Positive Action Traineeships in NW Libraries - Case Study
6. Lessons Learned
A nine month traineeship is an extremely short period of time at work and passes very quickly. Both trainees felt that they would have liked more opportunity to organise community activities at their libraries, but this wasn't possible in the time available. Perhaps their initial induction training should have been more intensive, bringing them up to speed on procedure faster, thus leaving more time for creative activity later.
It was vital to have experienced and committed local managers working with the trainees, who might have had a very different experience if they had been more isolated. The enthusiasm of the employing authorities was essential to making the traineeships successful. The different regulations around recruitment in different authorities may have defeated this project without the determination of the local managers, assisting the co-ordinator, to ensure that obstacles were overcome.
This project delivered more for the library services involved than we anticipated and this was in part due to the calibre of the trainees we were fortunate enough to recruit. Liverpool's trainee had language skills which made her particularly useful to the local refugee and asylumÐseeker community. Language was not an issue in Lancashire, though Shaaheda's cultural background gave her entry to local Asian women's groups. Both traineeships demonstrated clearly that specific communities do welcome the opportunity to relate to and work with staff who share their own cultural and life experience.
We were able to extend awareness of the traineeships through the Time To Read network and I feel confident that other authorities would now be keen to come forward to recruit trainees if the opportunity was available again. The only major regret is that neither of the authorities involved this time were able to retain their trainees beyond the period of the traineeship. If I was to co-ordinate a similar project in future, I would try to ensure that the traineeship was longer and led to something more long-term for the trainee.
Jane Mathieson
Regional Reader Development Co-ordinator
Time To Read
Librarians in the North West have pioneered partnership working to encourage new readers into libraries. Time To Read is a partnership of librarians engaged in reader development activity in public library authorities in the North West Region. All 23 public library authorities in the region currently support Time To Read.