Meet Your Academic Services Librarian #10

This year we will do a series of posts introducing you to the members of the Academic Services Team. This time it is the Graduate Trainee in Information Services.

Dan Smith
Library Graduate Trainee 2013/14

I’m Dan Smith and make up 50% of the Library Graduate Trainees employed by Information Services for the 2013/14 academic year. My time is split between four sections/teams within the library: Collections, Acquisitions & Resource Management; Academic Services; Lending and E-services & Communication. This gave me the opportunity to gain a wide variety of practical experience into the day to day running of an academic library, while giving the library a raw recruit, to try and train.

After my first brush with education ended at the age of 18, I worked for local government and was involved in the administration of teacher training throughout Powys. After a few years of arranging training for others, I started to think of returning to education myself and finally settled on the idea of trying to find a career which would allow me to order and sort things, so librarian. 


My return to education finally took place in 2010, when I moved to Aberystwyth to study at the Department of Information Studies. I completed my undergraduate degree in Information and Library Studies in 2013, part of which involved a month’s work placement with Aberystwyth Information Services. After the month's placement the library really failed to get rid of me, as I stayed on to work as a library casual, covering desk and shelving duties in the evening and at weekends along with being involved with the Collection Management team as an irregular mover of heavy things. 

Outside of study and work my interests tend to be of geeky variety, which at the moment involves far more episodes of Adventure Time than is wise, although I have been known to attend the occasional martial arts class and even venture into the gym from time to time.