History of Reference Assistants at Seattle Central College Library

Since 1998, our library has welcomed 2-3 MLS/MLIS candidates (most often from the University of Washington iSchool) each year to learn and work alongside faculty librarians at our busy reference desk. Via intentional mentorship with librarians, practical experience at the desk to complement their graduate coursework, and opportunities to share their own expertise, our Reference Assistants (RAs) often express feeling well-prepared to apply for library jobs upon graduation. Many former RAs have become adjunct or tenured librarians at SCC Library over the years!

How to Use/Read This Book — for new Reference Assistants

This guidebook is meant to be read in bite-size pieces, while there are slow/quiet times at the Research Help Desk (i.e. prioritize any students who need help). It may take you all year to do all of the readings and consider all of the questions in here, so familiarize yourself with the content overall, and then take your time moving through it carefully. We encourage you to do this learning during your desk shifts, while you are being paid and have easy access to discuss content with the librarians at the desk with you. Please share any feedback and suggestions about this guidebook so it can continue to improve the onboarding and training of future RAs.

How to Adapt This Book — for other librarians/library workers

For those at other libraries interested in starting or modifying a similar program, you are welcome to share/adapt this book’s content. If you do, please cite Seattle Central College Library and continue the use of the Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). If you have any questions or want to share your adaptation of our content, you can easily reach us via email.

NOTE:

Some of the links included in this book direct to Seattle Central’s intranet, requiring log-in by current employees.