ALIA West

November 2004

Where are they now?

A peek into the life of former ALIA award winners.

This month we catch up with 2001 Sharr Medal winner Kim Grace. Kim very kindly agreed to be interviewed by e-mail and has provided a very interesting snapshot of his life since the Sharr medal.

Q. What have you been up to since winning the Medal?

For the past two years, and since leaving Maylands Public Library, I have been working as an environmental field officer with Bennett Brook Environmental Services. We do training, management plans, flora/fauna surveys, bush and wetland rehabilitation, anything-involving environmental projects, big and small. I love it, but it is hard yakka, especially for an old bloke like me!

I am also a TAFE lecturer in landcare currently running two off-campus courses for Challenger TAFE, one at Lakelands Senior High, the other at Boola Wongin Nursery. Once again, it is not work when you love doing it.

Ironically, I had just been appointed to a library position when I received these questions, and will hopefully start with the State Library in November.

Q. What impact (if any) did winning the Sharr medal have on you as a person, and professionally speaking?

Personally, it was a huge thrill for my family, and myself. I was very proud to win it, and to be presented with the medal by Ali Sharr before his sad passing. Sometimes I cannot believe I actually won it until I look up on the wall and see it. It has been one of the big thrills of my life.

Professionally, to be perfectly honest (which can be a fault of mine I have been told!) it did not seem to help me at all and may even have been somewhat of a hindrance in obtaining library work. Either that or they did not like the colour of my ties at the interviews! Whatever, I got very few interviews let alone job offers and I admit to becoming very despondent about the whole profession and my place in it. But life goes on, bills have to be paid, and I loved every moment in the environmental field and the people I worked with. They made me feel valued, and part of the team.

Q. Given that the Sharr Medal is awarded to the candidate who displays the most potential to have a positive impact on their preferred stream of librarianship, do you feel you have achieved your potential (or are on track to do so?)

Definitely not, nowhere near it!

In fact, I was embarrassed when asked to help judge the Sharr Medal recipient last year because I felt that I should have been in libraries doing what I was trained to do. I also felt that I had let a lot of people down, in particular those who had chosen me as a recipient because I could not find a library job, not even as a casual librarian. In the end, I accepted the role because for me the award is not just about librarianship, it is about wanting to help people in their search for knowledge, and wanting to make a difference to both the people we serve and to the profession.

Q. In your acceptance speech [http://www.alia.org.au/publishing/orana/38.2/grace.html] you alluded to the potential that librarians have to change the perceptions of those they encounter. (I am thinking of your story about the bush fire) Do you still feel that way? Has your career so far borne out that perception?

My own (few) experiences with clients in public libraries has definitely reinforced that belief, strengthened it in fact. Good librarians - and I include all those hard working library clerks I have worked with - are more than just custodians of a collection, they can also become gateways through which people - and not always your 'normal' person - communicate with the mainstream world as well as gain access to the worlds of imagination and knowledge. This is particularly important with kids, the elderly and the disenfranchised.

Many of the clients I dealt with on a daily basis became more than clients and that was a great thing to be part of, to be able to change their perceptions of libraries, other people and sometimes the world itself. People skills are not taught enough in librarianship and yet they are the one attribute most often required, and I don't mean just conflict resolution.

Q. Where to now? What are your plans for the future?

Continue environmental work in a voluntary capacity, finish off the children's books I am working on, try and regain the passion I had for librarianship and use it to make that positive impact Ali Sharr would have wanted all librarians to have, not just the ones lucky and privileged enough to be awarded with his medal.