I became a librarian in New Zealand after a career as a programmer. My first library role was as a volunteer in Playcentre, which I attended with my young children. I moved on to a bigger Playcentre regional library before becoming a library assistant in an intermediate school (years 7-8) - without a librarian, but with other library assistants. I had also become webspinner for a voluntary national organisation with a major sponsor, so had become HTML and writing-for-the-web literate.
I started the MLIS as a part time, mature student, face to face as I was in Wellington - the only MLIS course in New Zealand. I found that my hands on experience in 3 libraries and a website across a wide range of activities (plus general life skills), was excellent preparation for the seminars where I was able to make useful contributions to the discussions. I joined LIANZA as a student and paricipated in the Wellington activities.
After completing the MLIS I became Collection Development Librarian Electronic at the National Library of New Zealand, a senior librarian role that I hadn't thought to apply for until invited to do so. I really enjoyed the changing role for 5 years before returning to Britain for a while (still here). The National Library was an excellent place for professional development as it was at the cutting edge of electronic legal deposit, web archiving and other developments. Seminars, international visitors, courses etc help develop the potential of the large number of librarians and other staff.
In LIANZA we had meetings to discuss introducing professional registration, but it was finally set up after I left for Britain. Since arriving here I have taken a variety of temporary roles in two university libraries, a government organisation's portal and contract website work. My MLIS is recognised by CILIP but I would like to charter. However I feel I need to move into a permanent job to do this.
If anyone reads this and would like to help by offering me a job...
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