Simon Chamberlain’s library weblog

I’m starting to get excited, because in less than two months my girlfriend and I will be in London and looking for work! We’ve been accepted under the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, meaning we get a two-year work permit, and we can easily extend it if we want.

We’ll be based in London, at least at first, though we’re considering looking at other cities.

Any words of advice or introductions to prospective employers would be gratefully received.

We’ve both already lived in London, in my case for four years from 1997-2001, so we don’t need too much information about the city. I’ve previously worked in a special library in London, and she worked in a public library, so we have some idea about how things work.

I’m looking for a reference position, possibly in a law firm or other corporate library, possibly in an academic library. Ideally, I’d like a position where I could follow my interests in new(ish) technologies and current awareness. I’m also interested in anything with a CI (Competitive Intelligence) element, where I’d be doing more analysis, not just information gathering or showing people how to use databases.

Wish us luck, anyway.

After taking what seems like a very long break, I’m back blogging. No real reason I was away - a combination of a temporary loss of interest/motivation, and doing other things. (Can I still say ‘life trumps blogging’, or is that passe?).   “Other things” includes traveling to Rarotonga for the wedding of some good friends, and continuing education  - two MLIS courses, meaning I’m studying half-time and working full-time; not conducive to blogging as well. The courses, if you’re interested: Advanced Reference Services and Competitive Intelligence.

Oh, and I’m an uncle which is pretty cool; my brother and his girlfriend have had a baby son: the first of that generation for either family.

The reason backups (and regular checks of your site) are good? Back in July, my webhost had a server crash, and some files became corrupt, including my blog (you can see where this is going….). As I haven’t been checking the blog, I was unaware of the crash. By the time I noticed, it was too late to retrieve the uncorrupted version, because their backups didn’t go back that far. I’m somewhat sad (I can re-import the really old posts from my Bloglines blog; I’m also hopeful that I can somehow grab the newer ones from a full-text version of the RSS feed; we shall see).

Coming soon: some long long posts giving my write up of the LIANZA conference (guaranteed Paula Ryan free! ;)).