The journey of migration to a new country is often uncertain and challenging.
غالبا ما تكون الرحلة إلى بلد جديد مليئة بالتحديات و غير مؤكدة
Leaving behind 25 years of memories and the people you grew up with is heartbreaking. However, the lure of Australia and the promise of a better life, new economic opportunities, and the chance to build a future for my young family made it worthwhile. My biggest fear about migrating was losing my culture and identity. But we did it anyway.
We landed in Sydney on 21 March 1992. Seeing the multicultural crowd in the airport gave me a sense of ease and excitement – I was one of many with English as a second language.
From that day on, I started thinking of ways to benefit myself and my family; I began considering changing my IT background to another field that would benefit all, especially my Arabic community in my new home country.
I enrolled at RMIT University for a Master of Information Technology. My first subject was cataloguing and using AACR2 (Cataloguer’s bible). I used to sit for hours with my two girls (aged five and one), trying to unfold the mystery of the main entry, series, and others.
While at university, my supervisor asked if I was interested in a casual cataloguer position at Technilib to catalogue Arabic materials. I didn’t know that by accepting this offer, I would be one of the few people in Australia that could catalogue Arabic materials.
Unfortunately, within the year, Technilib had folded, but as luck would have it many of the staff were offered positions at CAVAL. My love of books and my dream of becoming a librarian/cataloguer finally came true and I began my role as an Arabic Cataloguer at CAVAL in March 1996.
Providing materials to libraries gives me great pleasure, and by cataloguing them, we make sure they are discoverable. I was, and still am, proud of how I classify books and link them under one subject among the many things I do.
This year marks my 27th Anniversary at CAVAL. People ask me why I am still here after all this time. It is because I know that current and recent publications and information in 60 languages matter to CAVAL – it is where I belong.
Author – Lamis Sukkar
Lamis is Shelf Ready Lead with CAVAL. Holding tertiary qualifications in Computer Science and Business Finance, Lamis migrated to Australia over 30 years ago and has worked exclusively for CAVAL for 27 of those years.
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Very impressive and inspiring. True success occurs only with hard work. Congratulations Lamis.
My sincerest congratulation Librarian Lamis. I am so happy for you being happy with your career . I want to tell you that it does not matter to work in the same major you graduated from at the university but it is important where you can perform better and enjoy the career you doing . The first bachelor degree you graduated with from the university is the foundation for any career you choose in real life and the master and Ph.D degrees should be toward in depth for the work you have choose for yourself .
Good day
Many thanks Dr Ali for your encouraging words and for the one giving me my first IT job at Kuwsit university.