I believe in volunteering for experience. I have done it since I was very young. I have learnt a lot over the years and would recommend it to anyone.
I don't think it devalues our profession. The skills and knowledge gain from volunteering can be diverse which are useful to cement the gaps of skills and knowledge that we obtain from our day jobs. I have recently volunteer at an NHS library. I was amazed to learn how an health library works. While I was there, the library moved from manual circulation to RFID so that was an eye opener. I was also given an opportunity to give a presentation to a group of library assistants about my library and how we can can help them.
Whilst the experience really helped me grow as a librarian, the library also benefited from my presence. I was able to share my cataloguing knowledge with them when they were moving from an in-house cataloguing rules to the mainstream standards.
To get the most out of the volunteering experience, I would recommend that you have clear objectives and SMART goals. These objectives then need to be agreed by the organisation and yourself and they need to be reviewed periodically to ensure that they are being achieved. I would like to volunteer at a university library next. Please get in touch if you know one that you can recommend. I am opened to new experiences so happy to do anything.
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