Before 16-year-old Mia Clayton began her schools-based traineeship at Inverell Shire Public Library, she had little idea what was behind the front doors of the building, and was simply amazed by what one of this region's most modern and best equipped libraries actually had to offer the whole community.
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"I have learnt a great deal by working here. I have learnt a lot about using different software on the computers, a lot in customer service and general experience," she said.
"I've learnt a lot about the library that I have known from the outside, and now I have gained experience about what it is like on the inside.
"It has surprised me what's available here at Inverell, like talking books, books on different languages, the range of things we provide here. I had no idea."
Mia thought once the community found out what was available at the library it had a great respect for it.
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The staff here have been very welcoming here and I have had all the teaching and experience I could ever want from them.
"I can see the library as being part of my future," Mia said.
"I am at the stage where I am not sure what I want to do with my future and - yeah, definitely."
Library manager Sonya Lange said Mia traineeship would end in December 2020. They enable students to gain a qualification in business studies to be completed alongside their HSC.
"There is no guarantee of employment with these traineeships, but certainly two years of experience will make a difference in any application," she said.
"Customer service and those sorts of skills translate really well across quite a range of different things. Staff have been so impressed since Mia joined us. During the next fortnight we're going to be teaching her some simple cataloguing into our system.
"And that's us putting a great deal of trust into Mia and we've recognised she is showing a lot of promise when it comes to attention to detail, so we're going to give her something a little more challenging."
Sonia said Inverell library is a proven training base, with its fair share of work based trainees and schools-based trainees coming through the ranks in previous years.