Beyond Selidor

I tend to assume that people who speak of Cambridge mean the newer Cambridge? Hahaha, that's the opposite to what I would assume when I heard the word 'Cambridge'! (I do have quite a few friends at Harvard, though, and have been there once for a conference. It's a pretty nice place.)

I'd totally be up for meeting up at some point.

Cool. That would be awesome!

As I've kind of failed to make it into the library world in Cambridge (well, sort of - I found something else to do as a temp for a while and ended up liking it so much I stayed there instead of looking for librarian positions), I'm really curious to know what it's like where you are.


The library world in Cambridge is...weird. Very cliqueish, and somewhat insular, but I've found that once you get your foot in the door and have the right people advocating for you, a lot of opportunities open up. I really love my current job, because it's almost entirely working with people, either at the issue desk or leading teaching and training sessions (one-to-one, or small groups, although in October I'll be giving massive lectures to all the new undergrads in our faculty), or doing weird meet-and-greet type inductions at coffee breaks during inductions for new staff. I'm actually a rather introverted person, and find lots of unstructured socialising really draining, but for some reason, when there's a clear purpose to my interaction with other people - teaching, telling them about library services, solving a problem - I find it really fun. I never wanted to spend my days sitting in an office, cataloguing, so this job is basically perfect for me.

I'm lucky in that I really like my colleagues, and that I have a lot of support from my boss in doing my job the way I want to do it, and in getting lots of training myself in skills that I think would be useful (so she lets me go to basically any training session I want, even though I work full-time and it means I have to be away from the library), and funded me to go to a conference this week, even though I'm probably at a grade too junior to be attending such events.

It sounds like you also work in a nice faculty/department, even if it's not in a library.

I'm not used to being this landlocked, and I'm constantly frustrated by the weird UK rail infrastructure that routes everything through London, with the option being narrow, clogged-up roads.

Oh yes, I can imagine why this would be frustrating. I don't drive, so I just walk everywhere in Cambridge, and catch trains all over the place. Coming from Australia, which has terrible public transport (or indeed transport of any kind, unless you're flying between major cities), and where a trip to the coast with my friends necessitated an eight-hour bus ride, Britain's trains actually seem fantastic to me!

I'm spoiled from living in countries like Sweden, Japan and Switzerland that all have some combination of super efficient public transport and plenty of wide open spaces to explore.

Wow, what fascinating places to have lived in! How long did you live in each place, and what did you do there?

Which isn't really a complaint about Cambridge! You've just caught me at a time where I'm suffering a particularly strong bout of wanderlust, I think.


Sorry to hear this. I hope you're able to travel somewhere nice soon (the one good thing about the UK - it's super easy to get to lots of cool places nearby, especially from Cambridge with Stansted being so close).

How about you? How's Cambridge been treating you?

It's fabulous. I love it here (although it's slightly too small a town for my tastes, as I'm a big city person at heart), particularly the fact that it's so close to London and so easy to get to lots of different places in the UK and Europe. Occasionally I look out at the flat, relentless East Anglian fields and think I might scream with frustration at the landscape, and I really miss the Australian beaches and ocean, but I can't imagine living anywhere but Cambridge in the near future.