Library assistant Hana Whaanga was issuing books when her long skirt got caught in the castors of her chair. She became stuck fast, unable to stand up or move her chair. The customer waiting to check out his books alerted a colleague and Hana eventually extricated herself. Since then, Hana and the customer always have a chat whenever he comes into the library.

“To be a library assistant you should love relating to people,” Hana says. “Libraries exist because of people – those who use it and the staff who work in it. When I help someone locate resources or teach them how to use the catalogues, it makes me feel good. I have enabled them to do something for themselves, a bit like teaching, and hopefully they will go away and retain that knowledge.”

Hana helps a wide range of library users in her part-time jobs at a specialist medical library and a university library. In both jobs she splits her time between work with customers at the front desk, and processing and administration behind the scenes. “Even when I am stamping and labelling books, I always have at the front of my mind that I am processing these books so that people can retrieve them. You need to be very accurate doing this background work, otherwise you can throw people if you put out the wrong information. Having everything in order is part of the appeal of library work for me – maybe that’s my perfectionist streak coming out.”

While this attention to detail is critical, you also need other qualities to excel as a library assistant, Hana says. “You need enthusiasm, a willingness to learn and of course you must actually want to help people. The idea that librarians have to love books, though, is an old, outdated belief. This job is not all about books; more and more, the information industry accesses resources electronically.

“However, at the end of the day it’s about helping people who are in need of something important. What I do means something to someone.”

Hana is of Ngati Kahungunu descent.