Things 10 and 11

I have taken a rather circuitous route into library work. It was something I always wanted to do but when I graduated in French Studies (back in 1990) I wanted to be out earning money. I was young and in love(!) and didn't want to commit to 9 months as a graduate trainee before going back into studying which was, as far as I knew, the only option at the time. I was also keen to use my language skills. I acquired my first job as a result of temping - I happened to be working at the English headquarters of an Anglo French company who on discovering I was fluent in French offered me a post as bilingual PA to the the finance director. Despite my bosses attempts to interest me in the financial markets, finance wasn't really my thing however. My second and much more "me" job was at a multimedia language centre at Loughborough University, this was followed by LA and SLA at library headquarters in British Forces Germany. After starting a family and returning to the UK, due to circumstances I left library work for a while and spent 7 years working my way up in local government HR. This gave me many transferable skills and experience including training, project management, budget management and partnership working. However I missed library work and then I found out about Aberystwyth's distance learning course and applied and was accepted onto the course. I felt I would be better off working in a library environment whilst studying, so took a large cut in salary (money isn't everything I learnt since 1990!) and applied for my current post as part-time LA in FE and later also in the public library. Having recently qualified I am now starting to think about chartership and looking to move to a professional post where I can put my both library knowledge and experience and skills gained in libraries and elsewhere into practice.

Reading some of the other CPD blogs about this thing has reminded me that I too used to put library tickets into my Enid Blyton collection and was a librarian at my junior school. It is definitely a vocation ;)