Hi All,
I have a question about sending in a Chartership portfolio - how long does it usually take to get something beyond the 'we have received your portfolio response'? I sent mine in at the end of last year, then chased it up in mid-January (I was told I would have a response 'soon') but still nothing on whether it has passed or failed, or needs to be redone or what. Is this normal or should I start making a nuisance of myself trying to find out what's happened - if for no other reason than to save my nails from being bitten to the quick waiing to hear (not a very professional look for a service industry!). Any advice very gratefully received.
Friday, 17 February 2012
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Training advice
Hi,
I'm looking for a training course in writing for the web (i.e. writing webpage content & choosing images, but not actually designing the webpage) & am having difficulty finding a valid course provided by a reputable company. I've checked with CILIP, Renaissance(MLA), etc & so far they don't have any suitable courses so I've tried doing google searches, which results in 100s of webpages for companies I've never heard of. Most of them are probably perfectly respectable companies & the courses would probably be really useful but as I don't have anything to compare them against I've got no idea how to narrow the list down. Does anyone out there know of any web content training courses, or any training companies that you've used that might be worth checking? Thanks.
I'm looking for a training course in writing for the web (i.e. writing webpage content & choosing images, but not actually designing the webpage) & am having difficulty finding a valid course provided by a reputable company. I've checked with CILIP, Renaissance(MLA), etc & so far they don't have any suitable courses so I've tried doing google searches, which results in 100s of webpages for companies I've never heard of. Most of them are probably perfectly respectable companies & the courses would probably be really useful but as I don't have anything to compare them against I've got no idea how to narrow the list down. Does anyone out there know of any web content training courses, or any training companies that you've used that might be worth checking? Thanks.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
Certificate
Hi All,
Happy New Year!
Has everyone else received their certificate now because mine still hasn't appeared?
I'm back at work after the long Xmas holiday and faced with a massive backlog of work as well as new stuff coming in all the time - anyone ever feel like your stuck in a hamster wheel, running really fast just to stay in the same place.
On the brightside I did manage to finish my Chartership portfolio & send it off by Xmas. I sent it special delivery so I know it was definitely signed for, but I haven't heard anything since - does anyone have any idea when they usually acknowledge receipt, or how long it takes for the assessment to be completed?
Happy New Year!
Has everyone else received their certificate now because mine still hasn't appeared?
I'm back at work after the long Xmas holiday and faced with a massive backlog of work as well as new stuff coming in all the time - anyone ever feel like your stuck in a hamster wheel, running really fast just to stay in the same place.
On the brightside I did manage to finish my Chartership portfolio & send it off by Xmas. I sent it special delivery so I know it was definitely signed for, but I haven't heard anything since - does anyone have any idea when they usually acknowledge receipt, or how long it takes for the assessment to be completed?
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
Update
I haven't had a chance to keep up with the blog in the past few weeks as we've had quite a lot on at the library - several school visits, international group visits, prepping for Xmas closure & a lot more (on top of our standard tasks & responsibilities).
One of the things I've been working on is trying to develop our webpage for our Trade Literature Collection, I'm also working on a Trade Literature Guide which will eventually be sent out to various special interest groups & will be uploaded onto the website, but at the moment I am focusing on the webpage itself. I've attached a draft of the webpage text for anyone whose interested (I've left the images out as it would be too big a file).
Also as part of my LGBT voluntary activities we've begun launching new events & community groups - the first being a reading group based on the Green Carnation Award Shortlist (the first drop-in/sign-up meeting is tonight, 7pm at the Mailcoach in Swindon - Yikes!). Any advice on how to handle it very gratefully received. I was thinking of having a Christmas themed quiz as an ice breaker or is that completely naff?
Also, did the certificates for the 23 Things course ever get sent out, if so could you please re-send mine as it was never received. Thanks.
One of the things I've been working on is trying to develop our webpage for our Trade Literature Collection, I'm also working on a Trade Literature Guide which will eventually be sent out to various special interest groups & will be uploaded onto the website, but at the moment I am focusing on the webpage itself. I've attached a draft of the webpage text for anyone whose interested (I've left the images out as it would be too big a file).
Also as part of my LGBT voluntary activities we've begun launching new events & community groups - the first being a reading group based on the Green Carnation Award Shortlist (the first drop-in/sign-up meeting is tonight, 7pm at the Mailcoach in Swindon - Yikes!). Any advice on how to handle it very gratefully received. I was thinking of having a Christmas themed quiz as an ice breaker or is that completely naff?
