Isabel Hood
(to serve until 31 December 2009)
Email: Isabel.Hood@cilip.org.uk
Biography
My career has been a mixture of circumstance, luck and planning – as with many people’s!
Beginnings
Having spent a lot of my childhood in libraries they seemed the natural place to go career-wise. I did the SCOTVEC National Certificate in Library and Information Science at Telford College in Edinburgh, loved it, and went straight on to do the undergraduate degree level course at RGU in Aberdeen.
Law
The fact that I have become a law librarian was initially part-accident, but quickly then a chosen career choice which I have actively followed.
I wrote to all the Special Libraries in Glasgow looking for holiday work and ended up at The Royal Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow. And after the initial terror of not knowing anything of specific relevance I really enjoyed it and it started me out on my current path which has involved professional legal society, court and law firm libraries and led to all kinds of time-intensive decisions later on like doing a law degree.
Professional doing’s
Just over a decade ago I had my first and only part-time job for a wee bit. I got bored and allowed myself to be talked onto Career Development Group (Scottish) Committee and somehow I came out of the pub an hour later as three different Officer posts and the learning curve started. Thus my second simultaneous parallel professional life was born, though I didn’t know it. Ever since I’ve done more and more CILIP-related doing’s (everything from CDG President to Governance Review to CILIPS Council) and it does take over life, but I’ve discovered I really believe in progressing things (not good at doing nothing), and I quite like tilting at professional windmills and the unknown, I’m interested to see what will happen and what’s on the other side.
Read Isabel Hood's 2008 Candidate Election Manifesto.
Updated: 12 February 2008