Officially Employed!

I GOT A JOB!

Today I officially signed my Appointment Letter for the full time position of Programs Library Technician - Children and Young Adults. The position is at a big library in Sydney and my salary is, dare I say it, QUITE comfortable. The position will have me planning, promoting, and running the library programs and events for children and young adults as well as performing other general library duties.

I AM SO EXCITED!!!!

It really feels very self-affirming to note that I took a step toward a qualification in libraries, graduated with Distinction, and then have now walked into a great, full time job before the end of February. I finally feel like I'm an adult and am starting my lifetime career. It is terrifying, but thrilling.

I don't really have anything more to say for now, but I am very much looking forward to sharing the occasional story or thought related to my day to day working experiences.

Thanks for coming with me on this exciting next step!

xx Penny

New Beginnings

During the last week I have completed my library industry placement, finished my final assessments and completed my TAFE course. The feeling of elation that came over me when I realised that it was all finished was incredible and closely followed by a feeling of driven motivation and focus on the next step: getting a job.

Getting a job in the library industry is proving to be an interesting process considering the range of different methods by which to gain employment or information about potential employment. SEEK is, of course, a service that can be used to access work opportunities across all areas, but in the case of library work, SEEK will generally just link you back to the council responsible for the position. Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) has a selection of job listings but the selection is generally quite limited and often more of the positions advertised there are for Librarian level jobs, and not so much Library Technicians. Another option is the Zenith Management service, which lines up qualified job-seekers with potential library and information industry job opportunities. They have a few positions advertised at the moment so fingers crossed on that!

But when it comes down to it, most library jobs (at least those in public council libraries) are accessed through the individual council pages to which they belong, so sometimes it can take a bit of searching and networking to locate the little gems that don't make it to the big job listing sites.

As I set off on this journey to employment I shall keep you updated and hopefully, before too long, I will be blogging about my great new job.

Penny ^_^

Libraries and me: How I got to where I am.

When I was a child, the library was my friend.

When I was a teen, the library was my escape.

When I was in University, the library was my study companion.

Now, as an adult, the library is my future.

Libraries mean different things to different people and as we age, our perceptions of libraries change. The way that I view and treat libraries is much developed from the way I did in my childhood years, and it is this change that makes the bond that I have with libraries feel like an old friendship.

It is this bond and friendship which explains the wonderful warm feeling that I felt when first I considered changing my career path from Primary teaching to library work. When my best friend suggested I consider joining her in library work, I giggled with joy at the thought of making such a wonderful industry my own career. The world that had started as a doorway to my imagination had become a doorway to a lifetime of learning and educating possibilities, surrounding myself with books and creative pathways and allowing me to open doors for others, from intuitive children, to solitary teens, to enthusiastic students, to interested adults like myself.

When entering the teaching industry, during an interview, I stated that I saw teaching as a gift. That, to be a teacher would be a privilege. That to be the person responsible for introducing pathways of learning to children would be a pleasure that I would strive to earn. But now I look back and realise, to be a librarian is a greater gift, for as a librarian, you open those pathways to children, but also to people of all ages and walks of life. That is the true privilege.

Libraries as a community

Many would state that libraries are a pivotal part of the surrounding community, but few recognise libraries as a community in themselves. In this post I will explore this concept and discuss the relevance of community as a term for libraries.

 

Community has two distinct commutative meanings: 1) Community can refer to a usually small, social unit of any size that shares common values, and 2) in biology, a community is a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment. The latter is generally accepted as the relevant definition when referring to the community that a public library serves, but it is the former to which I refer in this post. This brief, summarising definition refers to shared ‘common values’ but linked to this is the sharing of interests, goals, advice and resources in order to strive toward attaining and projecting these common values.

 

Libraries can be referred to as a community because they share interests, goals, advice and resources, striving through the support of one another and a constant thread of networking. While you may walk into your local library and ask for a book that you cannot locate on the shelf, the librarian may be contacting 5 other libraries in the neighbouring networks in order to find a copy of that book and in doing so strengthen the connections between the libraries and develop contacts for the service of both the libraries, the staff and the public. Academic libraries often trade resources and it is quite common for libraries, during weeding, to offer their weeded resources to other libraries that may be interested in them. This networking system of trust and reliance builds up this sense of community and ensures that each library is strong and able to serve its local community to the best of its individual ability.

