Thing 10

As this post is all about routes into librarianship, I will discuss my own decision to join the profession and experiences of it so far. I spent a long period of time researching librarianship/information management as a career but it took me a while to even get to that point.
My first degree was in History. I particularly enjoyed gathering information from different sources and making sense of it. Yet, like a lot of my friends, I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career. So I spent two years teaching English as a foreign language in London and Madrid. I then fell into a job in Publishing when I returned to the UK. There were aspects of this first job I liked, such as responding to requests from colleagues for information, but it was not clear where I could progress from there. Other people in my team seemed to get jobs in marketing, so I went that way too. I started a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) course and eventually got offered a job at another company which gave me marketing experience.

Again, there were aspects of this job that I enjoyed but I felt there was something missing. I liked the idea of working with the public and doing work which wasn't just about profit. It was around this time that I arranged to volunteer at a local public library. It was here that I assisted a Librarian with an oral history project she was working on. The project itself was interesting but, admittedly, I wasn't so sure that public libraries was the place for me.

Then I got made redundant during the economic crisis! Bummer. This was a period of time when I really felt pulled to working in the information field. Marketing jobs were low on the ground, particularly as the type of experience I had was limiting. On the other hand, I felt that some of the work experience I had could cross over to the information field. Additionally, I liked that it can be both a technology and people focussed career.

So luckily I got accepted on a CILIP-accredited Masters course and found work in the Student Services department at the same university. Although I had customer service experience, this post was good for getting face-to-face experience as well as the opportunity to assist students using online technology. I also did a placement as part of my course.

I really think both my course and this experience helped me get recruited at the college I work at right now. It has been really good experience so far but, as it isn't a permanent post, I need to think some more of where I should go from here.

What I am certain about is that I would like to start working on Chartership in the next year. It would be good to get a mentor and discuss my career plans in more detail.