SotA Anthology 2015-16
SOTA300: Work Placement
In their second or third year in the School, students have an opportunity to
undertake a placement in a setting that matches their academic and career
or industry interests on a placement that allows them to develop materials
and undertake tasks within a practical or vocational context, apply academic
knowledge from their degree, and develop their personal and employability
skills within a working environment. The module therefore produces a wide
variety of work, a small selection of which we have included here.
Katherine Byron (BA English) spent her placement with The Athenaeum
My work placement was as a Library
Research Assistant at the Athenaeum
Library. There were two particular reasons
behind my decision to apply for this
placement. Firstly, libraries have always
proved invaluable to me. As a child, my
local library always encouraged my passion
for reading through its diverse selection
of books and its numerous reading
competitions; at school and university,
libraries had provided me with a comfortable
and relaxing working environment with
easy access to various research materials.
Subsequently, because I had been so
involved with them, libraries were a very
familiar environment to me and somewhere
where I felt comfortable and at ease. In the
meantime, my second reason for applying
was that my previous work experience at
Brownhills Library in 2010 had not only
been enjoyable but had also, mostly due to
me being inspired and enlightened by the
librarians’ enthusiasm and passion, ignited
an interest in librarianship as a possible
career path. A second-year student at the
time of applying, I was aware that ideally I
needed to have decided what to do after I
finished my degree, and therefore sought
to build on my experience at Brownhills
Library to see if librarianship was truly for
me. I felt that a position at the Athenaeum
Library could help me accomplish this.
Athenaeum in Church Alley was designed
by an architect, commissioned by the
Committee of the Athenaeum, so that
it was almost a replica of that of the old
building. The stunning nature of this interior
design makes the Athenaeum a popular
wedding venue as well as a venue for other
functions such as private dinner parties and
corporate affairs.
The Athenaeum is a private member’s
club whose proprietors include, amongst
others, lawyers, doctors, accountants
and academics. It was founded in 1797
and opened in Church Street in 1799
before relocating to Church Alley, where it
remains today, in 1928. The interior of the
My most significant responsibility was a
project involving the creation of a leaflet
(see right) for a potentially non-academic
audience about the Jackson Pamphlets,
which were not very well known and thus
needed to be signposted to library visitors.
The Jackson Pamphlets is a collection
The Athenaeum was founded with the
intention of providing a library and newsroom
which would ensure that ‘gentlemen could
receive and share information, instead of
going to over-crowded coffee houses or the
poorly-stocked local library’. Subsequently,
a prospectus was produced with the aim of
providing ‘a valuable repository of books
in every department of useful knowledge’.
When actually beginning to build up
the Athenaeum’s library collection, the
proprietors had the task of buying books
‘which no gentleman’s library should be
without’ and the first book they bought was
The Works of H. Walpole, Earl of Orford. By
1820 the library at Church Street consisted
of over 10,000 volumes whilst today, at
Church Alley, it consists of approximately
60,000 including books, collections of
pictures, maps, charts, journals, periodicals
and records of the Athenaeum (The
Athenaeum Liverpool, 2016).