In Fear and Trepidation... Tomorrow I start my work placement at Waverley Library in Sydney and I am really, really nervous! I have had emails from two people from Waverley Library welcoming me and they have been very reassuring and very supportive. Nevertheless it is nerve wracking. I have flown from Singapore to Sydney, I am jet lagged working in my little bedroom at a B and B just across from the library. (I can see it from the front of the house.) I was so worried that I might be late arriving at work each day due to bad weather or traffic that I thought it prudent to stay as close as possible to the library. I wonder if the CSU staff understand how nerve wracking this experience is? You have to step out of your comfort zone, from a position where you are the boss delegating work to staff to suddenly being the newcomer on the lowest rung of the ladder! I am anxious that my skills as a teacher will not be as valuable in a public library as they are in a school library.I am extremely worried that I have little to offer a public library in meeting their users' needs. I rarely use a public library in Singapore as our three school libraries meet my needs. I do however, borrow books from NLB in Singapore, but even then I don't need to go to NLB a member of the Senior Library staff, as part of her role, sources resources teaching staff need from NLB and deliver them to the teachers at school. Although I am very nervous when I was a child in Australia I always LOVED public libraries and I am very interested to learn who uses their libraries and how they meet their users' needs. In terms of users I am assuming they are the rate payers (or those who rent properties) in the Waverley Municipality. I wonder how broad their user group is and how many people use the library regularly. I wonder what they do to promote borrowing and I wonder if the library is used for anything else? Perhaps it is used for community groups- as a meeting place. I want to know who determines what the library needs to purchase and how. Do they have to prepare a needs based budget as I have just done for my school. I also wonder what their budget is for the year and how it is spent - what percentage on fiction, non fiction, databases and technology for example. I am keen to learn about how their collections are similar or different to mine in my school library and I wonder if they have a collection of resources relating to the history of Waverley. Having written all this I have realised that although I am terribly anxious, I am also really keen to learn more - must finish it is getting late and I only had about 4 hours sleep on the plane last night. I really hope it all goes well tomorrow!