Impressions from job shadowing in Sweden

Béatrice Niragire visited Sweden two weeks in February together with Daton Ngilinshuti for teaching in the master programme in  library and information science that they are admitted to, followed by one week's job shadowing at the University of Borås library. 

Below, Beatrice shares some impressions from her time in Sweden.

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Outline of the visit

The first week was devoted to the Digitizing Culture Heritage Material Course as planned in the master's program and the second week was scheduled for Job Shadowing. The objective of this Job shadowing was to exchange and learn from the librarians of Boras University Library.

Job shadowing

The job shadowing was organized in meeting sessions according to the library services and
functions. The library of Boras operates through four main functions:

• Customer services
• Collection services
• Education
• Digital services

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During the sessions, we met librarians responsible of each service in the university library and they explained to us the library functions, organization and its contribution to the university academic
services.

Impressions -- what have we learnt?

Organisation and a language lab!

We learnt much from the Boras library organization, for example in the language lab section we learnt how librarians help students in academic writing and oral presentations. This was interesting as it shows the role of a university librarian in research and teaching activities.

Network

We were also impressed by the university library network, where librarians who work within the same work areas organize a meeting three times per year to discuss and share experiences about the daily work.

I will share this information with my fellow librarians. This way of working could help UR-Librarians to learn more from each other's experience and help us to perform more in our daily work.

Inter library loans

The interlibrary loan system used by Swedish university libraries  is also an important service
which can be very helpful to UR-Libraries because, once the UR establish the interlibrary loan
system, it can facilitate for students, researchers and lecturers of one campus to get material from another locations.  For example: Students and researchers of Nyagatare campus will access materials from Huye campus.

Final words

I was interested in how this job shadow was planned, it helped us to visit the library and know
what is done in each section. I am very thankful to the UR-Sweden Program for having facilitated the attendance to this Job Shadowing. I am also thankful to the UR-CMHS for study leave grated to me in order to travel to Sweden.

Kigal 6th of March 2015

School of Public Health, CMHS, University of Rwanda

Beatrice Niragire