Skip to main content

Thing 20 - getting back to my roots

For this Thing, I'm meant to be blogging or thinking about my Library Route/Root, or the path that brought me to librarianship, back in the Good Old Days. However, I was involved in the discussions that kicked off the creation of the wiki, and have blogged both my library route, and my root previously, so if anyone was particularly excited to find out, they can have a look at those - there's been no major changes since I wrote them.

I haven't however had a look at many of the other entries since the wiki was established in 2009, so I went over to poke about in some of the newer entries. From reading a good few of those, it seems that librarian career paths can mostly be summed up as:
  • I didn't ever consciously think of libraries as a career, but ended up in them by accident, and it was a happy accident.
  • I started off as/qualified in something else, but I realised eventually that libraries were for me.
  • I always knew I wanted to be a librarian.
It seems that "I always wanted to be a librarian" posts are hugely outnumbered by the "I never knew it was a career, but now I'm in it, I love it" ones. Perhaps the always-wanted posts are so few because of the problems the profession has with negative and outdated stereotypes - I can't imagine that if you asked a kid "do you want to be a librarian?" that they'd say "yes: where so I sign up?!?!". Mainly because "librarian" to kids are the Frumpy Stereotype (well, for the younger ones anyway - give them a few years, then they'll move onto the Repressed Sex Beast stereotype), and that's a long established one. It's not really something that's likely to change soon (unless anyone has developed mind bleach for an entire population), but it would be nice if librarian/researcher/information retrieval specialist was a bit more of a visible careers option. I'm not involved in the academic sector, so I'm not sure how the Careers Service ties in, but how well informed are careers advisors on the information profession? 
Hopefully, a bit better than my one in the early 1990s, who cheerfully advised me not to go into working in libraries (despite it being an equal first on my careers choices, tied with science, and...erm...landscape gardening or something similar in close second!), as "it'll all be done by computers in the future".
Well done, careers advisor. I AM that computer who's doing it in the future: I'm a librarian.





Labels:

Comments

I hate Blogger said…
I (slightly spookily looking back) was actually recommended to be an information scientist in my careers advice session. At the time it wasn't a thought I'd ever entertained, and I dismissed the idea - but that was exactly the direction I ended up going in!
25 October 2011 at 18:48
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The mysteries of cataloguing

Cataloguing: an arcane art, where each piece of punctuation is significant, and commas and semi colons are all-powerful. Well, they are in "proper" libraries, where in-depth research of esoteric points goes on, and the precise spelling of Christian names, and information such as when a person lived and died can be crucial in pinpointing obscure facts. Here, we have our own catalogue system. It doesn't have a name, but if it did, it would probably be something along the lines of "I need this book NOW, no I don't care about the precise spelling of the authors middle name, or their date of birth." I know, I know, it's not snappy, but it's accurate. Cataloguing demands are different in a commercial law firm: we don't care about much more than what it's about, who wrote, when, and what jurisdiction it covers. And what we really, really care about is "where the hell is it". Law books are amazing: they have the power to move themselves f
12 comments
Read more

Careering along

When I look around at the activities of information professional groups, it seems that there’s a disparity. There’s quite often a lot of support and funding available for those who’re just starting out in the profession, but a desert of nothingness for those of us who’re “just getting on with it”. If you’re a new professional, you have lots of groups to support you as you progress in your early career, various prize funds available for essay and report writing, access to bursaries for conference attendance, eligibility for awards for being new and enthusiastic. But what do you get when you’re past that bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed first 5 years (5 years seems to be the approximate cut-off point for becoming “established” and no longer new). What happens when you’ve already received a bursary from an organisation earlier in your career and so wouldn’t be eligible for one now, meaning you’re not able to attend events or training? When you’re heavily involved in a project but not at
16 comments
Read more

UK librarian blogs - the list so far

I’ve pulled the previous entries into one alphabetical list, with a few categories. Will be back later with more detailed discussion of what I’ve learned by doing this. And, as always, if you know of other librarian blogs, let me know and I’ll add them in! Institutional Library Blogs / Professional Group Blogs aRKive Appears to be the blog of the Reid Kerr College library, or someone related to the Library, but unable to confirm as it doesn’t have any ‘about’ section that I can find. Lots of posts about library topics, books, IT… Brit Lib Blogs Google Group There’s a Google Group for British librarian bloggers! Unfortunately it looks to be pretty much unused at the moment. CILIP Blogs CILIP has various blogs by either staff, or links to relevant blogs, available from the Communities section. Varying levels of activity on these blogs – the PTEG blog has one post from November 2007, while Lyndsay’s CILIP Blog has been going has been going for almost a year, with at le
14 comments
Read more