After 4 years as Team Leader Customer Support for OCLC ANZ, I’ll be starting a new job in February.

The role is Discovery Specialist at La Trobe University Library. It’s exciting (new job! new opportunities! progress on my career goals) but also slightly terrifying – I’ll be supporting a system I have never supported before. So there will be a lot to learn.

Fortunately, Ex Libris have their Primo Adminstration course online. So I’ll be getting stuck into that in the new year.

Right now, I’m packing up my old job into tidy packages, ready to whoever takes over the role from me. It’s a slightly melencholy process. A lot has happened since I sidled up to a guest lecturer in my Masters degree and said “OCLC sounds like somewhere I’d like to work one day. Can I have a chat with you about what you’re looking for?”

I’ve loved working for OCLC. I’ve learnt a huge amount of what the theory I’ve been learning in my studies looks like in the real world. I’m met wonderful people. I’ve worked with colleagues around the world, and while I won’t miss the late night video meetings due to time zone differences, I will miss being flown to the UK, the Netherlands, and the United States to meet my colleagues.

In an ideal world, I’d be there another six months while I finish my Masters, and only then would I start looking for something new. But we take our opportunities when they present themselves.

One big change in the new role is that I won’t be a manager.

That’s fine. I’m happy to focus on building my technical skills for a while. But I am concerned that my managerial experience will slip further and further down my resume. I want to get back to managerial positions one day. I think I’m pretty good at it. (Also: the pay is better.)

In fact, I’m toying with creating a zine about it, a sort of Guide for New Managers. When I was first promoted from a technical role to management, I found I was really upset that my technical skills atrophied without me really understanding what new skills I was developing in their place.

Julia Evans has a great little zine called Help! I have a manager! about how to work productively with your manager. It would be nice to have something similar that looks at the nuts-and-bolts of management from the other side of the table.

The trick is keeping is small enough to be doable while being detailed enough to be useful.

I’ll keep thinking about it.

Meanwhile: happy new year!