PEOPLE
PROFESSIONAL REGISTRATION
Chartership: a route to change and career satisfaction
In the latest edition of our Professional Registration Stories, Kelly Whitard, Reading List Librarian at the University of Bath, explains how and why she decided to join CILIP’s Professional Register as a Chartered Librarian.
I WANTED to be a librarian when I was a child as I adored reading and had an idea that it would be loung- ing around in lovely, quiet spaces, reading books all day – if only that were the case and who would have guessed that for much of my library career I didn’t see a book in a professional capacity from one day to the next! Even though the idea of Librarianship had always been there, I had a bit of a non-traditional entry into the profes- sion. Although I applied for library graduate trainee roles after university, this didn’t work out and I ended up going into financial services, the obvious choice for someone with a degree in English Literature and a dislike of maths! It wasn’t until a career break after having my children that I decided to retrain. I wanted to return to work, but with young children and other commitments, I wanted it to be for some- thing that I really loved and wanted to do; therefore, I decided to go back to my first interest and library work. I began volunteering at a couple of school libraries and then applied to do the Master’s in information and library man- agement. After graduating, I continued with volunteer work, one particularly interesting one in a monastery, and finally got my first professional role as a Subject Support Librarian at UWE Bristol covering someone’s sabbatical. I soon moved into a permanent contract and ended up staying at UWE for over seven years. In 2023 I decided that it was time to move on and I moved to the University of Bath for the newly created role of Reading List Librarian. I feel that I have been lucky as my workplaces have always
been great at offering and supporting professional develop- ment. On my first day working at UWE Bristol, I began a Teaching and Learning Foundation course, which was quite a start! I have been supported in attending conferences, such as BIALL, LILAC and WHELF, which are always good oppor- tunities to see what others in your sector are doing, along with a mass of training and development opportunities. I found that these helped in giving me loads of ideas different from what I was currently doing and allowed me to improve my own practice. This helped me in Chartership, not only giv- ing me evidence examples, but as it allowed me to see where I wanted to go, and I could then make changes to get there. One of the biggest impacts on my professional development
has been joining the committee of NLISN (Neurodivergent Library and Informational Staff Network – see pp. 56-57). Before this, I had never joined an external committee before. Not because I didn’t want to put the effort into commit- tee membership, but a combination of finding networking extremely stressful and finding an area that I felt passionate enough about to put myself out there. Therefore, the need to be connected to likeminded people, the confidence of hav- ing received an autism diagnosis that made me understand
58 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Kelly Whitard, Reading List Librarian at the University of Bath.
myself more deeply, or maybe simply the right thing at the right time, meant that in 2024 I became a member of the NLISN committee. I would highly recommend committee membership, regardless of whether you are pursuing pro- fessional registration, particularly if it is an area that you feel passionate about.
Professional reflection Ever since completing my masters, I’ve had professional reg- istration in mind. However, at the beginning (and it was a very, very long process) I think that I was trying to complete it as a tick box exercise. I had the Masters, the first job and then came Chartership, with little real consideration as to what that meant to myself or my career. This lack of under- standing of what the process of Chartership was meant to be, and maybe a lack of real engagement, caused lots of frustra- tion and led to a couple of unsuccessful attempts! The real shift in my understanding of Chartership and mindset towards the process came when I moved to the University of Bath at the beginning of 2023. The process of finding another role allowed me to readdress my skills and
Autumn 2025
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