Having accidentally deleted Stephen Drake's original message I can't ly recall his exact words, but I'm sure he intended no offence to any practicing library assistants who subscribe to lis-link. After all whatever the criteria at their various libraries, they must have had to fulfill them in order to be taken on in the first place, so surely there is no need for them to feel insulted!
We still ask for certain minimum educational qualifications for our assistants. I don't see these as the be all and end all but rather as a preliminary tool when sifting through applications. For our shelvers we administer a "live" test with Dewey. I suspect if we were put under pressure to abandon the 5 GCSEs for assistants, we would certainly want some kind of evidence of basic numeracy and literacy - at any rate within my section (Acquisitions) I would certainly need this. My real concern would be that I'd be employing what would really be a screening test at too late a stage in the proceedings.
One final point. In the case of those with little or no work experience there is not always much else to go on!
Regards - Val Wilkins, Univ of Derby
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