Leaving

After 9 fantastic years with Culture & Sport Glasgow I’m moving on to pastures new with West Dunbartonshire Libraries. I have many great memories of Glasgow Libraries and the people I’ve worked with over the years. I can still remember my first day, nervous, eager and little bit unsure of what to expect. I needn’t have worried as the first two women I met were June Murray and Linda Macpherson both fantastic women and great librarians. I learned a lot listening to both of them over the years and it was with great sadness that Linda passed away earlier in the year. June always said to me “you should never, not be busy in the library” and its true there is always something that has to be done.
 I walked into the first branch I worked in yesterday and it brought back a lot of nostalgia, the library seemed smaller but warmer, the staff had all changed and a revamp had occurred but I remembered ghosts of conversations past and of customers by now gone. I was idealistic and passionate about my job, over the years I’ve kept the passion but became more realistic about what we can do and achieve in a climate where change is inevitable and budget cuts loom.
 It will be sad to leave the service on Friday but I know that I contributed to lots of little smiles from the storytimes and class visits the kids had when I was in the YP team. Introducing new authors to customers when working in community libraries and becoming part of that community, slowly without noticing. Knowing people within the city have better resources and training courses for information technology as part of the Digital Learning Team. I know there are now customers of aren’t afraid of the internet and who have better information retrieval skills. I made people feel at ease and occasionally made them laugh with tales of my dog, the only dog in Scotland who must have over 50 email addresses.To my colleagues I hold the utmost respect as I work with a very determined and passionate bunch of individuals. I’m sure I’ve probably debated (argued) with many of them, had countless laughs with all of them and learned things from each and every one. I’ve came a long way in my nine years from young people’s assistant to my new role as Information Services Librarian with WDC and I give credit to the people I work with for inspiring me to follow my path.


So, I’m lucky to be walking my path the way I want to, I’m sure I’ll meet new challenges and interesting people but that’s the beauty of my progress, the unknown, keeping it fresh and remembering with great affection all that has passed.


I found this little quote by Gail Sheehy:
“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow we aren’t really living”.