar with specific areas of their own interest. Because I’m interested in the activities of the student staff in the university library, I interviewed David Henry Ward who works at the Undergraduate Library.


Interviewee

David Henry Ward (Associates Professor, Undergraduate Library)

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Q. What was the reason why your library decided to hire student staffs? What kind of effects did you expect for them and how was the actual result?

We have had student staff as long as I have been here, which is close to 20 years.  The library provides opportunities for students to earn money to help with their tuition, and contribute to our mission.  We appreciate having users of library resources working for us for the insights they bring into how their peers utilize the library.


Q. What are their main duties and how do you decide to allocate work?

In general, student assistants perform our core circulation and reshelving duties, which includes charging, discharging, and reshelving books.  We also have students with specialized training for our loanable technology program who handle the more complicated procedures for preparing and circulating those items.  Students also help with assessment through recording questions they are asked and conducting counts of people in the building.  Finally, they answer a limited set of patron questions, and refer reference and technology questions to the appropriate staff.


Q. How do you train student staffs and what do you expect for them to do when they have some events? I’d like to know the process of events (planning, execution, reflection etc.)

We have a combination of an initial orientation prior to working any desk shifts, with weekly training.  Undergraduate Library staffs have built a staff wiki and online training program with weekly questions and training activities to refresh core skills and teach about updates to policies or services.  We are also investigating having a student leadership team composed of experienced students mentoring new assistants.


Q. Do they propose event plans? If they do, to what extent are their proposals adopted?

Students sometimes suggest ideas for the collection or services of the UGL; we don’t really have a formal process for that, other than yearly performance reviews.


Q. Our library decided to hire student staffs. The reason why is that we are expecting them to have interest in the library by increasing the opportunity to engage with the library. Do you have any advices that we should pay attention when we use student staffs?

We enjoy having students work with us, and find it valuable to get their input into services.  The best students also like to help their peers and provide good customer service.  For many college students, this is their first job, so we also find that we have to teach basic job skills like showing up to work on time, responding to email and professional communications in a timely manner, and planning ahead to cover absences.

 

Many thanks to David Henry Ward for facilitating this interview.

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