The appeal of libraries

Thing 2: My First Blog Post

Confession time!  I didn’t grow up with a burning ambition to be a librarian.  It was not a job or an environment that was really in my orbit when I was growing up.  We didn’t have a school library or a local library in my area so my exposure to the world of libraries was pretty limited until I went to college.   As you can imagine, the floors of the UCD Belfield library were quite overwhelming.  Many, many years later I still remember the kindness and reassurance shown by the librarian to the bunch of overwhelmed first years she was showing around on the library tour!! 

Once I left college with an Arts degree, one of the first jobs I got was working in a public library.  I really loved the variety of working in a busy environment that was a vital part of community life in a rural town. I worked mainly in the children’s section and to see the interest of young people in learning and reading was really inspiring.

 After 18 happy months in public libraries, my next job was in an academic library where my eyes were really opened to the value of the library in the academic environment.  Working with passionate colleges who were really interested in developing a top class library service and putting the library to the forefront of academic life really made me aware of the possibilities of libraries as a career.  Also this was just at the start of the internet era so the whole area of how information was stored and retrieved was changing and developing so there was a real sense of interesting times ahead. 

I have worked in a few academic libraries since then and that sense of the ever changing is what I love about working in libraries.  Nothing ever remains static.  Every day there are different challenges, every year there are new students and new courses.  The information resources available change and evolve; the method of delivering information develops and advances.  And libraries are at the forefront of the information age.  The first time I ever heard the term Twitter was at a library conference well before it hit the mainstream. 

Over my time working in libraries, I think the reach and recognition of the importance of libraries in public and academic life has only grown and expanded. It has been a very interesting, varied and rewarding career for me and one I would not hesitate to recommend to others