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Young hands over books she has charged during her new duties in IMDF. Photo Credit: Regina Young, 2024.

Longtime staffer turns temporary assignment into a permanent position

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Technician Regina Young celebrated 25 years as a Library employee recently, and does so from a new position, moving on after 18 years.

Prospective employees of the Library of Congress are used to seeing certain types of posts on the Library’s Careers page. There are evergreen posts for Materials Handlers, Attorney-Advisors, and many more. One of the posts that also come up are the temporary or Not To Exceed (NTE) postings. For many of those NTE postings, the job is only for Library staff, and only for a short amount of time, usually 120 days. Inside the Library, these are called “Detail” assignments, and are an opportunity for long-time staff to experience work in another office and possibly move on.

Two years ago, I introduced the readers of this blog to my coworker and friend Regina Young. Since then, Young has moved on to a new position in the Inventory Management & Document Fulfillment Section (IMDF) of the Collections Management Division (CMD). She did this after first working the job for six months on detail. She shares with us her experience.

All smiles at Preservation Live!
Young stands with the Pathways to Preservation poster that features her bio during the Preservation Live! at the Library in April. Photo Credit: Ronlicia Gordon-Falls, 2024.

 

Has it been difficult transitioning to your new position after so many years in Library Binding Section (LBS)/Processing and Preparation Section (PPS)?

My transition from my previous position as a Binding Technician where I was employed for 18 years into my new position as an Information Management and Document Fulfillment Technician was a smooth transition. This was a smooth transition because, I was selected in the division as a detaille for 120-days and was extended for an additional 90-days. This gave me the opportunity to know management, the staff, and the job.

A labor-intensive part of the job
Young unpacks serial books that have returned from the commercial bindery while working in PPS. Photo Credit: K.F. Shovlin, 2024

 

Is there any difference between your permanent position and the detail position you held?

There are some differences from being permanent vs. holding the detail position. In this section there are a number of charge stations throughout all three buildings in which there are different job functions to be performed. The common denominator for all stations is the basic foundation for charging and discharging books for staffers, patrons, study shelf holders, Kluge scholars, special borrowers, Congressional staff and members, and Interlibrary Loan requests. Due to the time frame of the detail, there were selected stations that I was trained at for a month to ensure that I obtained the knowledge and skills to work those stations, providing excellent customer service to patrons as well as answering complex questions. As a permanent employee to the section, I am now able to work all charge stations between the three buildings, perform sublocation/cataloging work and complex review for problem resolution books by routing these materials to the offsite Fort Meade campus.

What was the process to get selected for the detail?

The process for being selected for a detail position is to one: read through the detail announcement, two: make sure that you have