Also, did the certificates for the 23 Things course ever get sent out, if so could you please re-send mine as it was never received. Thanks.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Thing 22 - volunteering
I have taken on several voluntary roles over the past 10-11 years, sometimes to get a feel for certain roles but mostly as a way of developing my skills & expanding my professional knowledge. My voluntary roles have included acting as Student Mentor at university, acting as founder/advocate for the LGBT Community project & becoming a strategic driver for the NMSI Diversity Panel Entrypoints Taskforce.
I've also worked on fundraising projects for charities such as the RNIB, Swindon Foggys & others.
I think that volunteering as a professional activity has a lot of benefits at any point of your career. It can help you build up a database of professional & transferable skills which can help you to expand your CV, get a library position, network & build up your professional knowledge. In addition to professional support volunteering can also help you to build confidence & social skills. Volunteering can also offer opportunities for building a professional portfolio & gaining experience in public speaking, as well as research & publication opportunities.
My initial voluntary positions were based on gaining work experience while at university & gaining transferrable skills to keep my CV current & marketable. As a student I was also able to use volunteer roles to test out specific career areas without tying yourself fully into that career path. In my case, during my undergraduate degree I was considering opportunities for working in libraries or as a teacher. Both these roles would involve utilising transferrable skills like customer services, as well as specific skills like public speaking & teaching. As a result I took on the role of Student Mentor. This gave me the opportunity to practice negotiation & liaison, communication & organisation skills. This mentoring role was a good basis for me to build on & use to market myself in the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) market.
Once I became more involved in libraries as a profession through my ILM Master of Research, & particularly after getting my job at SMLA, I began looking into more specific ways of volunteering. In particular I was looking for volunteer roles that would benefit the library service as well as my professional development because I believe that although taking the volunteer service to extremes could be detrimental to the library service as a whole (resulting in loss of qualified staff or cuts in services because by definition volunteers won't be there every day 9-5 & all year round), having a balanced volunteer service that supports existing & qualified staff & is able to relieve some of the pressure on them will allow libraries to focus their time & attention on areas of the service that can only be developed by someone with the proper qualifications, & who is available on a regular daily basis. Suggesting that a volunteer can take on any & all aspects of the librarians role does de-value our profession, & is frankly ridiculous, for one thing most volunteers working in their own paid positions so that they wouldn't be able to cover the service & keep it open in the same way actual employees can but with the best will in the world they wouldn't be able to keep it to the same standards either. I am not knocking volunteers AT ALL - they are absolutely brilliant & we couldn't do without them being their to support us & they can bring a wide range of transferrable skills from their other jobs to the service, but unless their other jobs is in some other library service they wouldn't have the necessary professional skills to follow through in all areas (such as cataloguing) or being able to take on the role of the strategic planner without the serviuce investing in a lot of training for them (with no guarantees about how long they'll be in the service for, how committed they are to developing themselves as librarians or anything else).
I was given the opportunity to volunteer within the NMSI organisation by our professional development & recruitment teams &, as a result of looking at how volunteers could support the library profession & the need for volunteers with service specific skills, I decided to become involved with volunteering for several NMSI strategic panels including acting as a SMEG (Science Museum Executive Group) Observer & then later taking on the role of strategic driver for the NMSI Diversity Panel Entrypoints Taskforce (EPT). These roles gave me the opportunity to learn more about strategy & leadership in the library service while acting as an advocate for different elements of the library audience & stakeholders groups, & contributing to how national policy is set, interpreted & implemented. As part of the EPT role in particular I had the opportunity to feedback to our library service, & hopefully to the wider ILM community, by creating service packs & policies to be circulated thoughout all the NMSI arms.
I also wanted to find the opportunity to have a more direct affect on national policy & procedures for public libraries, whether it involved shaping how they are implemented at a local level or how they are designed at a national level, so I began looking into opportunities in the wider ILM community & looking at what skills or experience I could bring to them. At this point I had already begun volunteering with the local LGBT Community project campaign - the aim of which is to create an 'alternative scene' & offer support to the LGBT community. As part of this community role I made contact with the local council through the LGBT Coalition & the Disability Coalition (later joined together as part of the Single Equality Coalition) & was put in contact with one of the strategic managers for the local libraries who was trying to improve LGBT services in the library. I felt this was something that would enable me to join together the three strands of my professional skills, community skills, & optimising my role as a volunteer to gain the most benefit from it. Being involved in the LGBT in Libraries project not only benefits the local public libraries, it also benefits our LGBT Community project as a whole & allows us to have some say in policy & procedures relating to our services, on the personal side it also allows me to develop a new range of professional skills which in turn helps me to improve the services of our individual library organisation.
