Library & Information Studies [MSc/PgDip] postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

On Tuesday mornings the queue at the public PCs in the branch library where I work usually forms before we unlock the doors. Most people want to print something: a bus pass renewal, a Universal Credit journal entry, a CV for the job club that meets upstairs. Over two years as a library assistant I have learned that the printing is rarely the real problem. The real problem is that someone has been asked to upload a document to a portal they cannot find, using an email address they set up years ago and no longer remember. Helping with that, patiently and without taking over, has become the part of my job I value most, and it is the main reason I want to train formally in library and information work.

My route here began with my History degree. For my dissertation I worked with the surviving lending registers of a nineteenth-century mechanics' institute in West Yorkshire, held in a local archive. The registers recorded borrowers' names, occupations and the titles they took out over roughly fifteen years. I transcribed a sample of around two thousand loans into a spreadsheet and tried to see whether working members borrowed differently from the clerks and shopkeepers who dominated the committee. The answer was more modest than I hoped: the registers were inconsistent, titles were abbreviated, and some years were missing. Much of my effort went into deciding how to standardise entries without erasing what the clerks had actually written. I kept the original spelling in one column and my normalised version in another, and documented every decision. My supervisor's main comment was that the method section was the strongest part, which I took as a compliment rather than a criticism. It made me curious about how catalogues and metadata standards handle the same tension at scale.

At work, I do the ordinary tasks that keep a branch running: issuing and returning stock, processing holds, shelving, running a weekly baby rhyme session when colleagues are on leave, and tidying records in the library management system. I noticed that our local history shelf had items catalogued under several inconsistent subject headings, so with my manager's agreement I listed them and proposed consistent terms, which a cataloguer at central services then reviewed and applied. It was a small piece of work, but it showed me how much a catalogue shapes what people find, and how little I yet know about classification beyond what I have picked up on the job.

I have tried to fill some of that gap through reading. S. R. Ranganathan's five laws of library science were introduced to me by a colleague, and the idea that every reader should find their book, and that the library is a growing organism, gave me a useful way to think about our weeding decisions. I have also followed public discussion of digital exclusion, which matches what I see at the PCs: access to a device is not the same as being able to use services confidently.

Outside work, I walk two dogs for an elderly neighbour three evenings a week and help her keep track of her appointments and repeat prescriptions, which involves more filing than either of us expected. I play five-a-side on Thursdays and keep the team's fixtures and subs spreadsheet, mostly because nobody else would.

I am applying for postgraduate study because I have reached the limit of what I can learn by observation and goodwill. I want a grounding in information organisation, digital literacy and information policy, and a chance to study how libraries and archives decide what to keep and how to describe it. I would like to work towards a professional role in public or community libraries, combining the patient front-desk work I already enjoy with the structural knowledge that makes collections and services genuinely usable. I bring practical experience, careful research habits and a clear sense of the people I want this training to serve.