Merry Christmas!

Snow by Margaret Tarrant



A first book of nature...

I have purchased this beautiful book as a Christmas gift for the two year old daughter of a very dear friend. The cover [of course] is why it appears here but all the illustrations are lovely. The artist is Mark Hearld and here's a few more examples of his work...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Squirrel Library wins this year's ARLIS Christmas card competition!

 

Success at last!

 

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again :-)

 

These cards are now available to order from the ARLIS website right here.

Thing 21: Promoting yourself in job applications and at interviews



This one was always going to be tricky as I have not attended that many interviews. To those people who read my posts regularly, this will come as no surprise. I’m not a person who jumps from job to job – I found a job I loved I stuck with it.

That said, I obviously have attended interviews and at times, been successful but, if I’m truthful I believe that may have been more luck than judgement.

If I had to give someone advise on applying for a job I would say that you need to prepare of course but… do not over prepare. Years ago, whilst I was a Museum Assistant here, I applied for a job in the Art Dept. I really wanted this job and had waited a long time for it to come up and both myself and another Museum Assistant [a good friend also] were going for it. The post was for a Curatorial Assistant for Applied Arts and I was quietly confident as I held an Art History Degree [whilst my friend did not]. However, as I became convinced that this was my dream job I over prepared and on the morning of the interview I started suffering with a serious attack of nerves. That said, the first half of the interview went ok but then a classic “curve-ball” question sent me spiralling in to an anxiety attack that ended up with one of the Art Curators leaning over and asking if I was okay [the shame!]. It was a disaster after that, my mouth went so dry that I had trouble speaking and at one point I couldn’t even string a sentence together and thought I might be having a stroke! Suffice to say, I didn’t get the job but [yes, you guessed it] my friend did.

The point of relating this sorry tale is to illustrate that it’s not good to want something too much and that over preparing can be as bad as under-preparing.

Okay, since I have already admitted my lack of experience in this area, I think we’d better take a look at people who do know a bit about it…



 Lauren Jury has written a very informative Thing 21, breaking up the post into three sections as laid out in the Thing 21 write-up:

Part 1: Identifying your strengths; capitalising on your interests

Thing 21 recommends “[Making] sure that you keep up-to-date with yourself, and if you are unhappy in your current situation, acknowledge what has changed and take action.” I know I’m capable of doing this (as do people who’ve got a more personal insight into my life at the moment), and it’s a strength I have that I didn’t know about. I guess you never do until you’re in a situation where you need it.

Part 2: Applying for a job

I don’t plan to be on applying for a job in the near future, but I do need to build up an accessible record of activities, experiences and skills because it’s increasingly important to keep track of this kind of thing. I do have lists of interviews, presentations and publications, which I update fairly regularly... I try to keep my CV up to date when I know I’m likely to need to send it to places – this isn’t just for jobs, but for bursaries and applications for other things, and if you’re considering Chartership – so it is very handy to be able to quickly send it off without too much effort updating it.

Part 3: Interviews

I found the advice for this part of the Thing pretty spot on. I’ve recently been on the other side of the interview table and had the unfortunate experience of interviewing some truly dreadful applicants. Here’s some advice that I hope nobody needs to pay attention to!

• Dress smart…
• Make eye contact…
• Be enthusiastic…
• Don’t apologise for what you consider to be a lack of experience. Big up what you do know and what you have done…
• Let the interviewer finish the question before you start answering it! Don’t be afraid of (a little bit of) silence. Take the time to think of an answer if you don’t know where you’re going to go with a response.
• Think of a couple of questions to ask at the end of the interview…

The full version of Lauren’s post can be read here and I strongly recommend reading it if you are in the process of applying for a job as she has written it from the perspectives of both interviewee and interviewer.

Another very well written Thing 21 is by Karen Pierce at dark-side-of-the-catalogue where she relates a similar interview experience to mine but in reverse – she says that one of the best interviews she ever gave was for a job that she knew she was never going to get so she just relaxed and got on with it and was brilliant. However, Karen also discusses her interest in European folk dancing and then relates how the skills and energy required for that has been easily transferred on to her work CV:

The ability to learn new skills, to apply these skills in practice, and combine them with previous knowledge, to work by one-self, and with other people, teaching others new techniques, becoming the secretary for a local group, which organises monthly events and an annual festival (lots of organisational skills there!).  I’m sure there are more things I could think of, but it makes my earlier interests of ‘reading’, and ‘walking’, and ‘art’ pale in comparison (not that there is anything wrong in any of those activities!).  These days (as I’ve got older and done more things) I am far better equipped to fill in the CV/application form than when I first left University  – as I would guess most people are.      