Recently I've also had the opportunity to look at volunteering from a new angle as part of my paid employment, I have been given the role of Volunteer Supervisor for our trade literature volunteers (who are worth their weight in gold for all the work they've done on the project so far). Part of my role involved liasing with the NMSI volunteer team to actually generate the role descriptions for the trade lit. volunteers, which is where I found out that the organisation has policies in place to protect the volunteers, the service & the paid employees by maintaining the balance bewteen voluntary roles & paid roles. For instance, a volunteers role description is not allowed to include tasks that should be covered by the job description of a paid employee, & which they could reasonably be expected to carry out. on their own. So in our case we are allowed to include indexing/listing the trade lit. in our volunteer roles because there are a few hundred boxes holding several thousand unsorted pieces of trade lit. & there is no way they could expect an paid employee to work their way through that (unles they had been taken on solely for that purpose & were not involved in any other tasks or projects). On the other hand, as project leader it's part of my job description to do the strategic planning for the project so I wouldn't be able to ask the volunteers to do any of the research, or any of the development or marketing tasks. I think this may be the best model of volunteering vs. employment roles, it allows for support from both sides but makes sure the roles are clearly defined so that the volunteers don't have to worry they're being overburdened or given something to do outside their skillset, & the employees don't feel as if their roles are being taken over.
I'd love to hear if anyone else has any experience of different formats for volunteering/employee programmes & how they worked out, or if there's any suggestions for other places to find volunteer experiences beyond asking your university office, your local council or your employer's HR/training departments.
I've also worked on fundraising projects for charities such as the RNIB, Swindon Foggys & others.
I think that volunteering as a professional activity has a lot of benefits at any point of your career. It can help you build up a database of professional & transferable skills which can help you to expand your CV, get a library position, network & build up your professional knowledge. In addition to professional support volunteering can also help you to build confidence & social skills. Volunteering can also offer opportunities for building a professional portfolio & gaining experience in public speaking, as well as research & publication opportunities.
My initial voluntary positions were based on gaining work experience while at university & gaining transferrable skills to keep my CV current & marketable. As a student I was also able to use volunteer roles to test out specific career areas without tying yourself fully into that career path. In my case, during my undergraduate degree I was considering opportunities for working in libraries or as a teacher. Both these roles would involve utilising transferrable skills like customer services, as well as specific skills like public speaking & teaching. As a result I took on the role of Student Mentor. This gave me the opportunity to practice negotiation & liaison, communication & organisation skills. This mentoring role was a good basis for me to build on & use to market myself in the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) market.
Once I became more involved in libraries as a profession through my ILM Master of Research, & particularly after getting my job at SMLA, I began looking into more specific ways of volunteering. In particular I was looking for volunteer roles that would benefit the library service as well as my professional development because I believe that although taking the volunteer service to extremes could be detrimental to the library service as a whole (resulting in loss of qualified staff or cuts in services because by definition volunteers won't be there every day 9-5 & all year round), having a balanced volunteer service that supports existing & qualified staff & is able to relieve some of the pressure on them will allow libraries to focus their time & attention on areas of the service that can only be developed by someone with the proper qualifications, & who is available on a regular daily basis. Suggesting that a volunteer can take on any & all aspects of the librarians role does de-value our profession, & is frankly ridiculous, for one thing most volunteers working in their own paid positions so that they wouldn't be able to cover the service & keep it open in the same way actual employees can but with the best will in the world they wouldn't be able to keep it to the same standards either. I am not knocking volunteers AT ALL - they are absolutely brilliant & we couldn't do without them being their to support us & they can bring a wide range of transferrable skills from their other jobs to the service, but unless their other jobs is in some other library service they wouldn't have the necessary professional skills to follow through in all areas (such as cataloguing) or being able to take on the role of the strategic planner without the serviuce investing in a lot of training for them (with no guarantees about how long they'll be in the service for, how committed they are to developing themselves as librarians or anything else).
