I suddenly stopped blogging a month ago, with a week still to run of #blogjune. Life in my neck of woods quickly became rather tense and exciting; though there was still a little angst as well. Some may recall my concern at the start of June with regard to a job I’d applied for and the suspicion that I may have missed out.

I got the job!!!

That was the day after my last blogging effort and I wasn’t able to announce the news at that point. I spent the following couple of weeks negotiating both with my new employer and my current employer as to how best handle the transition. After all that, my current employer (Gale – Cengage Learning) is allowing me to go after 3 weeks instead of 4, so long as I return for a week later and train my eventual replacement.

I’m now madly writing up as many procedures for my job as I can :-)

I finish up with Gale in a week’s time on the 29th of July. On the first of August, I commence work with the State Library of NSW, as a “Librarian Grade 3” with the Online Information Services Branch. The new job title is not quite as nebulous as my current “Electronic Solutions Consultant” (which I have loved much), but at the same time, it’s nice to have “Librarian” in my title. The new position is a mix of things though the primary responsibility will be supporting SLNSW’s Digital Assets Management (DAM) system as well as coordinating the customisation of external electronic resources. Yeah, I copied that last mouthful from the position description :-)

The position is a good progression from the work I’ve done with Gale and builds on skills I’ve acquired as well as taking me in some new directions. With that said, there’s going to be a good learning curve for some of it; though nothing in the position that I can’t handle. To do the same sort of work within Gale I would probably need to move to Detroit where head office is or possibly one of the other US locations.

I’m really looking forward to starting the new job but finding it sad to leave the current. I still enjoy my current role but need some new challenges ie I want to go while I’m still enjoying it. The Australian office of Gale has a wonderful sense of a small company operating within the infrastructure of a bigger company. There’s a freedom in that that I didn’t expect. So too, I didn’t expect the amount of freedom and independence I’ve experienced on the vendor (“dark side”) of the industry. I’ve presented papers at conferences, been on conference committees and been able to do all the sorts of professional development stuff I’d be able to do were I on library-side. I’ve been able to be vendor and remain a librarian: the two are not mutually exclusive.

The other big challenge of the new position is more of a cultural/technological one. I’ve spent 7 years with my work laptop as my primary computer for both work and personal. The current laptop is XP only though previously I had a dual boot with Debian Linux. I have separate folder structures to keep my work and personal stuff apart. I even run two email programs: Outlook for my work stuff, and Thunderbird for all my personal stuff. Wherever I was, all my stuff was me, no need for any of that cloud stuff.

In a week, I return the laptop. A mate has come to my rescue and is giving me his old desktop Mac Pro as he’s upgrading himself. At SLNSW, I believe I’ll have a Windows based desktop PC; I don’t yet know which version of windows. Under this scenario, I might have to consider keeping some stuff in the cloud afterall. I’m going from one computer that goes with me everywhere, to two computers both location bound. With the development of smart phones in recent years, that’s less of a problem than it used to be. Though of course, I also need to return my iphone. At this stage, I’ll probably be getting the new Samsung Galaxy S II.