What Comes Next?

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Forward thinking and planning for the future is a major focus of mine at present. In regular mentor meetings with my manager we have been discussing library school applications, career prospects and funding opportunities. As well as learning the job on a day-to day basis, the graduate trainee scheme provides an opportunity to initiate and influence your work experience to suit your individual professional interests and to give you the best grounding for a MA course in Library Studies. Recently I've been looking in to course details, module options and have been exploring past students experiences of several different universities in order to get an insight in to what comes next...

 I want to make sure that I gain a practical and contextual overview of the profession as a whole before I start my course, in order to choose the right university and the best suited modules to help start my career. In order to make sure I have a good overview of librarianship in a wider context I have joined CILIP and plan to join SLA Europe this month. The great thing about SLA is that it is an international network of library and information professionals who provide a great deal of support to those in the first five years of their careers. They also run some fantastic and incredibly relevant events, which I will be making the most of once I have confirmed my membership.

The LIS profession is based around tradition and preservation, but as we are moving even further in to a culture of technology and open access,  where systems and IT form the core of service delivery, I'm learning more and more about the conflicts that come with the 'evolution' of libraries from speaking to professionals and from reading reports such as the Finch Group report on open access and  the Educational Advisory Board's 'Redefining the Academic Library- Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services'.
I've named this post  'what comes next?' because of the likeness between the transitional stage that I myself, and the profession seem to be in. As I look forward to what comes next, I am mindful of my present experiences and importantly, reflective about the experiences I have already had. I look forward to learning more about the profession and looking to the future.