I was given the opportunity to volunteer within the NMSI organisation by our professional development & recruitment teams &, as a result of looking at how volunteers could support the library profession & the need for volunteers with service specific skills, I decided to become involved with volunteering for several NMSI strategic panels including acting as a SMEG (Science Museum Executive Group) Observer & then later taking on the role of strategic driver for the NMSI Diversity Panel Entrypoints Taskforce (EPT). These roles gave me the opportunity to learn more about strategy & leadership in the library service while acting as an advocate for different elements of the library audience & stakeholders groups, & contributing to how national policy is set, interpreted & implemented. As part of the EPT role in particular I had the opportunity to feedback to our library service, & hopefully to the wider ILM community, by creating service packs & policies to be circulated thoughout all the NMSI arms.
I also wanted to find the opportunity to have a more direct affect on national policy & procedures for public libraries, whether it involved shaping how they are implemented at a local level or how they are designed at a national level, so I began looking into opportunities in the wider ILM community & looking at what skills or experience I could bring to them. At this point I had already begun volunteering with the local LGBT Community project campaign - the aim of which is to create an 'alternative scene' & offer support to the LGBT community. As part of this community role I made contact with the local council through the LGBT Coalition & the Disability Coalition (later joined together as part of the Single Equality Coalition) & was put in contact with one of the strategic managers for the local libraries who was trying to improve LGBT services in the library. I felt this was something that would enable me to join together the three strands of my professional skills, community skills, & optimising my role as a volunteer to gain the most benefit from it. Being involved in the LGBT in Libraries project not only benefits the local public libraries, it also benefits our LGBT Community project as a whole & allows us to have some say in policy & procedures relating to our services, on the personal side it also allows me to develop a new range of professional skills which in turn helps me to improve the services of our individual library organisation.
Recently I've also had the opportunity to look at volunteering from a new angle as part of my paid employment, I have been given the role of Volunteer Supervisor for our trade literature volunteers (who are worth their weight in gold for all the work they've done on the project so far). Part of my role involved liasing with the NMSI volunteer team to actually generate the role descriptions for the trade lit. volunteers, which is where I found out that the organisation has policies in place to protect the volunteers, the service & the paid employees by maintaining the balance bewteen voluntary roles & paid roles. For instance, a volunteers role description is not allowed to include tasks that should be covered by the job description of a paid employee, & which they could reasonably be expected to carry out. on their own. So in our case we are allowed to include indexing/listing the trade lit. in our volunteer roles because there are a few hundred boxes holding several thousand unsorted pieces of trade lit. & there is no way they could expect an paid employee to work their way through that (unles they had been taken on solely for that purpose & were not involved in any other tasks or projects). On the other hand, as project leader it's part of my job description to do the strategic planning for the project so I wouldn't be able to ask the volunteers to do any of the research, or any of the development or marketing tasks. I think this may be the best model of volunteering vs. employment roles, it allows for support from both sides but makes sure the roles are clearly defined so that the volunteers don't have to worry they're being overburdened or given something to do outside their skillset, & the employees don't feel as if their roles are being taken over.
I'd love to hear if anyone else has any experience of different formats for volunteering/employee programmes & how they worked out, or if there's any suggestions for other places to find volunteer experiences beyond asking your university office, your local council or your employer's HR/training departments.
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Thing 21: Self-promotion
CVs, interviews & other self-promotion opportunities scare me a lot. I'm never sure how much info to give or how to answer certain questions. I can usually reel off the stuff about qualifications & professional skills fairly easily because the proof is all there in the certificates & job history. But when it comes to answering questions like 'where do you see yourself in 5 years time' I can have a problem, I want to promote myself but I don't want to come across as too cocky, & I obviously want to say something that reflects the job requirements as well. Luckily I don't think I'll be doing the job search rounds any time soon (fingers crossed) but I am looking at ways of becoming more involved in professional groups & getting research published so I think this Things exercise should be very useful, so here goes.
I think question 1 is all about the importance of adding value & turning a negative into a positive, which is a big part of promoting yourself especially when it comes to application forms & interviews. During our ILM course they taught us an exercise for job applications where you write down a strength/weakness statement then add a statement to it that either adds value or turns a - into a +, sometimes it can be difficult to stretch out a statement but I think it's the difficult ones that help to prepare you for the unexpected interview questions. I mean if you can re-package a love of sci-fi books or heavy metal music into a valuable asset I think you can pretty much promote anything or anyone.
LIKES (adding value):
I like reading = I have a wide knowledge base covering a range of subjects.
