Why This Blog?

Hello and welcome to my blog.

I am not new to blogging. Since 2000 I have been blogging on various platforms under certain aliases. It appeared I was smart back then and never blogged using my real name. This is a decision I shall keep for the time being. My other blogs littered around cyber space are quite bland and not updated as much as they should be. This is something I hope to change with this blog.

So why have I started this blog? Quite a few reasons. The main one is that I have been unable to get a paid job in archives post-qualification. This is quite a hot topic at the moment, especially with the posts I have been following on Twitter. In fact, it was one specific blog post that hit home for me. Derangement and Description was a nice little geeky archives comic blog I had been following for a couple of months. Then Rebecca posted this: Post SAA Howl. Reading through that blog post I thought "This post applies to me and my classmates." It was a depressing thought.

You see, we heard through the grapevine that the job market was slim pickings. We followed various list-servs that had lots of job advertisements. Alas, many of these jobs were in London, pro-rota and short-term contracts. Not many jobs came up in my neck of the woods. When we questioned our lecturers they brushed us off. Yes, the market was slim but there was a recession on. No doubt everything would be fine by the time we graduated.

Except it's not. There have been recent reports of over 60 graduates applying for one post. Based upon my own recent experiences, this is also happening in the archival and information sector. To make matters worse we are also up against graduates from one of the other archival programs run in the UK. We are also up against graduates from previous years who have still to get a job post-Masters.

It would be easy to rant and rave against the world. Instead I decided to reflect upon my path that brought me to archives. And this is where this blog comes in.

At the moment I'm not very sure which direction it is going in. At the moment I'm not sure if anyone will find my thoughts interesting. Please bear with me while I try to establish a service.