12/30/2023 0 Comments Bookstacks student assistantRaffi Donatich sums up her work at the Beinecke in a sentence: “It’s my job to dig through the boxes and find whatever they’re looking for.” “My favorite part of being an undergraduate at Yale is working inside Sterling and helping with the system that helps so many people on campus,” he says. He won’t be giving up his library job, though. This year, Francis has been named a Bouchet Fellow and will be researching and writing on racial capitalism and the American criminal justice system. He tells us to treat every book like it’s the most important book in the world because, for someone, it might be.” “Anthony knows the best way to teach and how to get people energized and excited about the work. “We talk a lot about a lot of things,” Francis says. Over time, Riccio (pictured at the award ceremony with Francis and Dean Chun) has become a mentor and friend. “He embodies gentleness and pleasantness, and he has an incredible work ethic.” “I’ve had a lot of work leaders over the past twenty-three years, but Jaster is special,” says Collections Maintenance Supervisor Anthony Riccio, who nominated him for the Y-Work award. “The people I work with in Sterling Library have become my best friends.”īefore the end of his first year, Francis was promoted to work leader, helping to schedule and coordinate projects with the student work force. “There’s always someone there to greet you with a smile,” he says. He took the job for the paycheck, but he has stayed for the people. As Francis soon learned, “If you misplace a book on the shelf by just a few places, it can be missing for years.” Soon, the Branford College student was working nineteen hours a week in the labyrinthine basement and chilly bookstacks of Sterling, learning the meticulously organized processes for getting books back on the shelves, in exactly the right spot, as quickly as possible. “Everything I have, I owe to her,” he says. He was committed not just to paying his own college expenses, but also to sending money back to his mother, Rene Francis, a physical therapist who has raised him and his two younger siblings as a single parent. When he was looking for a campus job in Fall 2016, Jaster Francis wasn’t sure exactly what a student library assistant in collections management would do, but the $12.50 hourly pay was a big step up from the $7.25 minimum wage he had been earning at McDonald’s back home in Marietta, Georgia. “We always hope the experience will be valuable for them, too.” Gates ’68 University Librarian Susan Gibbons. “Students support our full-time staff in many different areas, and we are grateful of their contributions,” says Stephen F. Nearly 60 percent of Yale undergraduates work part-time on campus, and the library is one of the biggest student employers, hiring hundreds of students. Raffi Donatich ’19 is a student research assistant at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.įrancis and Donatich were among ten students who received the inaugural Y-Work Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Student Employees at an April 30 reception hosted by Yale College Dean Marvin Chun. Jaster Francis ’20 is a work leader in collections maintenance at Sterling Memorial Library. Two students who work in the library are among the first recipients of a new university award recognizing their contributions.
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