My journey so far and the mentoring process

I'm not sure when I made a conscious decision to become a librarian. I took on a Saturday job as a library assistant when I was 17 in a public library and then did a week's placement in an academic library when I was 18. I enjoyed these experiences and so I ended up applying for a mixture of pure English courses, pure Library studies courses and happily I found a happy medium by doing a Joint Honours at Aberystwyth University in English and Library and Information Studies. And it was here in Aber, that I finally got really excited about Librarianship. I did two years of the Joint Honours degree until I realised that I wanted to do LIS full time, so I managed to persuade the Dean that I could change at this last stage to a single Library degree and I never looked back.  I remember saying at the time I wanted to work in an academic library, as it seemed much more appealing than public library work, but soon enough I found myself working in a music public library in a world renowned concert hall (The Sage Gateshead) and I loved it. A the time, I could only get a part time job as an assistant, but after a year I got a professional post. During this time, I got involved in marketing, reader development, specialist music enquiries, teaching opportunities (1 to 1 and in  a class) and so much more. I revelled at being involved in all aspects of this new and infant library and I grew so much during this time. I then went on to, what is to my knowledge, the only public library traineeship in the UK at Newcastle Libraries and spent an amazing 1 year and 3 months helping to open three community branch libraries and a new City Library, undertaking project work, children's and adult events and working on 'From Words to Wellbeing' - Newcastle Libraries Books on Prescription Scheme. From there I become a permanent member of staff and spent a year as a Library and Information Officer in the Children's and Young People's team and then from June 2010 I was moved over to the Information Digital team where I have a specific responsibility for health information, shared reading groups, information literacy classes to name but a few. I am also currently developing my business information knowledge to help run our business information service and contribute to e-books purchasing, public Internet taster classes and so much more.

So despite having being qualified for only six years, I've had a wide variety of experiences and have been blessed to have been in organisations which have supported my growth and development all the way through. This was particularly evident when I was undergoing the chartership process as I had the lovely problem of having too much evidence rather than not enough! This whole process gave me the opportunity to reflect how far I had come (something that in every day life you don't really think about) and I became chartered in 2010.

During this time, I was also very fortunate to have a mentor who not only guided and supported me, but also who inspired me as well. As a result of this relationship, we worked together on several health projects and as a result it has made me consider working in a health library / information setting in the future. This is something I would never considered in the past and so it shows the benefit of having a mentor outside your own library sector.

As for the future, I would like to gain some experience in a health library, just to test the water and I'm keen to expand my teaching knowledge and experience, as teaching information literacy gets me really excited (very sad I know!). So far it seems like you need to be in an academic environment to be able to get the relevant teaching qualification lots of academic libraries are asking for, but I'm investigating a few lifelong learning courses that I may be able to do, although without vast quantities of teaching time, it is proving to be a hard search. Suggestions on a postcard would be most welcome! And in the meantime as well, I would also like to start thinking about a mentor again. I got so much out of my previous mentoring experience, I think it would be worthwhile to pursue again. So thank you Thing 11 for prompting me!

Image: The image used in this post is available from Flickr under the Creative Commons Licence: Habibmi