I really like the idea of something you love to do that is completely separate from your work self but that still enhances that work self and this ties in with one of the tasks related to Thing 21 -Identifying your strengths; capitalising on your interests.

I have all the “normal” interests: reading, cinema, theatre and going to the gym [no-where near as often I should though] but over the last few years another interest has recently taken over all of these and that is “crafting”. I make cards, gift boxes, brooches, pendants, note books, calendars, decorations and collages and sell them through shops and craft fairs. I use primarily recycled paper and card [99% of which comes from the library here!] along with magazine and general bric-a-brac type scraps. I’m not yet completely sure how this past-time might be used to enhance my work as a librarian but it has had a profound effect on how I see the books here in the library. I know find myself looking at the book as an object in its own right and not solely for its content. I’m starting to take an interest in the archaeology of the book and looking with new eyes at some of our rarer books as museum collections rather than library holdings. Of course setting up a craft business also takes a lot a hard work, concentration and dedication and these old fashioned attributes never go out of date J

Finally, I would like to point you in the direction of the ever brilliant thewikiman and his informative post What's the key to a good interview - beyond the truisms we all know already?

By the way, the images dotted over this post are all my own work [yay to me!] and if you’d like to see more please take a look at my Flickr and Facebookpages:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66082485@N02/   http://www.facebook.com/Mayfifth1935].                                   

Streptocarpus in August sunshine :-)




Every year the Librarian brings one of these in to brighten up the Library

 

Thing 20: The Library Routes project

The homepage of the Library Routes Project states its intention as:

… to bring together the thoughts and experiences of Information Professionals on how they got where they are today, and why they chose to work in libraries at all.

 And it is just that; a platform on to which have been uploaded many wacky and wonderful stories posted by librarians and information specialists on how they dipped their toes into our world of books [‘n stuff] and loved it so much they decided to build a career around it.

My story is not like that but okay here goes [in a nutshell]; shamefully disorganised [career wise] from a very early age I never envisaged myself as a librarian at all. When I left school I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do so did what many panicky and confused school leavers did… I started work in a shop. It was Laura Ashley [Cardiff] and I ended up staying for 8 [most enjoyable] years until I started their managerial training course and decided it most definitely was not for me so I left. A month later I started a degree at Cardiff Metropolitan University [Howard Gardens campus] in the History & Theory of Art and Design partly because I was confused and panicky again [still not knowing what I wanted to do]; a really good friend was starting it; but mostly because I had always harboured an interest in art history.

I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the course and came away with a not too shabby 2:1 and a plan to get a job in the Art Department [here] at National Museum Cardiff but had to wait until a vacancy came up so I got another shop job, this time at Next [Newport branch] and ended staying for another 3 [not quite so enjoyable] years. Eventually, I got a job as a Museum Assistant here at the Museum and [I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in a previous post] when a job finally did come up in the Art Department, I applied but didn't get it so I side-stepped over to the Visitor Services Department as an administration assistant  whilst rethinking how I could utilize my Art History knowledge within the Museum [because I was by this time ensared with love for the place and didn't want to leave] and then as if by magic [after about a year] a vacancy was advertised in the library for matenrity cover and the rest [as they say] is history.

I think you can gather from my story that I’m not the kind of person who is focused and driven to making plans and strategies. I tend to drift, bobbing along and seeing where the wind/tide/path takes me and in one respect, I’m doing okay. I love working in the Museum, it’s an amazing, vibrant and exciting environment. I really enjoy my work [primarily managing the journals collections plus many other things] and I’m now qualified with an MSc in Library and Information Studies. However, the downside to being so unambitious is that, qualification notwithstanding, I’m still working as a Library Assistant and at my age [please don’t ask] I should be on a much higher grade.

Hopefully you can see why I have not [yet!] uploaded my story on the Library Routes Project, especially when Laura Woods talks about it being a good resource for careers advice! That said, I do enjoy reading the posts [as any decent nosey parker does over their afternoon cuppa] and some recent gems are  Adventures of a Librarian, Librarians on the loose and particularly Librarians on the loose [Emma's story].

We were also asked to look at Library Day in the Life Project, which I already took part in last year [read it here], I thoroughly enjoyed this and will definitely do it again soon.

Our Library bathed in May sunshine...

Meant to post these images AGES ago!