Thing 2: Writing your first blog post

On being a librarian.

I had no real burning ambition to be anything when I was younger, other than older! I grew up on a farm in England. We were a family of readers, though, Dad preferred the newspapers to books, and the mobile library came around every five or six weeks, so we always had a good supply of new reading material. When I left school I did a bit of this and that, moved to Ireland, got married, had children, got separated, and when my youngest daughter reached thirteen, I realised that, as a stay at home single parent, I needed to start planning my future. 

At the time I was doing some voluntary work with a  charity and was talking to one the leaders about what to do next and she advised me to go back into education - I had left school with one GCSE (in Art, but that is a whole different story!). I went to the Northside Partnership for advice, and without whom none of what came next would have been possible, they advised me to bypass the Leaving Cert and look at doing an access course which would lead into a degree course, due to what they called 'my life experience skills'.

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I was a bit dubious but went ahead and applied to NCI, and got a place, only to realise that the cost of the bus travel alone would stop me from going (NCI were based in Ranelagh at the time, right over the other side of Dublin from where I live!), again the Northside Partnership came to my rescue and furnished me with a monthly bus ticket and a grant to buy books. I was the oldest student in the class which was a bit daunting, but I persevered and came away after a hard year of study with pretty good marks.

I applied to St. Patrick's College in Drumcondra to do an Arts degree. This was way back in 1997 and mature students applied directly through the college, not the CAO, I was called to do an interview, an aptitude test and had to write an essay on why I wanted to go back into education! I was petrified, having never sat a formal interview or aptitude test before.

 St. Pat's was and still is very supportive of mature students and I was very fortunate to be offered a place. I graduated in 2000, once again with the question what will I do next, saw that there was a job going in the library in St. Pat's, applied and started in October 2000. I have worked here ever since! I have worked in acquisitions, cataloguing, journals, circulations, issue/information desks and I am now managing user services and the library reception desk. Along the way I completed the Dip in Library and Information Science, by distance through Robert Gordon University, so like my tagline says...always learning!

So, that's how I became a librarian. The why is...because I love it! I love working in an academic library. St. Pat's is a smallish college, so you really get to know both the staff and students and mature students are always fascinated to hear my story. No two days are ever the same, I'm often challenged, but I'm never bored!