CPD 23: Thing 10

Thing 10: Graduate traineeships, Masters degrees, chartership, accreditation

Graduate Traineeships: I do feel that the title of thing 10 is a bit misleading as it assumes that you can only be a librarian if you have done a graduate traineeship. Ankova states in her blog that she wishes she had done a graduate traineeship, even though she seems to have had a much more varied pre-professional career, covering quite a lot of library sectors and is going to do some work experience at the BBC as part of her MA ( I am most jealous). There are plenty of people who did not do graduate traineeships before they went on to do an MA and have not suffered for it. I certainly do not think that employers favour people who have done traineeships, I don't think having done a traineeship meant that I found a job any quicker, employers are looking for an all round experience and someone who has the passion to work in libraries.

That said, I do now have to confess that I was a Cambridge graduate trainee. I had actually worked as a library assistant at my local public library for the first year after I had graduated but was thinking I would like to work in academic libraries and wanted something which would give me a taster of it (a kind of try before you buy), it was never a conscious decision to do a traineeship, I just wanted to work in an academic library. I'm pleased that the CATALOG site is mentioned on the CPD 23 website (presumably whoever wrote it is a former/current trainee themselves). Graduate trainee schemes do offer a more structured programme of library experience, you get to go on visits to other libraries in different sectors, you get to meet a bunch of people who, like you, are interested in a career in libraries and can bounce ideas off each other. They can also be a lot of support when it comes to applying for MA courses, funding etc. Also, if there is a graduate trainee website, then there is also the chance to add web editing and HTML stuff to your C.V. The year we were trainees was the year after CATALOG had started, so it was exciting to be a part of it. The CATALOG site is also very good as a general reference tool for prospective librarians, even if you are not a graduate trainee as it has lots of useful information on working in various library sectors, the library school interview experience and a library timeline (which is very scary as I realise I have moved slightly further down it now), as well as information on the actual traineeships themselves and what they involve on a day to day basis. It also contains information on previous trainees and what they went on to next (this is reminding me that I need to probably email the current trainees and get them to update my details). Whenever I look upon my year in Cambridge now, it is with fondness for the experience's I had and the people I met.

Masters Degrees: From Cambridge, I then went on to the East Midlands and sunny Loughborough (the town that time forgot) to do my Masters degree, I actually like how one of my lecturers described it 'a first class university in the middle of nowhere' it is certainly a good place to go if you are wanting to do a Masters degree and are even more cash strapped than you were in your undergraduate days, as there are not too many monetary temptations. I actually went to Loughborough by accident, Sheffield had been my number one choice when I was a trainee but I felt that I should have a second, standby choice. Once I started to look at Loughborough's prospectus however, it started to look like a more attractive proposition. Sheffield seemed to have a slight, public library bias, UCL, a more academic library one. I was leaning slightly towards the academic library but could not afford to live in London and go to UCL, but Loughborough seemed to offer a course that combined the best of both worlds.  I ended up having my interview for Loughborough on the Wednesday and Sheffield was the following Monday (how different things could have been if they had been the other way around ?). I turned up at Loughborough on the Wednesday lunchtime after 4 hours and 3 trains from Cambridge and negotiating the massive campus (with about 20 sportsfields), I finally found the upside down pyramid which houses the Pilkington library and the Department of Information Studies at the top. After a quick talk from a couple of the lecturers and some current students (always good to get a student point of view whenever you are in this situation), it was on to my interview. This was fairly straightforward after making sure that I was under no illusions about my capacity to get AHRC funding (which I wasn't) and ensuring that I could still do the course without it, there were a couple of questions about why I had chosen Loughborough and why I wanted to work in libraries. After telling the interviewer that I had an interview for Sheffield the following Monday, he ended the interview by saying that he hoped my interview there went badly (presumably because he wanted me to go to Loughborough, thats my story and I'm sticking with it anyway) so I obviously had impressed him with my commitment to work in libraries. I didn't actually go to the Sheffield interview in the end as I felt that Loughborough was a close knit and friendly department and it would do for me. Suffice to say that Loughborough was another fantastic year, where I made some great friends and, although I was cash strapped, look on it now with fondness.

Chartership: this is the more recent of my activities, after just over 18 months of long hard work, I finally passed chartership on August 13th of last year. Chartership was always a subject that came up but, whilst I was still a trainee, then a Masters student, then looking for work, it always seemed such a long way off. Finally after landing a job as a subject librarian at Winchester University and spending the first six months finding my feet, I decided to register to charter. I found chartership hard to get used to to start with, the fact that it is not a structured programme like an MA or a training course can make it hard to stick to if you are not very disciplined. I was lucky in that I had a firm mentor who would regularly check up on me and make sure I was doing what I was supposed to, I don't want to say too much at this point, as I want to save it for Thing 11 but it did help a lot. Once you get over the fact that you are pretty much setting the agenda, then the fact that it is all about you and that you, within CILIP regulations, pretty much decide what it is about is actually, I think, an advantage. I do feel that chartership recognises that, although a Library MA is pretty much a gateway to a host of careers in library sectors, it does not teach you everything, the chartership application is about YOU and how you develop as an information professional in the workplace once you have left formal education. Different people have different ideas and attitudes towards chartership and whether it is necessary, a member of staff here who is senior to me does not even have it but I am pleased that I took the plunge and got it and am already thinking about how I can enhance my skills now so that I can be where I want to be in a couple of years time when I start to think about revalidation.