Library Student Open Day Presentation for

Thank you so much for having me here. I will talk about my career as a librarian. Have always wanted to work in a library and dreamed of being a librarian. Probably influenced by many 80s films. My mom dragged me and my brother across counties as a children and I would always find a library in any new place.
I made it my mission to work in a library! I have managed to work in almost every type of library, a national library, public libraries, and a now a research library. They all have one thing in common, you will spend a lot of time advocating for the library service. If there is any skill, you should get good at its that.
So I started off working in the British library over 20 years ago. Then I proceeded to work there in various jobs for 17 years through all these events 17 years is a long time, worked as a Library assistant then later a refence specialist . I also worked for the Welcome team and as part of the basement retrieval team. I went part-time and did a degree in arts and humanities, after a 2 year break, started a Masters with London Met in 2006. Doing a masters while working full time easily the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Bu it did come in very handy for my career tho
Another thing that came in handy was volunteering for libraries. I also did lots of voluntary work to build my skills and experience. I sat on one of the committees for CPd25, as well as MMIT(now Digital Technology Group) in CILIP. Built up engagement skills and tech skills Visited lots of amazing libraries, Created lots of exiting events and worked with very talented librarians. I squeezed all this in while working full time in the Humanities Reading room
Then finally after 7 years as a reference specialist ,I left the red brick Brutalism of the British Library and I started working in public libraries This is where I discovered the joys of working with 3rd party providers Firstly I worked in Lewisham Council, My job was a digital librarian I delivered a project called MiWifi to deliver tablets and wifi to people with no or low access to tech. We lend ipads with sim cards to people in the community The project was Funded by the Mayor of London was a pilot to test the mechanics of lending 4G enabled devices through the library service in an inner city context. I wrote a bid for the 27K and got shortlisted and was up against professional bid writers and presenters but managed to pull through. My day to day role was mostly doing social media things with a very small team for the 13 different libraries in that borough. I developed the social media following on twitter , instagram, youtube. Talked about ebooks and eaudiobooks a lot . Did amazing Christmas shows for the children and other amazing literary events. Was doing that for 4 years before I got made redundant in the middle of Covid. I still volunteered and was on the committee as a digital advisor for CityRead, a London based reading group and City of Stories which is A reading program that develops and promotes aspiring writers in London. Then I started working for different agencies as a contractor. To move from permanent job with a strong union to having to submit weekly timesheets on a short contract was a very big change. I did lots of interviews with wild background noise. My neighbours on both sides decided it was the perfect time to do building work , so I sat through an interview with builders very noisily banging away on scaffolding and another time with a recruiter whose dogs barked constantly through the call and cats made an appearance too. Then I started working for Hammersmith Libraries. They have 4 libraries in central London an archive and a prison library. Yes, I did go to visit. Delivered a project to join them to TLC. That’s the libraries consortium, which is a consortium of 17 libraries that gives some of our underfunded public libraries stronger buying power I also oversaw a project that installed Deep Freeze to stop PCs leaking data The PCs were leaking personal data so had to take all 190 PCs offline, which was also very challenging Operation London Bridge happened during my time there and the procession went past a few of our branches. Advocated as hard as possible for improved infrastructure and recruited a brand new systems librarian to help the process, I think every library should have one of those. After my contact came to an end, I started applying again and landed a contract at the Turing
This role involved setting up the library service at Alan Turing Institute The Turing is a data science and AI research organisation based, back where I started in the BL. In this role, I procured 9 databases for the library service Wrote 18 policies and proposals Created 13 intranet pages And procured one repository I also catalogued 298 books And wrote one Handbook I picked up a bunch of new skills, learned to use Slack and Flows, why Python is the darling of Data scientists, got to grips with GitHub, Negotiated with publishers for Read Publish agreements and embraced Open access er… with open arms. The great thing about library roles is you are always learning and thanks to innovations in technology and AI there is so much scope to develop a modern library service. No day is ever the same and sometimes I got to work with fantastic people. Thank you all so much for listening, Gotta run, have to meet with a man about a dog xx

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