I like quilting = I'm focused on details as well as being creative.
I like strategic planning & writing reports = I am forward thinking & able to see the bigger picture, while at the same time able to act as part of a team.
I like indexing = I'm organised & able to carry out basic library tasks as well as strategic functions.
I like enquiries research = I'm customer focused & have experience in different forms of library research.
I like writing fiction & poetry = I'm creative & have skills that would be useful in marketing & pitching projects.
I like fndraising for Swindon Foggys & socialising = I'm committed to advocacy & inclusion, as well as being able to connect with people with different needs & backgrounds.
I like attending conferences = I'm committed to my continued professional development, & to building a professional support & liaison network.
I like sci-fi & fantasy/crime/horror books, movies, TV = I have an open mind & am able to connect with information in a variety of forms.
I like listening to music - anything from heavy metal to Joan Baez = My interests are varied & give me the opportunity to form connections with a wide range of people.
I like cooking = I can be methodical & creative at the same time, & work to strict deadlines.
I like researching organising trade lit. = I'm interested in collection development, & in how non-standard collections can be utilised.
I like working on the diversity panel = I like acting as an advovate for social inclusion, & working to ensure our service meets the needs of all its stakeholders & audiences.
I like volunteering on the LGBT Community project = I'm capable of thinking outside the box & I'm interested in how the library service can serve & support the wider community.
I like developing collections = I can look at things from different points of view to meet the needs of various audiences, as well as ensuring compliance with strategic aims.
I like blogging = I'm capable of utilising a wide range of technologies & social networking services in a variety of roles including marketing & collection development.
DISLIKES (+ to -):
I don't like physio = It has helped me to be more patient & learn more about control.
I don't like dealing with/getting through large crowds = It has helped me to develop skills in negotiation, socialisation & self confidence.
I hate call centre work = It helped me to develop my customer service & organisation skills, as well as liaison & financial reporting skills.
I don't like trying to pitch ideas to people/groups/councils who are obviously not interested = It has helped to boost my confidence levels, develop my marketing & negotiation skills, as well as developing inter-personal & networking skills.
I don't like being labelled & assumptions being made about me because of the labels = It has helped me to understand more about social inclusion & to view things from different viewpoints.
I don't like writing job applications/bursary applications = They have helped me develop my self-promotion skills & find new ways of assessing my personal & professional development.
I hate trying to convince my PC to do even the most basic tasks = It has helped me to develop my knowledge of IT & think outside the box to find new ways of accomplishing tasks.
I was very satisfied with the outcome of the LGBT in Libraries project. We were succesful in creating the collection, & launching it as a platform for future development. I've also been responsible for a series of projects & tasks at work , inc. overseeing the trade lit. move & creating a development plan for the collection. As a result of these projects I have continued to develop my professional & networking skills. In particular I have further developed my strategic planning skills, collection development skills & ability to understand issues of social inclusion.
The trade lit. project has involved generating, recruiting & supervising volunteer roles. In addition to standard collection tasks I have had to develop a deeper understanding of cataloguing & indexing, as well as utilising the internet & networking opportunities to market the collection.
I have a wide range of experiences that I can feed into a CV & job application including customer service roles, mentoring & teaching roles, research skills & much more. The problem I have is deciding what is valid experience for individual applications so I have developed a skills charting matrix to help me make these decisions. One side of the matrix will list the skills set out in the job description/person specification & the other lists all the skills I have. I then use the columns-rows to enter specific experiences that match both the matrices. From this I can then highlight which aspects I need to focus on in my CV & application.
I think question 1 is all about the importance of adding value & turning a negative into a positive, which is a big part of promoting yourself especially when it comes to application forms & interviews. During our ILM course they taught us an exercise for job applications where you write down a strength/weakness statement then add a statement to it that either adds value or turns a - into a +, sometimes it can be difficult to stretch out a statement but I think it's the difficult ones that help to prepare you for the unexpected interview questions. I mean if you can re-package a love of sci-fi books or heavy metal music into a valuable asset I think you can pretty much promote anything or anyone.
LIKES (adding value):
I like reading = I have a wide knowledge base covering a range of subjects.
I like quilting = I'm focused on details as well as being creative.
I like strategic planning & writing reports = I am forward thinking & able to see the bigger picture, while at the same time able to act as part of a team.
I like indexing = I'm organised & able to carry out basic library tasks as well as strategic functions.
