Par Sophie Trolliet-Martial
As a second year MLIS student at the Université de Montréal (UdeM), I wanted to get experience as a librarian in an academic library before getting my diploma. Consequently, on September 2014, I applied for a job opening as a student librarian at Concordia University. With 46,000 students, the Concordia University offers 500 programs and 7,000 courses. The University has two campuses: the Webster campus, located downtown, and the Loyola campus in the West side of Montreal. As a result, Concordia University has two libraries, the Webster library and the Vanier library. A total of 49 librarians, including 11 McGill/UdeM MLIS student librarians, are working at Concordia. As required, I sent my resume, a letter of interest, a list of courses completed in my program, and the contacts of two references. Two weeks after, I had an interview with the director of the Vanier library, Mrs Dubravka Kapa, and two subject librarians, Mmes Sonia Poulin and Krista Alexander. Before hiring me, they validated if my personality, my knowledge, and my experience met their requirements through questions, simulation exercises, and a written test. For instance, they asked me why I had decided to do librarianship, they wanted me to talk about my experiences related to the position, and they also expected me to know the difference between doing a reference service in person and on chat. I received a positive answer a couple of days later and since October 2014, I’ve been working part time – 8 hours a week – at the reference desk at the Vanier library. Continuer la lecture
