Rebecca Evans

I started my career in libraries in 1977 after completing one year of the Certificate of Applied Social Science (Library Technician) at Sydney Technical College. My first job was at Canterbury Municipal Library and I worked mainly at the Belmore and Earlwood Branches. Both branches consisted of only three staff members so we were involved in every aspect of library work especially story time which was my favourite. A couple of years later my husband was accepted into training for the Anglican priesthood and he started his training in Adelaide. While in Adelaide, I worked at Flinders University Library in the reserve collection which was computerised. I also did casual work at St. Barnabas Anglican Theological College where I maintained the library collection. I continued here until Peter (my husband) completed his degree. It was also here that I put completing my course on hold until we moved to Victoria.

Due to my husband's career we have had to move almost every two years after he completed his degree. This included Ballarat in Victoria, where I started volunteer work at both Sovereign Hill and Ballaarat & Queens Anglican Grammar School. This led to casual and part-time work in both organisations' libraries. My duties included library classes and general library work at the Grammar school and cataloguing and maintaining the staff library at Sovereign Hill. It was while living at Willaura that I was able to pick up some temporary work at the nearby Lake Bolac High School. This was a unique library as it combined both the school library as well as a separate public library collection. My duties here included printing a school and community newsletter on a gestetner. Give me desktop publishing any day!

Melbourne was our next point of call where I worked at the Braille and Talking Book Library in South Yarra and then the Box Hill-Doncaster Regional Library Authority. I really enjoyed both jobs; the Braille library because it serviced a unique clientele, while Box Hill allowed me to get use to using computerised library systems again. I think the system was an early version of Dynix. The computer age had finally returned for me. A stint at Wagga Wagga in NSW followed where I became familiar with Charles Sturt University and Riverina Regional Library Service. New experiences included online cataloguing using MARC, home library services and compiling / graphing statistics.

Since our move to Hobart, I have worked at various libraries from the state library to a number of Catholic school libraries; from special libraries to government departmental libraries. All these have involved setting up and managing libraries on my own or as part of a larger team. Duties have been many and varied including library classes, Book Week activities and even developing a classification system for a small library from scratch.

It was during my time in Hobart that I have managed to complete my library certificate through Footscray TAFE and upgrade it twice to an associate diploma and then a diploma through the Hobart TAFE College.

One advantage of all these moves has been the gathering of a broad range of skills and experiences. Some of these have allowed me to undertake roles I would never have thought to try. It has also allowed me to meet and get to know a wider range of community members from various walks of life that we, as a customer service industry, rely on. If I had my time again, I don't think I would change a thing. I have been fortunate enough throughout my career to have been able to pick up work in all the places I have lived, though some have taken months to come by. I cannot stress enough the value of getting out there and doing what volunteer work you can get; it can sometimes lead to an amazing experience.

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