CPD23 Thing 20

Image by Images_Of_Money

Thing 20: Career Projects
I find the library world really interesting and love to chat to people about why they have formed a career around it. I must be nosey! A few years ago I heard about the Library Roots/Routes project where folks outline their reasons for working in the profession and the path they took to get there. I added my contribution to the wiki and blogged about it here. I’ve read lots of entries on and have noticed a common theme in many – there are more facets to the professional than we realised when we joined it. Everything we do is hidden behind the scenes in order to create a seamless service for our users. It perhaps does us (as library staff) a disservice, but that’s the way it should be – library users don’t need to be aware of all the backstage action, they just need a good service they can rely on. And as long as that’s what they get then I’m happy.

Library Day in the Life is a similar project, where library staff record their daily activities at work for a specific week. I took part in it this year after several years of missing the date. Being newly hooked up on Twitter (a previous Thing) made following the project far more interesting as I was able to read people’s updates in real time, rather than waiting until blog posts had been compiled. I loved reading what others had written about their roles – it’s a great way of learning what life is like in different library sectors.

CPD23 Thing 13

Thing 13: Google Docs, Dropbox & Wikis  

Image taken by Chrissinjo 

I’ve never used Dropbox or Google Docs before. Always meant to, just never got round to it. I don’t know much about it, but I find cloud technology very intriguing. So, with CPD23 in mind, I’ve used Google to creat a document and shared it with our Graduate Trainee based at another location. It worked quite well actually and I was impressed. It simple and user-friendly. Likewise, she also shared a doc with me and receiving it was very straight forward. Both of us viewing the doc at the same time was quite amusing, although it turned a little messy when I 'comandered' the cursor and inserted text into the very sentance she was already working on. A little problematic, but perhaps there are ways around this when you know how to utilise Goofle Docs properly. Definitely a useful tool and one I'd like to explore further.

Dropbox looks like it may take a little longer to master. Don’t really have time at work so I’ll grab a look at it sometime at home. I am the queen of memory sticks and always have one on my person at almost any given time. In my last employment post, my memory stick was stolen by a pupil and I lost several documents. I can see Dropbox providing a convenient alternative to the perils of memory sticks.

The other element of Thing 13 is wikis. Finally – something I do have a little experience of! I’ve never had cause to establish a wiki myself, but I have added to various ones in the past:

The library routes project

Library day in the life

UK library blogs

If anyone knows of any others please drop me a comment to let me know. I enjoy adding to library-related wikis, it’s nice to participate and make a small contribution to a library initiative. These wikis have brought to my attention several blogs which I now regularly follow and a large proportion of BtB’s traffic is directed from these three sites. It’s an easy way of sharing experiences and I really do recommend joining in. Wikis = FTW!

CPD23 Thing 10

Image taken by Yoppy

Thing 10: Routes into Librarianship
So, Thing #10 is to blog about how and why we are where we are career-wise...

My story is pretty straight forward, and probably similar to a lot of other people's accounts. However, so that I don’t merely repeat my Library Roots / Routes record, here's a brief outline below:
 
The left-hand box represents my employment roles and the right-hand box shows the additional activities I’ve done parallel to this. Over the years I’ve learnt that, for my own satisfaction and development, I like to have ‘something else’ on the go at the same time (such as an evening course, writing an article or maintaining BtB). I know it's cheesy, but the more you put in the more you get out.

Not quite sure what the future has in store for me, but there are a few things I think I’d like it to include (should the Wish Fairy being listening...)

Revalidation
Line management qualification
Involvement with a Cilip committee
HE library role (one day in the future)
Winning the lottery

And if I could crack all that, I'd be one very happy bunny!

Library Routes Project

The Library Routes Project enables librarians to share details of their career paths, and I’ve enjoyed reading various submissions. It’s interesting and informative (and – at times – comforting!) to read about the experiences of other librarians. With this in mind, I thought I’d contribute and chart my own career to date.

I graduated with a history degree in 2000 at the age of 21. Before this time, I’d never given any thought to what I’d do as a career. All I was interested in was studying history and what I’d do after that time had never crossed my mind. Confronted with the concept of entering the big wide world, I flirted with retail graduate schemes. I’d worked in a supermarket since I was 17 and it was the only thing that came to mind. A few interviews later, no luck. After a few weeks of working in the supermarket full time, I found an office based job within the NHS. Number-crunching all day was mind-numbingly dull and I was far from a model employee; however hard I tried, I simply couldn’t make myself actually care about data inputting. I could do it in my sleep and it was unchallenging. On the plus side, it was local and offered flexi-time!

I decided to take stock of my life and started to seriously think about what I wanted to do. I felt guilty that after the financial cost of university I wasn’t making use of my degree. I put my thinking cap on and gave myself a grilling. What did I enjoy doing? What made me happiest about my current and previous employment? I’d enjoyed serving supermarket customers far more than sitting at a computer all day. It made me feel that I was helping people and making a difference (albeit it only to their shopping experience). The more I thought about it the more apparent it became – I wanted a role that allowed me to help people and make a positive contribution to the lives of others. Okay, now I’d got that sussed I just had to work out where I could actually achieve that. One day, out of the blue, it hit me like a thunderbolt… libraries! I had been a library user since my early teens, not just for my studies but also reading for pleasure. As soon as I’d thought of the idea it felt right, and I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to me before. I felt at ease in libraries and understood how to use them. I valued them and found them interesting. I could help people and use my brain at the same time. I researched the career and discovered you could study library science at university. Doing a Masters degree had always been a secret dream of mine, and here was the perfect subject to study. The next step – find a vacancy!