Wellington

In advance of the family move to Wellington some thought was given to my finding a job. (sister and brother still at school) My mother had a vague idea that my godmother's brother in law was something in libraries, and when she mentioned the name I fell off my chair: he was the National Librarian! Godmother wrote to him to see if a job could be found and he came up with a lovely post as a trainee in the Schools Library Service. (I never did meet Geoffrey Alley.)

The SLS was a division of the National Library Service, and had offices in the 4 main centres in New Zealand. The national head was Hector Macaskill, who ran this like a military operation. I learned a great deal about ideal management from observing him: when all the boxes of books came back at the end of school terms, everyone on the staff, including him, set to with checking the contents against lists of loans, setting aside books which needed mending or rebinding, and then reshelving them. (Imagine my horror at job-demarcation when I came to work in Surrey County Libraries in 1970!)
This was by now 1964. I am sorry to say that the swinging sixties passed me by entirely - my great musical discovery at the time was the complete recordings of Handel's Organ Concerti.

The professional body for librarians, the NZ Library Association, stepped up the drive to educate library staff and introduced its Certificate. I was on the first run of this wide-ranging course, which involved a sort of apprenticeship combined with sandwich courses at the national Library School, spread over three years. The only other qualification available in NZ at that time was a post graduate dipoloma offered by the Library School in Wellington - another branch of the National Library. Watch out for a course description next time!