Reflective Practice

I really enjoyed the reflective week.  I liked having the time to sit back, look at other blogs and find out who else was taking part and what they were saying.

From the blogs I had a chance to view I've learned a few things:

• Some people have far better looking blogs than me - the fact that I want mine to look better because of this says more about me than them!  Looking into improving the look and feel of my blog is one more thing for the to do list...
• Quite a few of us have similar feelings towards social media - do I want to put myself "out there", do I really need any more accounts, is this a new craze or will it last, how can this help me in my job?  I'm enjoying the chance to find new tools I might be able to use and I'm being choosy over wheich ones I want to sign up to, we all seem to be doing our own version of vetting a service for us personally.
• Some people have shared some great links or good articles and I've really enjoyed searching them out.  I've done a bit of reading around the subject of social media myself and am currently absorbing all I can from the brilliant Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick - I've borrowed mine from the library but you can buy it here http://artof.social/ - or use their great resources.  It's a really enjoyable quick guide to what works for various different platforms.

What Thing 6 didn't let me do was catch up - so I'm off to look into podcasts and video now!

So who becomes a librarian?

I spent all my childhood with my head in books.  I visited the local library every week and was never out of the school library.  I even have family who work/have worked in libraries.  I just never considered it for myself.  I went to uni straight from school not having a clue what I wanted to do so just went for a course I thought would get me a job - business studies - and hated it.  I left just before the end of my first year and went to work in financial services.  After 3 years of working to look after the interests of people with lots of money I knew it wasn't for me.  I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I wanted it to be something that contributed to wider society.  I went back to uni and came out with a 2:1 in Social Sciences.  I loved my degree, I loved studying for it, I made the best use of all the resources that were available to me and I honestly don't think I'd have passed if it haven't been for the library.  I still didn't think of becoming a librarian - slow on the uptake or just a profession not very good at shouting from the rooftops - you decide!

Just before my final exams I took advantage of an appointment with a careers advisor.  They rewrote my cv and pointed me towards some vacancy sites where I found out about graduate traineeships in libraries.  The seed was planted and I applied and was accepted for a years graduate traineeship in a university library.  In the intervening summer I worked in public libraries and that's when the penny dropped - this is what I wanted to do.

After my year in the uni, I studied for an MSc in Library and Information studies and was lucky enough to get a job in public libraries before I'd even written my thesis.  I spent 5 years behind the scenes in cataloging and acquisitions before moving front of house as a branch librarian.  I'm now in my second branch library and have just finished a secondment in a school library.  

I love public libraries, I'm passionate about what we do and feel we should and could be doing so much more.  The fact is we're a soft target for cuts but more and more is being piled on us with welfare reform.  It infuriates me that despite the vast amount of research linking early literacy to attainment and as a way out of poverty we're constantly firefighting to deal with the consequences rather than put the work in now to improve things for future generations.