Libraries as a business

One way in which many people never see libraries is as a business. When a library exists as a free public service, it becomes difficult to see it as a business because it breaks the specific rules by which a person would identify a business, primarily that all services will cost something, whether an exchange of money, goods or services. The library does not require an exchange of anything other than trust, care and reliability.

 

However, libraries are a business and, since they exist in all areas of the world, the business is booming. So how does the library, as a business, work in a world where money talks and everything costs something?

 

Most libraries are linked to councils and as such, most libraries run on an income from the council, a little extra money coming from the community through donations and fees. However, there are many libraries around the world which are privately owned, but publicly accessible and are thus not funded by any government group. In these cases the libraries must be funded and supported by anyone who wishes to assist. Many such small libraries hold fundraisers or ask for donations in order to manage the collection and maintain the services that they offer and, thankfully, many members of the community recognise the value of the service offered by the library and they assist whenever able.

 

But, as with all businesses, libraries do need significant funds in order to not only maintain the resources of their collection, but also to purchase new resources to ensure that the collection is current and relevant to all users. Weeding is a necessary process to ensure that the collection stays as useful and appreciated as possible, and weeding can also lead to a potential option for fundraising to feed back into the library service. Many libraries quite often have the option for selling on the books that are weeded from the collection so that people can own books rather than needing to return them, and in turn, the library gets some money that can feed into the continuous growth and development of the collection.

 

So when you are next in your local library, consider the costs of maintaining this service which you possibly take for granted. Not only in managing the environment, but also in ensuring that you have access to new books, in good condition and often access to the internet for all people. And maybe while you’re considering these costs, make a donation to help a library out.

Libraries as a space

I have spoken extensively on this blog about the service that libraries offer to their communities in terms of encouraging reading, developing knowledge and inspiring creativity, but I have not yet explored the other ways that libraries can be seen and used. In this and the next two posts I will explore the library as something other than a library as we see it in our primary interpretation. I will start this by exploring libraries as a space.

 

Libraries are, more often than not, a public space. Excluding for a moment those exclusive libraries that have a limited availability or a restricted community, we can look at libraries as a service for the community in terms of a useable space.

 

The library space can be employed by library staff in many ways, some of which are the workshops or training opportunities for members of the community. Most public libraries will offer private areas which can be employed for these purposes, from technology training seminars, to author visits, to childcare programs. These scheduled events and programs can be managed in the library space and the fact that the library is a comforting public space leads to those involved in these sessions being considerably more at ease in that environment.

 

The library offers a space to the individual also, allowing a person of any race, age, education or wealth to find a corner of the library and disappear into any world they so choose. The library is an environment conducive to escapism, offering a space of quiet, comfort and endless supply of imaginative worlds to leave the real world and advance, if only for a moment, into a world of your own. This interpretation of library as a space truly illustrates the value of the library to its patrons.

Libraries throughout time

The history of the library has been traced back to approximately 1200 BCE, with a palace library, temple library, and two private libraries excavated in Syria. From that time, libraries began popping up around the world at many locations such as Nineveh, Alexandria, in Catholic Monasteries across Medieval Europe, and gradually across the entirety of the globe. The Library of Alexandria in Egypt is certainly one of the most historically recognised and popular, partly due to the historical significance of its collection, and partly due to its untimely demise in a fire, leaving the collection a pile of collected ashes. The devastation that still carries through the years because of this tragedy echoes with the message of the importance of this kind of knowledge to the world. The fact that many libraries have been destroyed intentionally only serves to strengthen this belief in the power of knowledge and learning. Many people who sought throughout the years to control the people have feared the influence of the library, being an accessible pathway to knowledge. Knowledge is power, and power is freedom.

 

One of the biggest changes in the structure of the library from its early beginnings to its state today is the public accessibility of the collection, many libraries serving as public local libraries which are open to all members of the public, regardless of age, race, education or wealth. Rather than this supply of information serving as a divider to separate the elite from the common, the library serves as the great equaliser, the information being made available to all people of all backgrounds. The library encourages learning and serves to inspire people to improve their minds and stimulate critical thinking.

 

We are a long shot from what we once were and that is why, regardless of how some people fear for the future of the library, I am excited to be entering this great industry. To think that I am aligning myself with an industry which is just as passionate about encouraging learning and creativity is SO thrilling and I simply cannot wait to get started.