Mark Pester Email & Phone Number

London, England, United Kingdom

As Library Manager, I run the library at WM College, including the management of one member of library staff and any library volunteers. I am responsible for developing the collection in accordance with the library budget and input from the teaching team. I am also responsible for deaccession decisions. I catalogue new items using the library management system Heritage Cirqa. As one of the two available members of library staff, I work independently to provide an enquiry service to students, including evenings and weekends. I am also responsible for managing the rota and work of the other library staff and volunteers. I deliver inductions for key student groups to ensure they are comfortable using the library and monitor a range of usage and quality metrics for input into the college’s quality process. I also work closely with the teaching team to ensure the resourcing and training in place meets the needs of their students. The main library was decanted for refurbishment during the outset of my time at WM College. During this period, I worked from a small temporary library space to provide a continued service to key users and managed the eventual return to the main library.

London, England, United Kingdom

I ran the library at David Game Higher Education. As sole librarian for the college I was responsible for the development of the library by identifying software, books, and online resources for purchase and maintaining the catalogue. I also managed the circulation of physical resources when the library was available and provided enquiry support to students. Facilitating digital literacy at DGHE was a key component of my role. My work in this area included creating online guides on a variety of subjects including the library’s resources, partner resources, and open access content. In addition, I liaised regularly with the academic team to identify appropriate learning resources and areas for further development of the library. I also worked with library and IT staff from DGHE’s collaborative partners.I further served as Clerk to David Game College’s Board of Directors.

I worked for a number of years as an Evening/Weekend Supervisor at City, University of London. In this post I manned the enquiry desk and provided assistance to users during evening and weekend shifts at Cass Business School and City Law Library. I worked with a service assistant to run the library and responded to user enquiries including use of the catalogue, physical resources, and electronic databases.

Northampton Square, London Ec1V 0Hb

I was seconded to work full time as an Information Assistant in the Copyright and Digitisation Team at Northampton Square Library. This involved manning the enquiry desk during daytime shifts and providing assistance to users as well as providing roaming support for users and upholding library policy. In addition, I was responsible for using Talis Aspire to process and upload digital readings when they were requested by subject librarians and academics. This involved maintaining City’s compliance with their CLA license and sourcing documents from the British Library as needed. This role also required me to check theses submissions for copyright or data protection issues, make any necessary redactions, and consider requests for embargos from the authors. Once these hurdles had been cleared in consultation with the Copyright Librarian, I uploaded the theses to City’s institutional repository, City University Online. In addition, I continued in my role as an Evening/Weekend Supervisor at the Innovation Building Law Library on Sundays. I left at the end of the secondment to continue my work as an Evening/Weekend Supervisor.

I worked fifteen hours a week shelving books and providing a point of contact for library users. This involved demonstrating the catalogue to users and assisting them with research enquiries. I left at the end of the temporary post.

I was in a customer-facing role manning the library's enquiry desks for casual shifts on weekends and during the week. I assisted users with research and technical problems, helped open and close the library, checked the reading rooms and assisted with shelving. This taught me the value of professionalism while interacting with users and enhanced my knowledge of law research databases and materials. I left at the end of the post.

Over the course of the year, I was rotated between Academic Services, Document Supply, and Continuations to experience the full range of the library's work. I responded to user research questions at the enquiry desk. Academic Services involved maintaining circulation by sending overdue notices to users and recording usage statistics. Document Supply involved retrieving and processing commercial requests from legal firms for law documents from our collection within an hour of the request being placed. Continuations involved processing new issues from the library's journal collection and sending older books from the main collection to the closed basement.This work gave me valuable experience working as part of a team to complete a variety of tasks. In particular, work on the enquiry desk and on Document Supply required me to work swiftly and accurately while under time pressure to ensure the best possible customer experience. I left with the end of the temporary post to study librarianship at UCL.

Walthamstow

I worked as a volunteer for the online bookshop at Oxfam Walthamstow. This is involved a variety of tasks, including scanning books and listing them for sale online using specialist software, processing and dispatching orders, responding to customer enquiries and complaints by email, and supervising and training other volunteers. I also used the bookshop's database to track the age of the collection and cull the holdings periodically.This gave me valuable experience of working as part of a small and ever-changing team to complete regular tasks. I worked under three different Deputy Managers responsible for the online bookshop during my time at Oxfam Walthamstow, which required flexibility and independent work, as my supervisor only worked part-time and so I was frequently required to oversee the day's work myself, with reference to the overall shop manager where necessary. I also helped add to and use the database governing the online bookshop's holdings. I left this post in order to take up paid work as a Graduate Trainee at IALS.

Master’S Degree, Library And Information Studies, Merit

Bachelor’S Degree, History, 2:1

Activities and Societies: Mahjong Society, RPG Society