Having a nosy at the neighbours...

So as part of my career development work for cpd23, I have been having a nosy at other people's blogs to see what they're up to...

I quite enjoy reading blogs - it satisfies my interest in people watching. But it has to be about something I'm interested in. I think that's why I've been reluctant to start a blog of my own... what if I bore people to death with the day to day details of my little life! So the cpd23 programme is great for me as it provides a framework to hang ideas on.

I may be showing my age but when I was at Library School I don't remember blogging being popular - we did a course in computer studies and the internet but blogs certainly weren't in there. (It was also in the days before Facebook... yes we lived without it back then!). So having a look round Libraryland recently has been fascinating.

I started with a look at some of my fellow, newly registered cpd23 candidates, most of whom were current Library school students. I was impressed by their online confidence which I guess is very typical of today's university students- facebook, twitter, blogs etc must be a big part of their lives these days. I tried very hard to leave a sensible comment on the posts I read. This is actually something I find really hard... I consider myself pretty IT literate but I don't always feel comfortable with the interactivity of so- called Web 2 interfaces. I'm a very social creature in real life and happy talking to all sorts of people but online I'm a great lurker! So I think that this is one of the real benefits for me from this whole process.
 
I really enjoyed following recommendations to articles and other blogs and unearthed all sorts of useful stuff ( the way I found out about cpd23 in the first place). I came away buzzing with enthusiam and ideas and lists of people I'd like to have a look at again. It was more of a problem deciding when to stop and rejoin the real world...

Career Development

I have a confession... not many people round here know this but  I used to be a librarian!
 
This was a career path that was suggested to me in my careers interview when I was an undergraduate and it appeared to make a lot of sense and fit my personality and skills pretty well. I finished my undergrad degree, got some work experience in a city library, got a job as a graduate trainee in a faculty liason office in a forward thinking University Library and decided I'd found my dream career. It was great. There were 10 of us so it was a great team to be part of and I got experience on the enquiries desk, the circulation desk, cataloguing, shelving, meetings, CPD training, HR the lot.
So of course I enrolled on a Masters programme and looked forward to a bright new future.The course was ok, not thrilling but ok and I got through it.
Getting a job proved difficult but eventually I ended up in a University Library as a Grade 5 Library Assistant on the circulation desk. The culture of this library was very different to the one where I had done my traineeship - more traditional and stuck in its ways. I enjoyed much of my job - especially working on the enquiry desk and helping students with their research via the interlibrary loans department, however it didn't have the thrill that I had experienced before and I became disheartened.
Personal circumstances meant that we moved house (to a completely different part of the country!)and I decided to take a career break to look after my small children. we no longer lived near a university and I gradually turned my back on Librarianship.
Lately, I have been working in a local supermarket as a trainer, a job which involves training new starters, updating the skills of existing staff and ensuring that we give the best possible service to our customers. I thought I was content with that - a great team, great part time hours and no commuting but it turns out I'm getting a bit bored! So I've been exploring new career options - retail training, NVQ assessing, teaching- all things that would suit my skills.

All this personal reflection has led me to a bit of light bulb moment: What if I'm still really a Librarian! Sounds obvious doesn't it, I'm a Librarian. It's about 7 years since I last worked in a library but when I look at the work I have done in supermarkets there are more than a few parallels. So I'm doing some research and trying to find out if Librarianship is still the path for me.

Which led me to the CPD23 website and the resurrection of this blog for "Thing 1". I've tried blogging before but never really thought that I had much to say... So this is me right out of my comfort zone. It'll be interesting to see what the next few "Things" bring about!