This is my first blog post for the Rudai23- 23 Things for Information Skills course.
I am not sure what to write about as ‘Thing 2′ states ‘It is your blog. You can write about whatever you want to write about.’ So I will do an introductory post about myself and what I hope to achieve in the next few years in my own professional and personal development.
So let’s start with the basics I am a late twenty something woman who works at a university in the south of the country. I have been working in an academic library for 10 months. I do feel quite settled in my role and have learnt a lot in regards to developing myself professionally. I do on the other hand feel like a fraud like I don’t belong here.
I have worked in customer service roles since I was 16 and I do really enjoy helping customers. It took me a while after graduating to decide on what I should do for a living and I knew I did not want to work in supermarkets for the rest of my life.
I knew I loved reading. I knew I loved books. I knew I enjoyed working with the public and delivering excellent customer service. And then it hit me.
LIBRARIES! I should work in a library.
So I spent around a year trying to get into my local council library and succeeded. It was not a local post and I have to drive for over an hour to get there every Saturday. But I loved it! It also made me realize how unhappy I was in my job I was working around this one for 4 days out of the week.
After around 4 months in the weekend role I applied for permanent position in the city which was closer to me for commuting and to my surprise I got the position. I spent around 3 years at the giant public library and I learnt a lot about myself and local government politics. I made some wonderful friends at my time at the public library but I knew it was time to move on after being put on by the current manager who was making us all miserable.
In late 2015 I was offered an office role to give myself a step back from face to face customer service and learn some new skills to add to my CV. After a year and another restructure I decided office administration was not for me.
One of my library friends contacted me regarding a job at the university saying I should apply. I did apply but I had no hope that I would get the role. Since 2012 I had applied for a job in their library but I did not have enough experience etc etc. It was disheartening. However I feel I had something which gave me an edge over the other applicants I had already completed my first year of the Libraries and Information Management Masters Degree with the University of Sheffield. I felt this showed my commitment to working in libraries and my own development.
Academic libraries are very different to public libraries and it was a big learning curve but so far I am enjoying it. The university is committed to everyone’s development and I have been on many internal courses and I went to my first conference this summer!
As the summer is slowly fading into autumn I am preparing for my last year of my masters degree. The dissertation year. I am dreading it but I am also excited for the challenge and partly relieved that I have a year left and then I am free from studying!
I have a small professional plan for the next 3 years. I hope to obtain my masters in 2018, start the CILIP chartership process late 2018 early 2019 and then start a PG cert in teaching and education in the September of 2019.
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