Due to the nature of my career history so far (numerous temporary contracts and moving campuses), I have changed jobs a lot in the last few years. In just over four years at my current place of work I’ve had five interviews, five different jobs (four in the same job role but different locations and contracts), and worked at three different campuses. I’m now in my first professional post which I started just over a year ago.

I’ve become pretty accustomed to moving around and having different jobs, so having a permanent librarian job is a bit of a novelty. However, it’s got past that twelve month period now and although a lot of the time I still feel like the new girl (I hadn’t worked at this campus before and many of the staff have worked here for a long time), part of me is wondering where I’m supposed to go next. I guess it’s because I’m so used to changing jobs, and also because by nature I’m very reflective (need to get myself registered for Chartership really to make the most of it!). I think it’s also maybe because I’m at the beginning of my career so am still very keen and enthusiastic!

Don’t get me wrong, I still really enjoy my job and there’s a lot I want to learn and improve upon, but there’s a side of me that’s ready for a new challenge. I have my dissertation which I hope to begin soon (I sent my proposal off recently – see my recent blog post) and as mentioned I’m hoping to start my Chartership also, and I’ve just become part of the CILIP West Midlands committee – I guess those things should challenge me!

I think I’ve just come to realise that my work side is very different to my personal side where I’m pretty averse to change, maybe they balance each other out?! I suppose it’s a good thing for me that we will be going through a restructure soon, hopefully it will bring with it new challenges.

Well, the time has finally come – on Monday I had an interview for a professional librarian post and I was successful!

I’m also coming very close to completion of my Diploma (I’m going away at the end of this month and my aim is to complete my final assignment before I go) so hopefully soon I’ll be able to say with pride that I am a qualified librarian.

I’m so excited about starting a professional post, I can’t wait to be able to work more closely with academic schools to help support the students and further develop our services. I’m moving campuses but staying within the same organisation so I’ll still be able to continue work on my technology related projects. It’s a campus I hadn’t even been to before but it had a great atmosphere and I’m really looking forward to working there.

I also have some other exciting news – I’ve written a guest blog post for UK Web Focus about Library 2.0 Initiatives and Barriers which has been published on the blog today; please feel free to comment as I’ll be keeping an eye on the comments on there too. I have also contributed to a conference paper titled Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends which will be presented by Brian Kelly at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference later this month.

Everything is beginning to fall into place, I’m really enjoying the work that I’m doing and I’m glad that I’ll be able to further progress in my new post. I’m also really enjoying the blogging and am hoping to do more conference work too. It’s an exciting time to be a librarian and I’m really glad I decided to choose this career path.

I haven’t posted for a while, I’ve been spending most of my free time preparing for an interview (and reading Harry Potter, I’d only read the first three!).

I have been working part time for the last year, which has been good as it has given me extra time to study, however it has been more of a struggle financially and I have tended to spend my free day each week catching up with housework, going to town, the bank, the doctors, etc etc! A full time job came up at my level so I decided to apply for it, and was successful. I’m hoping to be able to take on more project work and hopefully try to put some of the Web 2.0 stuff into practice if I can. Hopefully I will still be able to find time at the evenings and weekends to concentrate on my studying. I’ve been having a bit of a break recently and am looking forward to getting back into it soon.

Degree Tutor has recently published interviews about the future of librarians, it makes very interesting reading. I haven’t had chance to read many yet, but have read the interviews of Librarian In Black and Phil Bradley, both of whom talk about the importance of librarians to utilise Web 2.0 technology.

My view is that the future for librarians is very exciting, the so called “information society” calls for librarians to help organise that information and enable people to find the information useful to them. I don’t know if we’ll continue to be known as librarians for much longer though, maybe more of the “information specialist” type titles will become common.