Skipping some things and how I started on the path to librarianship

Ok, so I have decided as I've covered Face-to-face networking somewhat in previous posts and calendars are not the most stimulating topic of conversation, so I'm heading straight for thing 9, Evernote which I actually quite like.  Learning something new is always refreshing and this one is especially useful; I think it's something which would be really useful for chartership (although this is a little way off for me, one year and a dissertation for my Masters to go).  And what's not to like?  Cute elephant, saving webpages and documents at the click of an icon, it's so simple and effective at organising notes and links that a librarian would question what they ever did before they had it!

I have noticed since starting work as an Information Advisor (Assistant Librarian) that one thing many librarians have in common are their organisational skills.  I would probably say my organisational skills are somewhat lacking; perhaps evernote and google calendar will help with this predicament?  So if it wasn't my organisational skills which brought me to this career choice then what was it that led me to librarianship.  Well, it was something which I fell into rather than actively seeking out this chosen career path, I have effectively worked my way up from lowly shelver to what I am today and I'm still striving to become a fully-fledged librarian.

It all started when I was a fresh faced student at Roehampton University back in 2005, I, like many other students needed some extra cash...and in my second year I managed to secure the post of 'student shelver'. Surprisingly enough it wasn't the glamorous world of shelving which persuaded me that librarianship was the job for me.  After a brief semester studying in Austrlia I came back from travelling, it was then that I got a job working in the digitisation department within the library at Roehampton.  This opened my eyes to the possibilities and varied roles which were available within librarianship.

When I graduated from Roehampton I was then offered the job of library assistant which I took because I wasn't sure what else I wanted to do and this would be something I could do whilst I was looking for another job.  So I started to hone my skills within the library both as a Library Assistant and Digitisation Assistant, but it wasn't this that made me want to become a librarian!  I started getting itchy feet, particularly as a recent restructure within the library services meant I was redistributed, so I decided this was the best time to go travelling.  It was whilst travelling that I decided that I actually quite enjoyed working with students and maybe the role of subject librarian is one I could see myself in.

A couple of jetlagged interviews later and I was offered a job as graduate trainee at Royal Holloway University, which I of course accepted.  The support and enthusiasm from the subject librarians was great and the shared experiences of my fellow grad trainees was a great way to get my first insight into being a librarian.  At this point I started thinking about my next career move, I obviously wanted to start my Masters and to do that I needed to get a full-time permanent position.  This came in the shape of Information Advisor at Kingston University, I have been in this role for just over a year now and it never fails to surprise me the constant changes and challenges working in a University library brings.  I think this is what drew me to becoming a librarian also, I am someone who is constantly looking for new challenges and new things to learn and in the ever changing world of libraries that is just what we expect to get.

CPD things (part 2)

I have been on holiday for 3 weeks and have just got back to work and I find that many of the CPD things have passed me by...therefore I have decided to pick and choose what I look at, much like a student choosing their GCSE subjects, I'm only going to choose the ones which are relevant/interesting to me; if it's not interesting to me then the chances are what I write about the subject will not be interesting either!  The following blog post I wrote as a follow up to the blog post written on 15th July, so it might be somewhat out of date, but I shall endeavour to write another post shortly to keep my small readership entertained.

So, after setting up my RSS feed and perusing some of the blog posts out there, I find that not many people are actually sticking to the topic in CPD23, beer anyone...well of course beer has a place in libraries, but more a cold one after a hard days work.  I think it may be frowned upon to start drinking whilst on the job, although I do keep my trusty hip flask with me in case of dire emergencies (I am of course joking!)  I like to mix personal and professional with my blog, looking at it reflectively, is this the best practice?  I'd like to think I can reach a wider audience this way, we need to tell all that libraries are great places to work and visit; we're not all be-spectacled, bun wearing sensibly shod peoples (although I have noticed spectacle wearing among librarians is higher than the average, although I don't think there's any correlation between these two factors).  This is meant to be a learning curve for me, both by writing and reading others blogs I shall hopefully be able to widen my networking and learn from others.

