I am an information omnivore, I will use information whether it comes from print or online sources. Being an information omnivore makes me have a hard time with two different sorts of people. Most of the time it’s been the people who think that information from online sources is inherently of a poor quality, unstable, unreliable and generally worthless. But increasingly I have to deal with the other extreme, the people who think that information from print sources is always out of date, and is too expensive or inconvenient to deal with. I am definitely not a bibliophile, but there is no way that you can try to keep on top of a specialized field and ignore books and other print only sources.
Repeat after me: Right now, it is not all available online for free. And if information created from the past is needed, it will never be all available online for free. I wish it were, but it isn't.
As I write this I have no internet connection at home. Of course, I use the internet all day at work, but would never contemplate working on this blog there. Anyway, I’m writing all of this offline, with the intention of uploading it when I’ve got my home connection sorted out.
We take things for granted, and I wonder if this situation of not being able to blog has made me want to blog again. That, and the fact that my daily commute is way shorter than it was than when I lived in Sydney. My guess is that it’s been halved and then halved again.
My career has changed recently. I’ve had a management role - only in an acting capacity during a maternity leave absence, but nonetheless I got to experience a lot of the good things and bad things which managers have to deal with. I’ve learned from this experience that I can do this management work, and wouldn’t mind doing it again. The experience also made me appreciate the perks of not being a manager. My new role (I’m not naming my new workplace here, other than to say it’s a Australian government agency) is not a managers role, and I’m really enjoying just having to worry about doing my own job.
But it’s not entirely back to how things were before. I am officially the second in charge of this library, and when my supervisor is away, I am in charge.
It’s a big change for me to be a senior librarian, someone who is responsible for coaching and mentoring less experienced staff. It reminds of two people I’ve worked with before who were more senior than me - one example I’d like to emulate, the other one I’d like to avoid.
I don’t want to be like the senior librarian who would roll her eyes in disdain when asked for assistance or advice with research, because it was all too easy for her. This person was extremely set in her ways, and fought tooth and nail to resist any change or improvement in library services or operations. I don’t want to be like the person who would speak glowingly of all the people who used to work in the library and expound on how better things were before. I don’t want to be the one who was constantly backbiting and undermining her manager. Most importantly, I don’t want to be the senior librarian who made sure that she was always given the most interesting and challenging research queries, and never shared any insights she learned from her research.
But I do want to be the senior librarian who gave rock solid support to the library manager, who could speak for the manager and was usually more approachable, being around more often and slightly less busy. I want to be like the one who would attempt to help me with my problems, even if they weren’t in her area of expertise, helping me identify the next steps and solutions by talking through the problem, and then, gently encourage me to work these things out for myself. I want to be the one who could be open to my crazy ideas about new-fangled library technology, suspend disbelief and tell me what I’d need to do to get these ideas accepted by management. I want to be like the senior librarian who shared her knowledge - whether of research techniques, or of the organization.
Canberra is an unusual city - most Australians seem to have a hate-love relationship with it. Canberra is both a city and a symbol of the Australian federal government. People complain that it is boring city without a centre and a soul, full of dull government workers.
But since I decided to accept this job and move to Canberra, I’ve had a lot of people say to me - almost as a confession - that they actually like the place - that they enjoy visiting its institutions and restaurants, and have some good friends there.
Canberra supposedly has a crap nightlife, meaning that there are no night clubs or venues worth visiting. I don’t know whether this is true or not, and I don’t really care. I’ve already discovered some good restaurants and bars in Canberra - in Civic, Dickson, Kingston and Manuka. I don’t like night clubs anyway, but enjoy being able to walk around on a Saturday night without being worried about drunken louts, which is an improvement from Sydney.
I like that the Australian Capital Territory is mostly national park, and that the beautiful Namadgi National Park is only a short drive from where I’m living, and that I have another nature reserve just across the street where I’m living. I like that Canberra is full of trees and bike tracks. I visited Canberra a few times when I was growing up, usually in the hot and dry (but not humid) summer or in the chilly winter - chilly by Australian standards. But unlike a lot of places in Australia, Canberra has four distinct seasons. I’m really enjoying the autumn here, the cooler evenings, and the leaves of the deciduous trees turning to gold and red.
It’s different in Sydney. The leaves of deciduous trees tend to stay green well into the autumn, even into the winter, then one day they turn brown and drop all at once. For someone who fell in love with the beautiful and gradual fall colours in Minnesota, this seems so wrong.
But this post isn’t about saying good riddance to Sydney. Sydney is only a shortish drive away (I should know, I’ve done that drive a lot lately), and I know I’ll be back there often - for family reasons as well as to see national and international acts which would never make it to Canberra. I’ll definitely miss the Blue Mountains, a unique place which I won’t be able to visit so often any more. On the other hand, I look forward to exploring some of places surrounding Canberra - Batemans Bay and the South Coast of New South Wales aren’t very far away, not to mention Cooma and Jindabyne and the Snowy Mountains.
One last thing I’ll say about Canberra is that it’s a good place to be a law librarian. There seem to be many opportunities for librarians with legal or business research skills, both in the public sector and private sector. There are some amazing places to aspire to work at if you’re a librarian in Canberra: the National Library of Australia, the Parliament of Australia, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Treasury Department, the High Court Library, to name only a few. If you’re a new librarian and want this to be your focus, you could do a lot worse than move to Canberra. The process for entering the Commonwealth Public Service can be intimidating, but it seems that the placement agencies are having a hard time filling positions, and temping is a good a way of getting experience and getting your foot in the door.
Recent Comments