I like enquiries research = I'm customer focused & have experience in different forms of library research.
I like writing fiction & poetry = I'm creative & have skills that would be useful in marketing & pitching projects.
I like fndraising for Swindon Foggys & socialising = I'm committed to advocacy & inclusion, as well as being able to connect with people with different needs & backgrounds.
I like attending conferences = I'm committed to my continued professional development, & to building a professional support & liaison network.
I like sci-fi & fantasy/crime/horror books, movies, TV = I have an open mind & am able to connect with information in a variety of forms.
I like listening to music - anything from heavy metal to Joan Baez = My interests are varied & give me the opportunity to form connections with a wide range of people.
I like cooking = I can be methodical & creative at the same time, & work to strict deadlines.
I like researching organising trade lit. = I'm interested in collection development, & in how non-standard collections can be utilised.
I like working on the diversity panel = I like acting as an advovate for social inclusion, & working to ensure our service meets the needs of all its stakeholders & audiences.
I like volunteering on the LGBT Community project = I'm capable of thinking outside the box & I'm interested in how the library service can serve & support the wider community.
I like developing collections = I can look at things from different points of view to meet the needs of various audiences, as well as ensuring compliance with strategic aims.
I like blogging = I'm capable of utilising a wide range of technologies & social networking services in a variety of roles including marketing & collection development.
DISLIKES (+ to -):
I don't like physio = It has helped me to be more patient & learn more about control.
I don't like dealing with/getting through large crowds = It has helped me to develop skills in negotiation, socialisation & self confidence.
I hate call centre work = It helped me to develop my customer service & organisation skills, as well as liaison & financial reporting skills.
I don't like trying to pitch ideas to people/groups/councils who are obviously not interested = It has helped to boost my confidence levels, develop my marketing & negotiation skills, as well as developing inter-personal & networking skills.
I don't like being labelled & assumptions being made about me because of the labels = It has helped me to understand more about social inclusion & to view things from different viewpoints.
I don't like writing job applications/bursary applications = They have helped me develop my self-promotion skills & find new ways of assessing my personal & professional development.
I hate trying to convince my PC to do even the most basic tasks = It has helped me to develop my knowledge of IT & think outside the box to find new ways of accomplishing tasks.
I was very satisfied with the outcome of the LGBT in Libraries project. We were succesful in creating the collection, & launching it as a platform for future development. I've also been responsible for a series of projects & tasks at work , inc. overseeing the trade lit. move & creating a development plan for the collection. As a result of these projects I have continued to develop my professional & networking skills. In particular I have further developed my strategic planning skills, collection development skills & ability to understand issues of social inclusion.
The trade lit. project has involved generating, recruiting & supervising volunteer roles. In addition to standard collection tasks I have had to develop a deeper understanding of cataloguing & indexing, as well as utilising the internet & networking opportunities to market the collection.
I have a wide range of experiences that I can feed into a CV & job application including customer service roles, mentoring & teaching roles, research skills & much more. The problem I have is deciding what is valid experience for individual applications so I have developed a skills charting matrix to help me make these decisions. One side of the matrix will list the skills set out in the job description/person specification & the other lists all the skills I have. I then use the columns-rows to enter specific experiences that match both the matrices. From this I can then highlight which aspects I need to focus on in my CV & application.
Friday, 14 October 2011
Thing 20 - careers
I've just been looking over some of the links on the Library Roots page & it struck me that there seem to be a lot of us librarians who went through a period of not knowing what exactly we wanted to do, & doing lots of other jobs before ending up almost as an accidental librarian or as Jennie puts it in her Dumpling in a Hanky blog 'it all started off a bit randomly'. All of which just adds more proof to my theory that many librarians are born with some kind of underlying almost genetic predisposition to be a librarian & will end up finding their way into the profession somehow, everything in between is just a valuable information & experience gathering exercise allowing us to develop transferrable skills to support our new roles in libraries or archives. My main piece of advice for people starting out in their careers or thinking about becoming a librarian is that you shouldn't be afraid to take on other jobs in the meantime or worry that all the experience on your CV absolutely has to be library related or it's going to be harrder to get a job in the field. As long as the experience proves your commitment to basic principles such as customer service & you have had at least some experience in a library-related field, either paid or voluntarily & you can demonstrate you have the skills they are looking for like customer service, organisation, etc then you WILL find a job somewhere in the field. Just don't permanently shut any doors along the way.
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