Thing 10 - becoming a librarian

I’ve been reading lots of other blogs where people have said that, due to their use of libraries as a child, they always wanted to work in a library. I have to be honest and say it was never a burning ambition of mine, to be a librarian. Like many others I was a voracious reader and heavy user of my local public library, but it never occurred to me that it could be a job I might want to do.

At school I had no real idea of what I wanted to do. I was good at English and History and read a lot. I was hopeless when it came to maths, science or the arts. A careers adviser suggested that I could do librarianship at university, based on the fact I read a huge amount, and the idea just stuck. I suppose you could say I fell into librarianship for lack of any other career path presenting itself. I sometimes think that 17 or 18 is far too young to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. I would possibly do something different if I could choose again, based on the person I am now, but that’s not to say I regret my career choice. I think (hope!) I’ve turned out to be not too bad at it.

In Scotland a 4 year degree course is the norm for undergraduates and, at the time, Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen offered an honours course in Librarianship and Information Studies. It meant I could stay at home and not be too poor a student (this was in the days of student grants. In retrospect I was fairly well off!) so that’s what I did. It’s been 15 years since I graduated so my memories of the course are relatively faint. I remember enjoying most of it (AACR2 and Marc aside!) and still keep in touch with some of the friends I made.

During my honours year I realised that I had no practical experience. Some of the people on my course had worked in libraries prior to doing the degree and were talking about going straight in at Assistant Librarian level once they had graduated. I knew that this was unrealistic for me, and that I might also struggle to get full-time work. I already worked part-time in a shop which gave me some experience of customer care etc. but practical library experience was the problem. I decided to write to all the library services in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire and ask if they had any part-time posts available. Most wrote back to say that any vacancies would be advertised in the local press but one invited me to come in for a chat with the Librarian. Happily this led to me being offered an evening position which I started in the January of my 4^th year. In June, just before my graduation, one of the full-time staff left and I got her post. This meant that I began working in my first full-time library job as soon as I had finished my degree.  Northern College was still using the old Brown system when I started but they automated 3 months later. It was fascinating to see how the library coped with the change of system and my manager felt I was really helpful in assisting some of the older members of the team who were adjusting to a computerised way of doing things.

A few years later came a sideways move to another Information Assistant post at University of Aberdeen. I had enjoyed working in Northern College but felt that it was limited in scope. I hoped that the larger institution would offer more opportunity for training, development and advancement. I was right about the training and development side of it, but not so much about advancement. I applied for lots of promoted posts but was always being told that I had been second choice. That got a bit irritating after a while! Often the job would go to someone external to the university who had been doing similar work already. I understood the reasons, but it didn’t make it any easier. (Somewhat ironically University of Aberdeen now advertise most of their jobs internally. I’d like to get back in there but I don’t think it’s going to happen.)

A few years and many interviews later I applied for the post of Assistant Librarian at Aberdeen College and have been here ever since. I’ve been in this post for 10 years now, but the job has changed quite a lot. My CPD has never really stopped. Initially it was all about the books but with the rapid expansion of internet resources, development of e-books and more focus on user education I have had to change and adapt to new circumstances. 

10 years on I am looking for the next step. I’ve had a variety of interviews over the last few years for Librarian posts with other organisations but they are few and far between and competition is fierce. RGU no longer offers the 4 year degree course but does have a very popular postgraduate option. Although relatively affluent, Aberdeen is a small city with limited employment opportunities and having a local university putting out a new batch of qualified librarians every year doesn’t help matters! So, back to CPD and trying to update my skills again. I’m progressing extremely slowly through my charter, trying to find local training events that don’t cost very much and won’t take up too much work time and hopefully using CPD schemes such as this to update my skills and knowledge.

Reflecting on it all, this career that I just fell into hasn’t turned out too badly after all.