Library Volunteers are students who volunteer with Library staff to support and add value to services provided by the Library. We recruit new volunteers at the beginning of each academic year. Joseph Tustian is a 1st year BSc Economics student currently volunteering with our team. In this post, Joseph writes of his experience volunteering with us over the past year.
Ever since November, when I began my volunteering journey, I have found archaic texts, new skills, and tranquility amongst the loud and exciting university lifestyle. My name is Joe. I am a first year Economics student who lives off campus and came to Hull from the heathland filled fens of East Anglia. I am the kind of person who floats towards books like a cartoon character would to a pie. With that in mind, here is what I have to say about my volunteer experience:
On my first day, staff trained me on simple Library tasks that I could start off with and, by my fourth shift, I was putting books through the Sierra system. One thing that I can guarantee stays consistent whilst I have been a part of this, is that staff are always supportive and value the help you provide immensely. They are kind and friendly, so I look forward to my shifts. To paint a better picture of this, I would say that the Open Days that you can volunteer at are the best opportunities to get to know them better. Whilst helping to direct and inform visitors, there are lots of moments in between to chat. You feel a part of a group at these events, working closely with other volunteers also.
Before I delve into more core parts of my experience here, I must go off on a small tangent to really emphasise why now is the best time to become a volunteer. For any passionate writers out there, or people who say they want to write, this blog is relatively new at the time I am writing this. In fact, it is a revival of an old project. All volunteers can contribute to it, and to avoid clashes with studies you can work on it during a shift. Right now, I am sitting behind the Art Gallery desk seeing visitors come and go while I mash keys and sip juice. Don’t wait to miss out on the hype of being among the first to add to this, as you are credited fully in the posts.
Tangent over now. Lets explore the day-to-day stuff. What do volunteers actually do on an ordinary shift? First, I will have to completely revoke the word ordinary. There are plenty of days when a new task is presented to me whether that is replacing old signage, checking for faults, or learning a new function of the Sierra system. I have mentioned Sierra twice now, so I kind of owe you an explanation. Sierra is the Library’s administrative system for checking out holds as well as activating the tags and barcodes of new books. It has many uses, but I have a real soft spot for how old the application is. Amidst all the new Windows 11 software, it still has the stylised borders of an old windows XP program. This is not to say that there aren’t any laid-back shifts too. Not every day is a whirlwind of new, new, new. Here is what I usually find myself doing:
I stuff my headphones in my bag as I approach the desk and greet everyone at reception. Picking up the sign in booklet, I write down my name, hours, the number on the volunteer card I have just been handed, and the number of the locker key I wish to borrow. I am told I start in the Reading Room for my first hour, and then help out on Floors 2, 3, and 4 during my second hour. Sometimes, I’ll come in at 10:00 and finish at 12:00, but today I am in from 14:00 until 16:00. Sometimes, I just book one hour in through the volunteers’ Canvas page if my week is super busy. I head down the stairs and use my volunteers’ key card to access the basement. After locking up my belongings, I’ll hop in the lift and fly up to the first floor. I quietly say hello to whoever is at the Reading Room reception desk, who outline my duties. I start off shelving what has been left on the trolley: some DVDs on the mezzanine floor, some HDC collections, and a couple take me on a detour to the third floor before I head back down. My second task is to grab a basket and retrieve some available holds. Most come from the Reading Room, but there are a few that I must search for on the upper floors. I am thanked for my assistance and start my second hour greeting the member of staff on Floor 2. There isn’t a lot to do today, so I shelve any books left on the trolleys and spend the rest of my second hour quietly doing some shelf tidying. After grabbing my things from the basement, I hand in my keycard and locker key before heading home. I leave feeling relaxed and mindful.
I appreciate the headspace a quieter shift like that can provide. It allows me to plan out the rest of my day. If I was being completely honest though, amidst the daydreaming, I spend most of that thinking time deciding what I’ll cook for lunch or tea depending on the shift. Other common tasks include: checking that HDC books don’t end up on the upper floors and BJL books don’t end up in the Reading Room. On some days, there is time to set up the wand. It is a small handheld scanning device that reads the tags on books and displays, on a tablet, whether they are in the right place or not. It checks for faulty tags, and other issues as well, making it a fun task. Other times, you can be sent on a mission/treasure hunt to locate lost books. Please, if you see a copy of Charlotte’s Web lying around, bring it to a reception desk. I can’t bear that such a childhood favourite is sitting abandoned somewhere unknown. My worst enemy has to be a book titled Gothic Incest. Other volunteers and myself have seen it appear on the lost sheet since I started volunteering here. A part of me hopes it never gets found but I’ll do anything to not see its name on that sheet again. We repair old books, stamp and tag new books, and process them to shelve later. There is a cute little label maker for the class marks. They teach you how to read the classmark system in training.
I could go on and on about all the many micro parts of volunteering, but I should leave some surprises. Alongside this blog, another new opportunity we have outside the norm is the running of online study sessions via Teams. My heart goes out to any part time and online students who don’t have the same levels of access to the campus as others do. To connect and bring students together whilst spreading feelings of inclusion, Library staff are looking to introduce online study sessions run by volunteers. I attended a pilot session showing a lot of interest from students and I hope to be among the volunteers running future sessions.
I would like to share one more gem with you before I bring this to its end. The physical beauty of books. If you have been on any of the upper floors, you would have noticed some of the older ones that live here. As a volunteer, I will discover all sorts of texts from times before I was born, predating the 50-year-old elevators, or even carefully constructed remnants of what used to be the full works of our first economists, scientists, and other famous authors. The most awe inspiring of these I get to gawk at are in the basement as I collect holds or simply when I drop my bags off in the locker room. They add to the basement’s spookiness – if you’re a fan of that.
I have shared a lot of pleasant experiences of volunteering here, but you may enjoy it for countless other reasons. Currently, I have given 40+ hours, but the minimum required to receive a Library volunteers’ award is 15 within the given time frame of the academic year. I also put this towards my Hull Employability Award. I hope some, if not all of my experiences connected with you in different ways, because I’d love to see even more people grow our circle. Meeting fellow volunteers is a large part of the adventure, so please share this blog with friends. Sign up to add something meaningful and pleasantly memorable to your CV.
By Joseph Tustian, 1st Year Economics Student
If you are interested in becoming a Library Volunteer, please email our team at libraryvolunteers@hull.ac.uk and we will add you to our waiting list.