Lizzy from Bangkok – her turn

You have heard from a range of my students about what they are up to with their life, post work placement. Now I’d like to introduce to you, “Lizzy from Bangkok” (you could say like the song, Jenny from the Block). You have seen Lizzy’s photo on here when I visited Bangkok and caught up with her in August, we had a very unusual library meeting (if you think it was that formal) at an unusually named place (check the photos out to see the name).!!

When Lizzy joined me for work placement during July to October 2005, at Urbis (we were called UrbisJHD then- terrible name) she was training to be a Library Technician. Now she’s studying to be a Librarian (hey, congrats Lizzy) through Charles Sturt Uni, and it’s now good to see her story, 2 years later, to learn about what she’s doing now. Over to Lizzy…

After a stint at Central Queensland University where I was doing library technician stuff which was mostly customer service, checking books in and out, shelving, covering books and the like, I moved to Bangkok and got a job at a K-12 school library. I was working with one other staff member, and she put me in charge of circulation, while she focused on cataloguing and acquisitions. Circulation was (and still is) a bit of a mess. Because only part of the collection is catalogued on the computer, borrowing is done both manually with date stamps and cardboard library cards; and on the computer, by keying in book codes to the student numbers. This will continue until the entire collection is catalogued.

A couple of months after arriving, my colleague, who wasn’t happy at the school, quit her job, leaving me in charge! So since then I’ve been in charge of acquisitions, which has included chatting with sales reps who come by the school, liaising with teachers, going through book catalogues and trawling the internet, and attending second-hand book sales. I’ve also been cataloguing, and you can forget your online Dewey and online school subject headings, I’m doing it either with Sears subject heading and Dewey volumes, or copy-cataloguing from the Internet. Every record must be entered manually, as our Library Management System (an in-house design) doesn’t incorporate MARC records.

I now have another librarian working with me, and she has taken over a huge backlog of cataloguing (both retrospective & new books), and running library classes for grades 1-4, while I take care of circulation and management of the library.

The collection is probably around 8,000 volumes. One of the issues we have to consider is what ends up in the general collection (for everyone to borrow) and what is reserved for teachers (materials that might be specifically for teachers, and others that are considered ‘unsuitable’ for students). Another problem is donations. For example, we recently received 2 boxes of videos, some dirty and dusty, which we have to decide what to do with. This will take time, as the videos will all need to be played to see if they still work, and if they are worth the time, effort and space required to catalogue and house them. A third problem is that we aren’t given a budget to work with: we must simply make requisitions and hope they are approved.

I would never have guessed in a million years that I would be doing what I’m doing now, I always thought I’d be able to pick and choose a well-resourced school to work in, if I even went into school libraries, but library jobs are thin on the ground in Bangkok, partly because of Thai labour restrictions on foreigners, and also because I am not yet qualified as a librarian (I’m doing post-grad now), so I was lucky to get this job at all. But the students are gorgeous (for the most part!) and I’m getting some amazing experience that is really helping with my post-grad course.

Elizabeth Player (aka Lizzy Player)