Five Voices, Two Perspectives: Integrating Student Librarians into a Science and Engineering Library

While there is an ample amount of literature on the topic of integrating new librarians into the workplace, there has been relatively little on the practice of integrating graduate library school students on the reference desk. Written by a team of librarians and library school students, this article brings together the unique perspectives of working professionals and students. Each year the Science and Engineering branch of University of British Columbia (UBC) Library hires a number of library school students as Student Librarians (SL). This creates a win-win situation whereby librarians are given release time to work on a multitude of tasks, while students are given the opportunity to gain valuable experience working in an academic library setting, learning from professional librarians and building a network. The article begins with insight and advice from supervising librarians, including what they look for in a potential new hire. The discussion then moves on to include reflections from the student librarians in the areas of reference, collection development and instruction.