Focus on Alumni is our series of blog posts written by #citylis alumni.
This post is by #citylis alumna Ludi Price, who is now a PhD Candidate in Information Science at City University London.
Ludi at the Internet Librarian International 2014 conference, with Batgirl, the superhero library scientist. Photo by Lyn Robinson
Joining #citylis was a risk – but one that has really paid dividends for me. For years I’d had a career in teaching and childcare, when I decided to fulfil a childhood dream – to become a librarian. In 2011, on the spur of the moment, I quit my job and applied to the City Masters course in Library Science. I arrived expecting to learn all the usual librarian-type things – cataloguing, indexing, classification – but what I actually learned was that and so much more. The course taught me to appreciate just how much information management, organisation and seeking intersects with our everyday lives. This was great because it allowed the students to bring their own experiences and interests to each module, and there was always something new and fascinating to get your teeth into.
During the course I had the opportunity to gain some experience by volunteering at some notable institutions. I joined the National Archives as a volunteer on their World War I Diaries project, and myself and a fellow student also helped set up the Peter Dunn library at the British Association for Perinatal Medicine. This involved organising the collection and creating a custom classification system. I’m proud to say that my classmate is now employed by BAPM and is responsible for the management of the collection.
As for myself, the Masters really broadened my intellectual horizons and inspired me to take an unforeseen direction. Ultimately, I decided to do a PhD, and was lucky enough to get funding for it. Under the supervision of Dr. Lyn Robinson and the support of Dr. Ernesto Priego, my research is looking into the information behaviour of cult media fans – traditionally library and information science has been interested in the information behaviour of library users, or of those in the professions – but my interest is mainly in how the information society has enabled us all to become information practitioners in our everyday lives. Fans, hobbyists and enthusiasts are interesting because they seek out, organise and share information primarily out of passion and because they enjoy doing it.
#citylis has inspired me to reach out into intellectual horizons I’d not contemplated before, and has helped me to realise that with the internet and the rise of the information society, LIS is more relevant to our everyday than ever before – we just need to wake up and realise we’re all becoming a part of it.
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Ludi is on Twitter @LudiPrice. She also hosts a blog about her research which you can view here.
If you are a current #citylis student or alumni and would like to contribute a post, please contact Ernesto Priego at ernesto.priego.1@city.ac.uk
Find out more about postgraduate study in Library and Information Science at #citylis, meet alumni, current students and staff on our next open evening on 10 June. Register here.