Whilst thinking about reflection, this has taken me back to branding which I wanted to reflect both my personal and professional brand.  After reading Library wanderer's great blog about her reluctance to give herself a brand, I have to agree with her, as we are not products we are all individuals and as such we should not branded as librarians because this isn't what defines us.  Although, I did have to chuckle over the Library stereotypometer which appeared in the wikiman's blog this week.  I think most of us in the office agreed that this was fairly accurate, although perhaps we could substitute gin for wine?  I feel I have gone slightly off course, but I really wanted to mention both of these blogs as Helen Murphy (aka library wanderer) in particular, always has interesting and funny blog posts which I can relate to.

The 5th thing of CPD23 is being a reflective thinker, to be honest most of this blog is all me, me, me and why not!?  Well it probably doesn't appeal to others on the whole for a start and I need to be more informative to my readers.  Not being overly objective myself, I have looked at other's blogs and found that the ones which I enjoy and get the most out of provide useful and informative information which I can engage with.  I think the whole point of this exercise is to engage with other people and endeavour to network and meet other people who will enhance our professional life and vice versa.  I have to admit to not being a great networker, when faced with a room full of people I tend to shy away from the crowd; instead I usually prefer to talk to one or two people. 

I found the blog by Joeyanne Libraryanne really interesting on networking for introverts and I think this completely summed me up.  Find Joeyanne's blog here: http://www.joeyanne.co.uk/2011/05/20/networking-for-introverts/  it says that introverts can still be good at networking they just have to adapt to using different techniques to make contacts. So my aim for the rest of the life of my blog is to provide one piece of interesting information to my (small) readership which doesn't revolve around me!  Although there is no getting away from me completely, as I am the writer and essentially the blog is about my personal experiences. 

Lastly, I didn't compete in the aquathlon on July 17th, as it had to be postponed due to adverse weather conditions :-(  Therefore it has been rescheduled for this weekend 21st August, I'm not sure I'm fully prepared, but I'll let you know how I get on.

CPD things

After much consideration I feel that the following blogpost is far too long for just one instalment, therefore I will be spreading it over two posts, in the style of Charles Dickens if you will, just to keep you all interested.  I will of course leave you on a cliffhanger at the end, so that you are persuaded to read on next time.  Ok, so I seem to be failing miserably at keeping up with the CPD things I am still more or less keeping up with my blog, although one of my friends has complained that I haven't written anything for a while.  I've been thinking about my branding and after reading London Library Girl's blog I have to agree that having a more personal branding will be more effective when networking so people can recognise me, so a picture of me will be online shortly, I just have to pick the best one, in which I look fairly normal and of course professional!

I have to admit to being a little scared of RSS feeds, with no idea what they are or what they do I have always felt a little intimidated by them.  However, with the help of those helpful and clever people at CPD23 I have found it easy peasy to set up some RSS feeds into my google account so I can keep up with all of my favourite CPD23ers in one place, although with twitter, facebook and RSS feeds I am in danger of information overload, how do these librarians do it?  Creating their own blogs, replying to people on twitter, retweeting interesting tweets and networking with others, as well as squeezing in a whole working day somewhere in there it's exhausting!  Librarians must have a secret they're not telling us on how to be organised and make sure you can cram 26 hours into a 24 hour day.  As I haven't finished my Masters yet and therefore am not a fully fledged librarian, I'm clearly not privy to this information yet...

Whilst on the topic of Masters I have been warned by those on my course currently undertaking their dissertations to start thinking about my topic now.  So, I have been trying to think how I can possibly shoe horn Shakespeare and Information Management together, the first suggestion I made to a colleague elicited some colourful language...so I shall be leaving out the word juxtaposition.  I might re-think my stance on this at a future date!  After seeing so many great plays at the Globe recently and realising that apart from the plays we have from Shakespeare there is next to nothing written about his personal life.  Most of the Shakespeare historian's research has been pieced together from various corners, some of it valid, others mere conjecture.  Why is it that we have such a prolific amount of information supposedly about Shakespeare today, when there is so little information about him from the 16th and 17th centuries?  I think that was nicely shoe horned in, don't you!?

