Braith Birchhall works in Resource Management Services as a Serials Assistant. This position assists the Electronic Resources & Serials Specialist with the maintenance of our journals collection both print and electronic.
How would you describe your job?
I am a serials assistant in RMS. I work with periodicals, processing new ones, shelving, recording use, pulling periodicals for binding, re-shelving periodicals after binding, and helping the occasional lost soul navigate the twists and turns of my basement home. I also sometimes do small side projects.
What do you like best about working in Collins Library?
I am lucky to get to work with some really wonderful people. My job is a wonderful balance of sitting and doing computer stuff, and walking around doing shelving stuff. It’s something that I feel competent at when I’m fe
eling incompetent in everything else. It’s calming and steady and makes me feel productive. It is also really nice to be able to take time off or shift my hours around when I have a lot going on school work wise.
What’s your favorite childhood book and why?
I’m really not a good favorites person, but one of my favorite books as a child (and still one of my favorites now) was The Rabbits’ Revenge by Kurt Wiese, which is about a group of rabbits banding together with a bunch of other creatures to construct a rather complicated plot to prevent old man Shivers from making them into a rabbit-skin suit. I also really love the Bunny Planet books by Rosemary Wells. I still get my mum to read them to me sometimes when I’m really stressed out.
The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space. A powerful, revelatory contribution that is as essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as Between the World and Me or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
