Thing 2 Why I became a librarian

When I think back about what made be decide to become a librarian, it is hard to pick an exact reason or moment.

I wasn’t a person who always wanted to become a librarian. I was someone who never really knew what they wanted! ‘I don’t know’ was always the answer when people asked me what I wanted to do when I finished school.

I knew I liked reading, languages, geography and felt that maths and science subjects were more of a challenge for me. I managed to cut out lots of career options by trying to avoid those that involved maths and science!

During my Leaving Cert year I did a lot of thinking about what I would do after school and what course would be a good course, an enjoyable one and also one in a field that I could see myself working in for the rest of my life.

At the time, I had no concept of changing career throughout your life, I had this idea that you picked something and stuck with it. So as a result I couldn’t make my mind up, I felt I was too indecisive and couldn’t possibly pick a definite course, so I put Arts down on my CAO form. Firstly, I knew that this way I could continue to study subjects I liked at school such as Geography, and secondly it would buy me some time to make my final decision whilst still earning a degree.

It was while I was picking my subjects for Arts in the first week of college in UCD that I first heard of the subject ‘Information Studies’.  This was a ‘shopping around’ week where you could go to lectures in all subjects until you decided what you wanted to do. Up until then, I had given no consideration as to what course you would need to do in order to become a librarian.

I remember the lecturers in the first week talking about information society, the internet (it had not at this stage become the part of everyday life it is today!) organising information and presentation of information  and I liked the sound of it, I thought that this was something I would like to study.

Further into the course, the lecturers mentioned that information studies was a branch of library science and I began to think about it as a career option.

I thought about when I was child, one of my pastimes was reading, my mother brought me to the local library every week as a child. I have great memories of babysitter club book and children's' crafts and cookery books.  I read quite a lot,  I liked English in school as well and I always had a thirst for learning. I also felt that I was always one of those people who ended up helping everyone with their homework and essays and felt I had the patience to be a librarian! I decided that this would be a good fit for me. I got some experience in a college library before embarking on the MLIS, which I really enjoyed. I knew then that I would liked working in library/information environment.