Education and route in:
Four A-levels, BSc Psychology, NVQ level 2 in Library and Information Services. Has just submitted CILIP Chartership portfolio for MCLIP and is also working towards a Post Graduate Award in E-learning for Academic and Professional Practice.
No hiding these library legs behind a rickety old desk
Until I worked in a Library I thought Librarians sat behind a counter and stamped books all day. How wrong I was! I took my very first Library job because I needed a job and it was the first thing I was offered … I loved it.
Far, far from the stereotype of old ladies in suits with greying buns, the sixth form college I worked in was vibrant and busy and my supervisor was a tattooed rocker with a love of bright purple boots and vampire novels. I quickly discovered that the job, even at entry level, was challenging and varied, and I got involved in everything from answering enquiries for staff and students, teaching people how to use electronic resources and running poetry competitions, to putting together packs of resources to support the A-level curricula in the subject areas I worked with (ranging from P.E to English Literature).
During my three years there I completed my NVQ in Library and Information Services before I moved on to a University Library to progress my career. It was there I enjoyed three separate part time roles, all at the same time. One involved setting up University access to online subscriptions such as Journals and bibliographic databases, allowing university members to get access to specialist information not available on the internet. Another involved general customer service, issuing books, responsibility for liaison with the security staff and a role as a disabled student’s representative. The third one was in the cataloguing team, reclassifying books to meet new classification guidelines brought in since they were purchased.
From there I moved to my current post, which involves elements of nearly all of my previous roles, and much more besides. For example, I am now part of a Marketing Advisory Group, an examiner for information skills exams at the Medical School, I maintain a section of the library web site, I write a blog to keep university members aware of internal developments in science information. Plus, I edit the internal staff newsletter (readership of around 170) and run specific projects, which currently include looking into ways to improve Library provision for required reading across all of Science and Medicine, and input into developing the Library’s use of web 2 technologies, such as facebook and social bookmarking.
In the last few months I have really got involved in CILIP and am now the Web master and Marketing officer for CILIP West Midlands, doing much work to encourage understanding of the profession in the wider world.
I have also had several articles published in a range of Library and Information Journals. This included one on Librarian stereotyping, from which my picture is taken. And yes, those are my legs!
What’s next?
I am now waiting for the results of my Chartership submission (I had to do a two year, instead of a one year Chartership, because I don’t have a LIS degree or Masters). I hope that I will be able to go on and progress to Fellowship later in my career.