Why am I a Librarian?

In the very short life of this blog I have mainly discussed my life, my hobbies and mostly through the medium of meme.  It’s high time I talked about my library life.

This post is also a response to @gigglesigh’s question:Librarianship was not a career I actively chose.  I fell into it and it wrapped around me like a warm blanket.  Growing up I never thought I’d be a librarian.  I’d always wanted to be a teacher.  In my teen years, I’d wanted to be an accountant…which is what I began studying in my undergraduate years.  I qualified in the area of commerce but specialised and later worked in the field of HR but it never felt really right for me.

I began my library career at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin (now called Mater Misericordiae University Hospital).  I was given a 2 week temp assignment to backfill a girl who’d broken her leg.  In the mornings I did admin work for the Clinical Nurse Co-ordinators and in the afternoon I worked in the Library.  I wasn’t much fussed on the morning work but I looked forward to the afternoons very much.  I found the work to be both logical and enjoyable.  I got to indulge my secret geek tendencies and it felt good!  In fact, working at that library felt like a kind of homecoming.

After the two weeks at the Mater were up I moved on, as temps do, to the next assignment.  Dictaphone typing for An Bord Pleanála.  I’d been doing work like that prior to my stint at the Mater but my trip down Library Lane life was never the same again.  So when I got the call from the woman who changed my life (and who reads this blog!) I jumped at the opportunity.

After returning to Australia when my father died, I set about finding a course that would give me the right to call myself “Librarian”.  Unlike my undergraduate studies where I just fell over the passing line, my library studies came naturally to me and I scored quite reasonable marks seemingly without even trying.  The concepts of library science were and are just plain common sense to me.

Since then I’ve worked in a large academic library, a small special academic library, a one person medical library and now a larger medical library.  While I have appreciated the experience of working in academic libraries, nothing has been more rewarding for me than working in a clinical environment where I know that the assistance and information I provide is used to improve and even save lives.  I am still inspired by how the library plays an integral part of clinical decision making.

I’ve finally found my home.