Thursday 26 November 2015

A New Chapter

It's been a roller-coaster few weeks for me. My secondment to Reader Services ended and I returned to the English Cataloguing Department in a lower grade to the one I left which was, needless to say, demoralising. I then successfully interviewed for a new job in a different Library department.

On Monday I move to the Office of Scholarly Communication here at Cambridge to work as Research Skills Coordinator, a new role that I will be able to really make my own and which fulfils a lot of my professional goals. I'm beyond excited to start my new role (not least as this is the first full time permanent job I will ever have held!) but it's also a time tinged with a little bit of sadness. I am leaving behind cataloguing as a day job which will be a big change for me. I have spent most of my career working in a cataloguing role and it will be different to think that I won't be going back to it at some point. Of course you can never say never but I think the time has come for me to move on.

A few years ago I was as set as I could be on making cataloguing my niche in the profession and couldn't imagine doing anything else. To some this may seem like a boring ambition but I think it's a truly exciting time for the profession with the advent of initiatives such as Linked Data and BIBFRAME. I will still be involved with the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group for as long as they will have me so I will be able to keep my hand in that way and I think many of the new developments will tie into my own work. A good thing about all this change is that it will hopefully mean more blogging, something I haven't had much time to do recently! This will be a new area for me professionally as well as an exciting direction for the profession and I'm keen to find out all I can about it.

What I have basically realised is that change doesn't have to be scary. People change and adapt over time and what you really want today might not be what you want in a year. My advice to all new (and maybe even not so new) professionals is to keep your options open and don't pin yourself down to only one part of the information industry. There are a lot of facets to the profession so go out and explore them - you never know what you might find!

photo credit: Light Reading via photopin (license)

3 comments:

  1. Very sound advice! And good luck in the new job, glad you'll still be in the same building :-)

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    1. Thanks Margaret. At least it means I won't get lost on the way to work on Monday ;)

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  2. Congratulations Claire! What an exciting new role. :)

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