Hello, World!

I'm a cynical old bitch (well not that old: I'm only in my thirties), but of late my heart is warmer; my mind more open to the wider world of libraries. This blog (and its accompanying twitter feed), inspired by the efforts of my library feres in this sphere, will document my attempts to find my place in, and embrace firmly, the library community that has so inspired me in the last few days. In it I shall attempt to be honest both to myself and to my readership, whilst maintaining a reasonable modicum of diplomacy.

The title of this blog: "Succentorship without Sneers", describes (with pithiness and alliteration) my desire to balance a passion for libraries with an inherent suspicion of almost everything. This is not to say that an empirically minded doubt of all is a bad thing; it is demonstrably not. But I am a pessimistic soul at times and all too often place barriers that are unwarranted. This bloody-mindedness must stop. Thankfully I am an optimist at times too. This isn't a question of faith or doubt, but of genuine openness: of listening and considering things without taint of preconception. It's also about showing a bit of enthusiasm and not being such a miserable git: beyond any question of science or discrimination, there is a simple matter of attitude: I have to go out and get stuck in, rather than stay sitting here on my beautiful arse, waiting for the world to come knocking for my services.

The latter has been my prevalent technique to date. It cannot be said to have been an absolute failure, but I have learnt from other spheres of existence that a certain degree of 'putting yourself out' is required to have any reasonable hope of attaining that which you desire: a technique which has not, in the past, sat easily with me. After all, one cannot to a stranger until one has been properly introduced! And even then it would be damnably bad manners to discuss oneself! 

So that is what I shall start this venture by doing: a summary account of myself, where I am, and how I got to be right here at this present moment in time. 

Where is right here? It is the back bedroom in a Strafforth suburb and I am by no means the saint I purport to be. By day I am a mild-mannered shelf-elf: an underling Academic Library Assistant in the Badlands of Sheffield. I have been in this job for the best part of five and a half years, and was shelving at the same place for six months before that. I did not apply for the shelving job. I emailed for information about it, discovered that the closing date was too soon, and thought no more about it. And yet I got an interview. I went to the interview, intimated there that I would be unable to fit in the hours due to other commitments, sent a last-minute email correcting this misconception, and, in spite of all this, found myself gainfully employed.

I place the mystery of this appointment (and my subsequent promotion following "the worst interview" one of the panel had "ever seen") upon a combination of two factors: on the one hand, the employers were clearly desperate (how soon times change), but also I believe I struck some sort of chord with the wapman who would be my line manager. Subsequent interviews have strengthened my conviction that success or failure rests largely on this 'click'. By contrast, a year of my pre-shelving days was spent being interviewed by a woman who had likely taken against me in our first meeting (my very first job-interview) and who continued, through further encounters, to resist my charms. 

This period of job-hunting followed a disastrous attempt to co-run a niche-market on-line record shop, which itself followed a period of wilful inertia and disengagement with the wider world that followed my graduation from university. I had no desire for work of any kind; my hopes and dreams lay crumpled and I had given up. But slowly and annoyingly, real life made its presence felt and insisted I pay it some money. There were only so many worldly goods to put up on eBay. I would have to indulge in a spot of that "putting myself out" business and get me a some employment. But what? Rock stardom, my ambition from the age of 9, had failed to manifest itself at uni. The shop hadn't worked out. I needed a new direction: something that appealed to my bohemian ideals. Something that would not require formal office-wear and the sale of my principles. And so it was that I gravitated to the library: all the charm of a book-shop but without the merchant's mark-up: a socialist utopia of sorts that appealed to my very core.

This was not my first brush with library ambition. I recall with fondness turning this room into a library: making my own stamp, and a turnstile from my Lego play-board, and trying to fine my mother. For a time, too, I was School Librarian in the Deweyed up Junior School library. And I had always been a user of libraries, be it the local public library, the school library, the university library or the central library in town. This was not some Damascene conversion; it was a settling into reality from the wild, unfulfilled ambitions of musical fame and critical acclaim. 

Life in my current job was initially wonderfully varied, with work at three contrasting campuses and a special collection. But after four years it became necessary to contemplate grander ambitions than juggling books part-time. With nothing coming up at work, I began to nose around the wider library horizons, and noticed that librarians-proper were generally requested to have in their possession a qualification of some kind. Buoyed by my special collection experiences I was also contemplating archives at this point, only to discover that competition in that market is immense, with training prospects far from local. So libraries it was, though it would require a bit more pushing: from a manager, and most importantly from a former teacher of mine turned workmate. It was at this point that one of those curious coincidences of fate occurred again: an email from my union offering training advice. I went along and was given the final little prod needed to make a last-minute application to Library School. I found myself at the ultimate round of interviews for the course, and thankfully got myself a part-time place thereon. 

And now I sit here, two months and one dissertation away from the end of that course. Does fate strike thrice? Will a wonderful library job turn up in my inbox without my applying for it? I can't really rely on that, especially in the current climate. No. I have to break free of the inertia that has freewheeled me this far. It's time I started pedalling myself. 

Please feel welcome to look in again for my next post and see if I fall off!