Sunday 26 July 2015

My Library: A Personal Journey

Maybe I was always destined to be a school librarian, I just took a while to realise it. But along the way I always had my library card at hand.

I certainly loved the Library at school. Located off the corridor to the Headmaster's office, the glass walls encircling a goldfish bowl of knowledge, its highly polished floor squeaking under my black school shoes. The Library was my form room. We read the papers there - the Guardian, and Punch magazine - thinking we were right on and sophisticated then. I helped out. I stamped books and learned the mysteries of Dewey and the intricacies of the Browne system.

Some years before our public library branch was relocated from the local school to its own bespoke wooden cube across the road from our house. I must have been quite a regular visitor - Tintin and Asterix mainly if I'm honest, but also non-fiction, history and facts. The library ladies weren't quite like Matilda's Mrs Phelps, but they must have looked out for me. I do remember they let me borrow the Stanley Gibbons stamp albums from the reference section for the weekend.  My county library card worked in the Central Library in the town centre too, so Saturday afternoons would find me there, borrowing records as well as books, clutching them on the top desk of the bus, waiting to get home to play them.

As I moved away from home, to University and then to London, I signed up for new library cards along the way, and although I always thought it would be a great place to work, my career took me in other directions, in finance and local authorities, until a break when my daughter was born gave me the chance to rethink my whole career. As a stay-at-home dad I applied for a Saturday job in the public library, was turned down for lack of experience, so ended up getting a placement via a temp agency after the most humiliating interview experience of my life. The interview went well, until I got up to leave, shook hands and promptly took a wrong turning into the broom cupboard.

But that broom cupboard experience certainly opened doors, and along the way I have met, and been taught and encouraged by some many extraordinary librarians. I worked as a public library assistant for a number of years, volunteering for all sorts of tasks, and took up a part-time post in a school library. I am now School Librarian in a busy comprehensive secondary Academy school, thriving on the challenges of promoting reading for pleasure and delivering information literacy skills across the curriculum. I am studying for a Masters in Information Management, have taken on the role of Extended Project Co-Ordinator in school, and am building a professional network via Rudai 23 Things.

Along the way I have come to realise that libraries are not static, they are about change and evolution, and as librarians we never stop learning, growing and developing. These are uncertain times, with budget constraints and changing information delivery, but the need for libraries has never been more important.

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