Trust me, I'm a professional

[ladyofastolat]

I was filling in a form today that would allow me to be let into prison (in a professional capacity, I hasten to add), and I need to attach three photos, all counter-signed by "someone with a professional qualification."

Yes, I know this is nothing new, but for some reason it really annoys me. I have a professional qualification. Pellinor has a professional qualification. We also regularly invite friends around and spend the weekend blowing their heads off. We spend weekends dancing, drinking, and singing every song known to man while collapsing slowly into the nearest gutter. Pellinor likes to conquer the world, and knows more than anyone ought to know about swords and armour. I like to be incredibly mean to defenceless fictional characters. The fact that we have professional qualifactions says nothing important about who we are. We could murder bunnies in our spare time, or be inveterate liars, or run a drugs ring out of our living room. Just because I'm a chartered librarian doesn't mean I can't be evil incarnate.

It just seems so old-fashioned, harking back to out-dated class issues, when your humble little farm hands and factory workers lived in a totally different world from the lofty local doctor or solicitor, and the middle and upper classes just knew beyond doubt that "their kind of people" were good chaps in every way, whose word could not be doubted. That isn't today. That isn't now. I don't like it, and want it to go away.

*sigh* I'm probably being very silly. Probably no-one else has a problem with this.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

There are library qualifications, yes. Technically, you can only be called "a librarian" if you've got the qualifactions. Most people who work in libraries don't, though. You get the professional qualification by either doing a librarianship degree, or, as I did, doing a normal degree, working in a library for a bit, and then doing a post-graduate qualification (either full time, or part time, while continuing to work). This sets you up for work in any type of library, not just public.

Even after you've got that, you're only a "qualified librarian", not a "chartered librarian." To get chartership, you have to work for a few years, and write various reports on your professional development and learning experiences.

It's ten years since I did my post-grad course, and since then the only reading I've kept up with is stuff relevant to public libraries, so I can't advise on books or courses that would be useful to you. It could be useful to get in touch with CILIP. (http://www.cilip.org.uk/) That's the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. I don't know if they do, but they might run brief overview courses, for people in your situation, who don't need a librarianship qualification, but just want some pointers to get you going in the right direction.