Double interview to Chiara Cauzzi and Anna Pajerská, both on a staff training week with a focus on university libraries

Chiara Cauzzi, an administrative staff of the BUL and PhD student at USI’s Istituto di studi italiani, joined a staff training week at the Universitat de Barcelona (specifically at the Biblioteca de Reserva). Anna works at the Loan Department of the Palacký University Library (Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Czech Republic) and came to USI to spend a one-week training with the colleagues at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Lugano and the Academy of Architecture Library in Mendrisio.

They both took advantage of the opportunity offered by the Lifelong Learning Programme, benefitting also from SEMP grants.

Thank you, Anna, and thank you, Chiara, for your availability. 

Anna, why did you choose USI for this experience?

I chose Biblioteca Universitaria di Lugano for one-week training to practice my Italian so I looked for the places where Italian is used outside Italy. Although USI is small compared with our university, we have the same opening hours. My interest was to see the library spaces, to see how the library works with its users, what services and activities it offers to them. Then, which options users have in the library. I was also interested in information about functioning and organization of work of the library.

Chiara, what attracted you the most about the Universitat de Barcelona and that particular staff training week? 

Seven months ago I saw a communication of CERL (Consortium of European Research Libraries) with the opportunity to spend one week in the Biblioteca de Reserva. I was attracted by their many projects for early printed books and manuscripts, for example, a database of former owners, a database of printer’s marks, lessons for students in collaboration with courses at the University of Barcelona. I have a passion for early printed books and for the University Library in Lugano (BUL) I have catalogued the early printed books of Carlo Dionisotti (1908-1998) and I have collaborated with the Istituto di studi italiani for a conference and exhibition of these books.

Anna, what were the three highlights of spending one week in a different team?

Amazing friendliness and willingness to give me their time and introduce their work to me with such enthusiasm; pleasant working atmosphere; good work organization.

Chiara, what were the three main take-away of this experience?

The importance of comparison, the passion for new projects and the necessity to keep on learning.

Is there anything you will both be able to immediately implement in your daily work?

Anna: good work organization, schedule of employees to ensure the working of the loan department; recording activities for fast, clear statistics and last but not least connection of the syllabus of subjects that are taught at the university with the library catalogue and the available electronic resources. 

Furthermore, for me, the inspirational idea is to involve students in help in the library.

I would also appreciate the possibility of a part-time job, that greatly affects people's concentration and attitude to work. In this, the Czech Republic could be inspired by Switzerland. 

Chiara: I would like to implement new modalities of valorisation of collections and write new studies about these.

What do you both think is the added value of doing such an experience?

Anna: The new experience enables me to see my work from a different perspective (I have already seen some well-functioning libraries which has influenced my view, of course). Thanks to this stay I could meet new people, visit other libraries and know their way of functioning, know another country, beautiful new places, getting to know another culture. 

Chiara: During my stay, I had the opportunity to speak with colleagues and I could visit Pavellò de la República and a workshop of restoration. Furthermore, I could work on three incunabula (an early printed book, especially one printed before 1501), conserved in the Reserva, I could check the cataloguing of bibliographic records and I inserted provenance notes into MEI (material evidence in incunabula), a database linked to ISTC.

We would like to remind our USI readers that the full list of teaching and staff training week opportunities are available on our billboard: https://www.usi.ch/en/university/info/relint/billboard