Who am I and what am I doing here?

Hi all
this post is for the The Library Routes Project I heard about in the 23 Things project.  Here goes..

After being made redundant from a knitwear factory in my home town, I decided no more factories for me.  The previous couple of years saw me going to night classes at the local college to do a CLAIT course and typing, from which I gained qualifications.  I was ready to leave the factory to seek employment in the admin world.
However I put that on hold when I met my husband and we started saving up for a house etc.
At the end of 2000 I had no choice but to seek admin work as the factory closed it's doors for the last time.
I then decided to join an agency and gained a little experience filling in for people at various offices in the area.
After a few months I landed a part time 6 month job at a local hospital in one of the offices, as office junior [!]  I'm not very 'junior' , not in years anyway, however young I call myself!  That contract ended and I had another spell on the dole.
Another job became available - this time a permanent full time job with the same hospital as Undergraduate Secretary.  This involved supporting medical students on placement at the hospital.  I was there for a few years before I got itchy feet and decided to do something else, that's when the post of Senior Library Assistant became available where I am today.  I have been at this post now for 4 years.

Not sure I want to further this and become a librarian.  If a post came along it would probably mean I have to travel a lot further than I do now to come to work. Not sure I want to do that, even if it is more money!  Also it is a very competitive market out there, not wanting to be too negative and appear not very confident but I probably wouldn't stand a lot of chance.  I'm not a young whipper-snapper either!  Someone like me at my age of ... ahem.... and without a lot of experience in libraries would be beaten by some young graduate I'm sure!
I am happy with what I do and happy to plod along as usual ..  for now anyway.

thanks for reading!

Thing 20: The Library Routes Project

Have signed up for this..  I don't know if anyone will read what I've put - but it is there for all to see if they want. It's a good idea and it gives people an idea of where people started from, why they wanted to follow their library careers etc.  

Thing 22: Volunteering to get experience

I have no experience of volunteering for any sort of work.  As an ex-factory girl at the time there were plenty of jobs around so no need to volunteer unpaid services.
As a library assistant I just applied for the job and got it.  I didn't seek out to be a library assistant or any sort of library staff, so volunteering my services didn't apply.
I can see the potential of volunteering however, especially someone who has recently graduated as a librarian and want to gain experience in a library.  After leaving printing college [that's another story] nobody would take on college leavers because of a lack of experience, so I can definitely back up the need for experience.  At the time nobody from the printing college mentioned about volunteering so it never occurred to the students - that's if employers would take on volunteer staff.  All water under the bridge now..

Thing 17 : Prezi / data visualisation / slideshare

Well I am liking this Prezi business.  Have played around with this and had great fun.  I will probably give this a go when they let me loose on the Medical Student Inductions.  I have already started creating a Prezi for that.  It won't be for a while yet, but I think it's best to prepare while I've got a spare min or two.  Hopefully I will knock their socks off and they will actually sit up take note of what I am telling them.  Powerpoints they've all seen before so it can be a bit boring.
The other 2 data visualisation / slideshare I've not really looked that deep into.  I don't think it would benefit me in my line of work.  There wouldn't be any use of them for me.