Member interview with Helen Challinor

 Helen Challinor has been a government librarian for nearly 30 years with experience across a variety of different roles. She is currently the Departmental Taxonomist at the Department for Education where she manages, maintains and develops controlled subject vocabularies in the department.

 

 

 

 

Could you tell us about your background and how you became involved in the information profession?

From an early age I had been impressed with the librarians I had seen in the libraries of my younger days. When I went into my local public library for homework resources and books for reading for pleasure they were there as inspiring figures. From about the age of 10 it became my goal to be a librarian and I went to Brighton Polytechnic on their BA (Hons) Library and Information Management course to achieve this. I graduated in 1991.

 

Where have you worked and in what sorts of roles?

I have worked in a variety of different areas of librarianship from cataloguing and enquiries at the Department of the Environment and Transport library in London, to acquisitions, enquiries and journal article abstract writing, in what was then the Employment Department library in Sheffield.

I went on a couple of secondments from the library to work on a few different projects. This was a great way to get experience of other roles within what was, by then, the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). In 1999 I was appointed manager of the Sheffield library service in DfEE.

Then about seven years ago, the nature of my role changed. It became clear that the subject thesaurus that I had been maintaining would need to be an essential part of a new IT system used for managing and directing correspondence received into the Department for Education.

I became the Departmental Taxonomist with responsibility for managing, maintaining and developing the subject taxonomy that we use across a number of IT applications in the department. This is a job about which I feel passionately and which I enjoy terrifically. It is about making a difference to how we answer enquiries and serve members of the public, ministers and Parliament. It is also a mixture of detailed subject term construction and seeing how everything fits together at a high level, which suits how I like to work.

 

What are you mostly excited about in our profession?

I am excited about the vibrant taxonomy and knowledge organisation community that is out there, not just in the UK, but around the world. There are such great ways to connect with people through, for example Taxonomy Boot Camp London (TBCL) [link to TBCL Twitter] or via the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO). Here is a quick shout out for ISKO UK which runs three series of online events offering practical workshops as well as educational and research sessions. Events and meetings give the opportunity to learn about new things, to connect with others to learn from their experiences or to ask for help or advice.

 

What advice would you give to someone starting their career as a librarian/information professional?

I would recommend trying different roles to get a range of experience across a variety of connected disciplines not only in the library world. I spent some time working in information standards and learning about data modelling. This was not my ‘natural habitat’, but being able to read data models, understand information architecture and develop skills around linked open data have turned out to be essential in my current role.

 

What are your (personal/professional) plans and expectations for the future?

I want to continue to develop the Department for Education’s subject taxonomy, build on what we have and look for the next opportunities to use it to enhance information management and retrieval.

I am looking forward to the 2022 Facet publication of Taxonomies: Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information. I was invited to write a chapter (about taxonomy maintenance), which was an interesting experience in itself and something that I had never done before. I also got to work with a super editor, who I am sure is pulling together a great publication for taxonomists everywhere.

On a personal note I was very pleased to become a Fellow of CILIP in November 2020. This was a lot of hard work, but ultimately very satisfying because it made me think about what I had achieved, why it mattered and what I needed to focus on next. I am already preparing for my revalidation submission towards the end of the year.