Thing 10: graduate traineeships, Masters degrees, Chartership

Thing 10 is all about how we got into the profession, what we have done so far and what we plan to do. I have already blogged about my route into librarianship on my main blog, for the Library Routes project.  It was written about eight months ago so is still fairly accurate. I won’t repeat it all in this post, but you can read it here if you want to know the full story of how I came to be doing what I am today (by accident, basically!).

Graduate traineeships

I first became interested in librarianship when I was working as a weekend shelver in the J.B. Morrell Library at the University of York, whilst studying for my undergraduate degree (English) there. I began to hear about the various interesting things that these people called academic liaison librarians were doing. I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career, but I felt like I would like to work in HE, although not as an academic, and, after doing a bit more research, academic librarianship started to sound like something I would enjoy. I was still undecided though, and when I graduated I just applied for any job that I liked the sound of. I had academic librarianship in the back of my mind, and applied for a graduate traineeship at Leeds Metropolitan University Library, but also thought I might want to go into social work, law, careers advice, retail management, or something entirely random that I had not yet discovered, so applied for loads of other things too. I very nearly became a contracts proofreader, but Leeds Met beat them to making a definite job offer, and so I decided to give this academic librarianship stuff a go.

To this day I am so relieved that my graduate traineeship was the first job I was offered! I had an amazing year at Leeds Met. I worked in all areas of the Library and was given so many opportunities, from participating in planning and delivering teaching sessions, to helping to project-manage a book-writing event. I gained valuable experience in teaching and enquiry desk work, amongst other things, which I believe helped me to get my current job. I thoroughly recommend doing a graduate traineeship. All library experience is valuable, but a graduate traineeship can offer you opportunities that you might not be able to get outside of a professional post otherwise, and can help to give you the edge when it comes to job-hunting after your Masters. 

Masters degrees

Continuing the theme of falling into this career by chance, I sort of ended up on the MA Librarianship at the University of Sheffield by accident (I originally planned to go somewhere else but for a number of reasons found myself applying for and accepting a place at Sheffield; it’s a long story!). Once again, though, I am so glad that this turn of events came about. The course was fantastic; I learnt so much. We had some compulsory modules - Library and Information Services Management, Information Literacy, Information Retrieval, Libraries, Information and Society, Research Methods, and, of course, the dissertation – and then were able to choose some others; I did Academic Libraries, Public Libraries, and Information Retrieval Research. For my dissertation, I investigated student perceptions of academic library staff (and was later able to turn it into a journal article co-authored with my supervisor). During my year at Sheffield (I took the course full-time) I also became involved with the CILIP Career Development Group (CDG) as a New Professionals Support Officer and joined the admin team for the LIS New Professionals Network (LISNPN), roles I continue with today. And I made some (hopefully) lifelong friends. Overall, it was a brilliant experience. If you’re choosing a Masters course, have a look at the anonymous reviews of various courses on LISNPN (and please do contribute one if you’ve done your Masters!).

After the MA

After handing in my dissertation in September 2010, I applied for any subject librarian role that came up, anywhere in the country. After multiple rejections without even an interview, and a few unsuccessful interviews, in November I luckily landed myself a position at one of the smaller campuses of the University of the West of England, in Bristol. I am a subject librarian, but, being in a small campus library, I also have responsibility for the AV collection, the journals collection, and some aspects of acquisitions, as well as line management responsibility for two members of staff, and contributing to general library management. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that this past nine months has been a massively steep learning curve! I learnt so much on my MA, but I can’t even quantify what I have learnt in my job.  It’s been a challenge, but I have (mostly!) enjoyed travelling the curve, and I have gained so much experience, and so much self-confidence from it. I’ve also thrown myself in at the deep end outside of work; I’ve presented a paper at the New Professionals Conference, had a journal article published and have another on the way, started blogging, started Chartership (more about that shortly!) and attended the Umbrella conference this year. I couldn’t have imagined this time last year that I would be at this point today. I feel incredibly lucky!

Chartership

This word makes me shudder a little. Soon after starting my job, I decided to register for Chartership. Initially I was really enthusiastic; I enjoyed a “preparing for Chartership” course that I attended, found myself a mentor, and wrote a PPDP. My intention was to have submitted, or to be ready to submit, by the time my contract at work runs out next summer. Since then, I have stalled, and feel a bit stuck. I know that I am doing things to meet my PPDP objectives, but I just don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere with collecting evidence! Some colleagues have started a cross-campus Chartership group, and hopefully we will continue to meet and encourage each other to persevere. Recently, while watching #uklibchat on Twitter, I began to wonder whether anyone would be interested in a #chartershipchat. It may already have been tried, I don’t know, but if anyone thinks it would be helpful, do let me know! 

