I’m volunteering for my first library conference in May, the Manitoba Libraries Association thingy here in Winnipeg. We had our first meeting last night down at Millennium Library.
I’m doing this for a couple of reasons. One is because hey, I’m going to be doing a bunch of these once I get to library school so I might as well get my first one out of the way. I have no idea how the age breakdown of my class at UBC is, but if I’m going to be old, I want to at least have a bit of experience to go with my white hairs.
The other reason is less about my experience at school and more because I was going through my resume recently and the “volunteer experience” in there is pretty light. I don’t claim my MCC time as volunteering, since I got paid by my school for my teaching. And other than that, well, I suppose I’m a selfish jerk who’d rather paint miniatures than feed the sick or what have you.
Speaking of miniatures, I’m on a 1/300th scale World War II aircraft kick right now. They’re so small and cheap! I got a game, Wings of War: The Dawn of World War II, which Reyn and I played a few games of before he went to Africa, and it’s a bunch of fun. It uses cards for maneuvering and also for the planes, but you can also use figs. The official figures are like $15 each, though they come with maneuver decks which makes them useful in game terms. What I’ve done is bought a few flight bases of the appropriate size and a swarm of these cheap little planes. So far I’ve got some Battle of Britain planes painted up and some Italian and Vichy planes to fight the Free French and RAF in North Africa.
But yes, back to the conference, most of the volunteers, apart from the coordinators, were Red River students. I always forget there’s a library tech program there. I don’t really know what they learn in that program that you wouldn’t learn from working in the library. But it’s a qualificationary foot in the door I suppose, and I’d look pretty stupid calling anyone out for getting one of those.
