Becoming an Information Professional

Nia Williams

My first steps to becoming an information professional

• Making a choice

• Creating my own Graduate Trainee experience

• Choosing a Masters course

• My experience at Loughborough

• My first professional post

• Building and complimenting my skills

2007 – Graduation from Swansea University

History BA(Hons) – What next? Teacher?

Archivist?Librarian?

2007 – 2008 My first steps to becoming an information professional

• Too late to take up a position as an “official” Graduate Trainee.

• Started volunteering at my local Public Library – Neath Library.

• NPT County Council employed me as a Library Assistant from November 2007 until May 2008.

Summer 2008

•Eight weeks at Swansea University Library

•Part II – Of my “unofficial” Graduate Traineeship

•Given the opportunity to:-Shadow and complete tasks with various Subject Librarians

A week at SWML

Cataloguing

2008-2009 Loughborough University

• Information and Library Management MA

Information Needs and Use

Research Management

Information Law, Policy and Society

Web Design and Web Analytics

Collection Management and Preservation

Information Organisation and Retrieval

Management and Marketing of Information Services

Information Services and Libraries

Digital Curation

Dissertation: “A race of men who will read and inwardly digest” (Glamorgan Free Press). The Miners’ Institute Libraries of South Wales and their users, c. 1880 – c. 1945.

September 2009 – Present

Senior Officer of Newspapers and Periodicals at the National Library of Wales

Digitisation Project

• The biggest digitisation project the Library has ever undertaken

• 2 million pages of 19th Century Newspapers and Periodicals to be digitised

Facts and Figures

Correct on the 1st of June 2011

My role within the project…

Line Managemen

t

Metadata

Creation

Checking

Metadata

Uploading Metadata to WOMBAT

Surveying the libraries holdings of 19th Century Newspapers

and Periodicals

Bringing volumes together in

Digitisation Suite

Returning volumes to the stacks once digitisation is complete

Liaising

Saturdays in the Reading

Room

Staff supervisionAnswering reader

queries

Using VIRTUA

Working withthe readers

What next in my quest to become an Information Professional?

Chartership

23 Things for Professional Development

Taking the next step on theCareer Ladder

• Picture of Neath Library - http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1330294

• Picture of Swansea University Library - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Swansea-University-Library-and-Information-Services/141938469175330

• Picture of Loughborough University Library - http://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/about/index.html

• Picture of National Library of Wales -

http://www.rsawaw.org/archive.php

• CILIP logo – www.cilip.org.uk

• CPD23 logo - http://cpd23.blogspot.com/

• Career Ladder - http://adminsecret.monster.com/benefits/articles/420

Images