For thing ten we are asked to consider our education in librarianship. 'Tell us about why you joined the career, where you are now and how you got there and what you are planning to do next.'
Why you joined: I joined by accident. I had never intended to become a librarian, but, on leaving university in 1978 with an unimpressive II:ii in economic history, I moved to London with my girlfriend and looked for work. I worked for a couple of months in a Jewish baker's shop, a curious experience for a Gentile young man and, just as I decided I couldn't face another early Sunday morning with the chollas and beigels (in those days Jewish shops, which closed on Saturday, were more or less the only shops allowed to open on Sundays), an invitation to interview came for a library assistant job with the London Borough of Barnet. I had applied for the job so long ago I had almost forgotten about it.
I was interviewed by Colin Page, the Deputy Borough Librarian, and we discovered mutual interests in jazz and cricket; in those days interviews were less obviously structured affairs, and I found myself appointed to the post of library assistant at Child's Hill library, in the very south of the borough, close to the border with Camden and Brent. I began to discover that I enjoyed the work. True, tidying the shelves, loaded with more or less everything Jean Plaidy had ever written, could be tedious, and we issued books using the photo-charging system, a ludicrously labour- and equipment-intensive method. Before this we had been on Browne issue, and still retained trays of tickets and book cards. The element I discovered I enjoyed was enquiry work, the thrill of the research chase. True, as an unqualified assistant in a branch with two professional staff, there wasn't a great deal of scope for this, but I took every opportunity I could. I knew that the borough's main reference library, at Hendon, was the place to be and after a year, I became first library assistant, and then senior library assistant there. By now, I was clear that this was what I wanted to do. The borough in those days ran a trainee scheme, and many of my fellow-workers, people like Bryony Vitow, who died so young, Karen Gouly, Veronica Fraser, Gill Hughes and Helen Buchan, were former trainees. Under the scheme trainees spent a year working around the service, spending time in every part of the service, with tutorials every so often with Colin Norris, the Principal Assistant Librarian. Then they spent a year on the postgraduate course at the Polytechnic of North London, followed by another year working round the service, with a guaranteed professional post at the end. All fees were paid and trainees were paid a salary throughout, including the time at library school.
I applied once for the trainee scheme, and was rejected, so I had a false start, enrolling at Ealing to do the part-time postgraduate course under my own steam. This didn't work; in truth I found part-time study too hard to reconcile with everything else in my life. I applied a second time and, with Kevin Turner, who worked at the Church End library and who was, with me, active in NALGO, was successful. The trainee year was fascinating, and showed me the breadth of a public library service. It laid the basis for the wide-ranging career I've had. The time at PNL was great, too. In those days the library school still more the stamp of Edward Dudley, who had recently left as Head of School, to be succeeded by Kevin McGarry. Edward had built a large team of the best people to be found: Derek Langridge and others from the Cataloguing Research Group, linked through apostolic succession back to Ranganathan, Bob Baxter, Jim Hennessey and Margaret Redfern teaching public library management, David Nicholas and Adrian Mole teaching me subject bibliography, Tony Vaughan on organisational theory, John Eyre on library automation, Kevin McGarry who supervised my dissertation on Krupskaya and literacy campaigns in the early years of the Soviet Union, Joy Lewis who taught medical librarianship, my tutor, the delightful Brigid Mulcahy….I'm sure there are many I've forgotten.
I returned to Barnet from PNL, and at that time saw my future in public libraries. I worked in Barnet and in Haringey, working for much of my time in the old Tottenham library, now turned into flats, whose site would have been at the centre of the recent riots. I left Haringey at the end of 1990, disillusioned with public librarianship. For all the successes of our campaign to stop libraries closing, in a London borough, rate-capped and cut to ribbons by the Thatcher government, I spent much of my time explaining to people why we didn't have the resource they needed. So I was made redundant, and went off on a career that took me to the British Council, Hawker Siddeley Group plc, before finding my way into health libraries, where I have been for most of the time since.
I was quite slow to charter. When I qualified, the Licentiateship scheme was being introduced, and I achieved Licentiateship, but was slow to covert it into Chartership. Indeed, but the time I did, Licentiateship had been abolished and I had to start again. I may apply for Fellowship, something I've been thinking about for a long time. As far as I can see, being unemployed is no bar to Fellowship, but I wonder if the Board will share that view.
Where am I now? Unemployed for nearly five months. Where will I go next? Anywhere that will have me. I like to think that I have developed a wide range of skills in a varied career, but it doesn't seem to impress potential employers. Economic imperatives may drive me out of the profession that has been my life for the past thirty-three years; I hope it doesn't come to that.
A postscript: I realised after posting this that I had made no mention of my MIInfSc, another arcane qualification from the days of the penny-farthing and the horseless carriage. It denoted membership of the Insititute of Information Scientists, merged with the Library Association in 2003 to form CILIP. I became an MIInfSc about the same time as I chartered. My job then seemed to span the divide between librarianship and information science, so it made sense. A couple of years ago, I came across a colleague who was still using the MIInfSc post-nominal letters, although the organisation no longer existed. This seemed to me ethically questionable, especially as he refused to join CILIP, but who should regulate this? The IIS has gone and CILIP has no jurisdiction over non-members. Of course colleagues in the information world knew the history, but, and I imagine the reason he did it, those outside the profession, particularly people on shortlisting and interview panels, would have no idea at his post-nominals were bogus.
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