End of the line = On to new things

It is the end of my one-year internship as a Library Graduate Trainee at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. I literally remember it as if it was yesterday when I was led on a tour around the library and the herbarium by the previous graduate trainee, Marc Muller. Fast forward a year, I have spent two days doing the same thing. I am definitely excited for next year's trainees and coming back to Kew to see how they are getting on.

I have definitely grown as a person since being at Kew and achieved a long list of different things since being a Kew. From my projects:

• Completely retro-catalogued approx. 500 journals from Japan, China and South America and sections on Bryophytes and Ferns.
• Approximately 300 newly catalogued books and journals titles.
• Completed updating the master list in Excel for exchange partners.
• Completed updating the bookseller list.
• Completed my conservation and book-binding project to make my first ever journal.
• Completed the Kew Gardens at War project which has garnered 300+ people.
• Survived three shelf shifts for the Gardens Library, Studies Office, Diplomatic and Consular reports and pre-1867 journals.

Wednesday: Typical day as a Library Graduate Trainee

It is mid-week and I am having a busy morning doing a little bit of administrative work. I have my first meeting with someone outside of my library team :- our main source/ go-to-guy/ researcher for our large end of year exhibition to comemorate Kew Gardens involvement during World War One in terms of stories of plant science, research and plant-based products from the Library,, Art & Archives and Economic Botany collection. So, the first thing for me to do is to gather together my research in an organised fashion and set up a meeting to view some materials from the Economic Botany collection for our display.

One thing I learnt from having this meeting is that organisation of research and a planned agenda key. Being able to be in a place like the pub/restaurant also helps encourage individuals to be relaxed enough to actually get involved and contribute to the discussion.