I still hope I might get my act together and have my portfolio ready by next summer, but I’m not sure I’ll manage it after all. However, so many jobs are temporary these days that lots of people I have come across have completed or are completing Chartership having changed jobs mid-way through, so it doesn’t seem too unusual.

What’s next?

What’s coming up next in my immediate future is my first September as a librarian! This means my first round of inductions, teaching and new students as a fully-fledged academic librarian. I’m a bit nervous, but mostly excited; I have enjoyed the teaching that I have done so far, and am looking forward to doing more.

Looking further ahead, I am on a fixed term contract at work which ends next July, so fairly soon I will need to start thinking about what my next move will be. I’ll probably be looking for another subject librarian post in an academic library, although I’d happily do another “hybrid” role like the one I have now. I’d consider moving pretty much anywhere in the UK or overseas, so I have no idea where I’ll end up; it’s quite exciting!

Outside of work, I intend to continue my CDG work, and will soon be taking on a larger role within LISNPN. I also want to carry out some more research, and publish and present further. I have a few other plans for myself too, but I am keeping those to myself for now; I don’t want to jinx them!

I honestly have no idea where I will be this time next year, or what else I will have achieved by then; I’m excited to find out though…

Thing 5: reflective practice

I was first introduced to reflective practice during my graduate traineeship at Leeds Met three years ago (they’re recruiting for their next graduate trainee, if anyone’s interested, by the way!). There was a lot of emphasis placed on preparing us for life as a librarian and, as reflection is viewed as increasingly important in the LIS profession, they asked us to keep a reflective diary of our year, from which we could create a final reflective report at the end of the traineeship. Writing reflectively didn’t come naturally to me, but I persevered, and, whilst my earlier entries are fairly descriptive, by the end I was starting to get the hang of it. At that point I still wasn’t totally convinced of the value of reflective writing; it felt like something I had to do as part of my career. During my MA we had to keep an assessed reflective journal of our progress towards becoming an effective manager, as part of our year-long management module. I put this off for as long as possible because the whole management module scared me and I didn’t know where to start, but once I forced myself to get on with it, I began to see some value in reflective writing; with no prior experience or knowledge of management, it helped me to consolidate what we were learning in the module, to relate it to my past experience with my own managers and colleagues, and to consider how I might behave as a manager in the future. And again, I saw an improvement in my ability to reflect, as I wrote my journal entries; the final couple got really good marks and were genuinely reflective.

By the time I started my job, the ability to reflect was coming much more naturally, and I decided to set up a blog in which to reflect on my experiences. Now, I blog about everything I do; every event, conference or course that I attend, things that I do at work, such as teaching, as well as my thoughts on my past experiences i.e. library school and job-hunting. I think that I do it in a reflective way (examples here and here, if anyone feels like commenting!), and writing up my experiences allows me to make sense of it; to really consider the experience, pick out what I learnt, and work out where things went wrong. It’s easy to forget what you’ve done if you don’t record it, and it’s easy to forget the value (or non-value) of something if you only record it descriptively. Now that I am Chartering, reflection on everything I do that relates to my PPDP objectives is hugely important, and the decision to Charter was one of the main reasons that I started blogging about what I’ve been doing.

However, as explained in the CPD23 blog post for Thing 5, reflection isn’t just about getting your Chartership or other qualification; it’s about working out what you’ve learnt and where you go next in your work (and maybe even home?) life. Once I have finished my Chartership portfolio (if that ever happens!) I’ll continue to reflect, because I feel that it makes my work more effective. Checking that the staff whom I line-manage are reflecting on their work and personal development, and encouraging them to do so, is a standing item on the agenda for our monthly one-to-one updates. All in all, I am a big fan of reflection. However, when someone refers to it as “reflective practice”, I start to feel anxious, and panic that I’m not doing it correctly, that I’m not being reflective enough. I think that may be one reason why my Chartership has stalled; I look at the “Building your portfolio” book, or get an email from my mentor reminding me that I must write-up and reflect on what I’ve been doing for my portfolio as soon as possible, and I get really anxious, even though I know, or at least I’m pretty sure, that I am doing this. I think perhaps this might be more of a symptom of me feeling stuck and de-motivated with the whole Chartership process, though (that’s a whole other blog post!).

I think my CPD23 blog posts have been fairly reflective so far. I’m not sure about this one though!