As well as thinking about my dissertation ridiculously early (I have another couple of semesters to go before I have to start on it).  In other news I am undertaking my first aqauthlon on Sunday (which is like a triathlon, but without the bike).  I am slightly nervous about the event, it being the first dual-discipline event I've done and the fact that there are only 40 people in the field, so it will be very noticeable if/when I come last!  So now you'll have to tune in next time and find out how I do (cliffhanger singposted cleverly at the end.) 

Teaching and learning...it can be fun :-)

Now I have been up and running for a mere few weeks I thought I would check out other people's blogs (as suggested by CPD23) and see what other people had produced.  The competition, if you will, is tough, when I thought up my blog title it was subtly intelligent and a clever play on words, I now question why I chose it?  Maybe I should have gone for something more adventurous...

In all seriousness, the blogs that I have looked at are great and I am enjoying reading them, although it is becoming quite addictive now.  I would aspire to have a blog which other people follow and enjoy reading; to be a good writer you should write what you know...so I guess I'll tell you all a little bit about what I have learnt/done over the past few weeks.

Firstly and not very library centric, but I actually completed the London to Brighton cycle ride on 19th June :-) it was fun, it was difficult and tiring and I won't tell you how long it took me! The length of time owing in part to the slowbies who shall remain nameless...but I really enjoyed it and am actually thinking about doing it next year...see librarians aren't all about the books, although our jobs aren't much to do with that anyway... I'm currently looking for a new flat share and mostly when people find out I'm a librarian their first thought question is 'so you must like books then?!'  Well yes I do, but unfortunately my job doesn't allow me to sit down and read all day and I think I'd get pretty bored if it did.

Not many people are aware of the wide variety of roles that we take on as a librarian, as part of a subject team one of which is teaching.  Yesterday (28th June), I attended a training session on 'making database training interesting', an almost impossible task one might say.  But I came away from the day at the CILIP offices feeling more positive about teaching and with some ideas that I would like to try, including creating more interactive sessions for the students.  It's going to take me some planning and a lot of confidence to try and ad lib in my teaching sessions, but I think it will be more rewarding for both me and the students.  I've got the whole summer now to prepare, so I'm going to get on that and come up with something a bit different so that the students I teach get the most out of the database training.  I'm not saying it's going to be completely ground-breaking, but I'm up for the challenge :-)

Impostor syndrome

I have been in my job as Information Advisor for just over a year and in that time I have sporadically felt that someone would tap me on the shoulder and say that it was all a big mistake and I should pack my bags.  I have since learnt that this is something which is known as 'impostor syndrome', it is where compentant people find it impossible to believe in their own competence.  It is commonly associated with academics and is widely found among graduate students.  As a graduate student who has a love for all things academic this certainly rings true for me.  I have to try and convince myself that I got my job on merit rather than by luck and timing...

It has taken me a while to realise that actually I am good at my job and deserve to be there as much as anyone else.  Over the last year I have also come to really love my job and realise that I do have something worthwhile to contribute to the team that I work within.  I am currently studying for my Masters in Information Management in the Cultural Sector and I am really enjoying the buzz of learning something new and researching an area which interests me.  With the politics surrounding libraries of all shapes and sizes currently it makes the area in which I work and study inherently important to the wider society in which we live.

I am just starting out in the Information Sector and I never thought that I would become a librarian, although this may be due to the unfair stereotypes heaped upon us!  There is more to my job than just stamping books, with the technological revolution and debates surrounding funding, librarians are all having to do more with less.  Call it a new years resolution if you will (albeit we are part way through the year already), but I have decided I want to have more of a voice and give my opinions on the current issues and problems facing individuals and our sector as a whole.  Perhaps no-one will read this blog, or if they do it may be because I have persuaded unwilling friends and family members to peruse my new creation.

I get bored easily and may neglect to update my blog, something which has happened so many times in the past...think the knitting endeavour (because all librarians are meant to knit) and the read a new book every week resolution; there are only so many Agatha Christie novels to read.  I am going to try and keep up with this one though and hopefully this will encourage people to write their own blogs too, if only to improve on the one they have just read...Hopefully along with my fellow CPD23ers I shall be able to improve my blog writing abilities over the coming weeks, so look out library community, here I come!

Disclaimer: Some information taken from wikipedia...sorry (bad librarian practice)