Things I would tell someone applying to library school

[jenett]

(Thanks to finch for the question, which is part of my Three Weeks for Dreamwidth posting, and therefore not cross-posted.)

This is, for reasons that will become clear, both a fairly common question, and a rather fraught one, as much as I adore the profession. And of course, I have Opinions.

My advice comes in four parts, with subsections. (And for anyone new to my journal, the 'secret masters of the universe' will take you to other librarian related posts, though there's still a huge swath of my journal that's not fully tagged.)



Part 1: Be practical
Don't go into major debt
Library jobs have a number of virtues, but they tend not to be very high in salary compared to the amount of education required.

Salaries in my area are running in the 45K-60Kish realm for full-time work with decent benefits unless you get further up the management scale. One can live on that fairly nicely around here, if you don't have luxurious tastes (and either are single, or have a spouse/partner with a similar or higher income, if you want to have kids). And most full-time library jobs do come with really solid benefits and often fairly extensive vacation time that make up for salary for many people.

But it's also not a salary on which anyone sensible would recommend paying off tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Really think twice about the debt. And then think some more. (That said, there are a number of library schools where you might be looking at $15K or so, depending on your location, which is not entirely unreasonable.)

Job prospects in classic library jobs are pretty lousy right now.
They've been lousy for the last five years, and there's a pretty good chance they're going to continue to be lousy for the next 5-10 years at least.

It's currently taking a lot of library school grads between a year and three years to find a professional (MLIS requiring) job after they graduate. If you do not have a good solution for this now, you should rethink library school for the time being. (A classic solution is getting a paraprofessional job in a library, and hanging onto it until you find a MLIS requiring job, but those can also be hard to get these days because of the abundance of existing degreed folks.)

There are many reasons for this, but they mostly boil down to a combination of:

- lower than expected retirement rates among librarians (since many library jobs are relatively undemanding physically, people can often stay in them past a normal retirement age) This *will* probably turn around some in the next decade, but not necessarily enough to make up for the large classes coming out of most library schools.

- budget cuts in a lot of libraries leading to either fewer jobs overall, or more work that used to be done by MLIS degreed folks being done by folks without that degree. [1] Also, a lot of cataloging and related work is now getting hugely centralised.

- a certain amount of people preferring to live in larger cities, which tends to attract more competition (library jobs in more rural areas are easier to come by, but you have to be up for living there, and in a very public role in a small community, and not everyone is.)

- there's also a lot of pent-up supply in the chain - people who would like to be working as librarians but who ended up taking a job doing something else to pay the bills. However, it's still a lot easier to get a library job if you have a library job.

Now, there are a number of positions which require or benefit from the MLIS degree, but which aren't the classic public, school, or academic library jobs. There are special libraries (in law, medicine, business, and all sorts of government roles.) but there are also a number of other fields where it might be useful. This booklist from a LISjobs.com blogpost would be a good start for further reading. (And it's a great site to be familiar with in general.)

One of my former classmates was working in a managerial role for Target's shipping department, and they were paying for her MLIS in order to have someone who had a much deeper knowledge of organising information and documentation in ways that would be most effective. One of my former teachers runs the internal education library at 3M. And there are an increasing number of jobs for MLIS holders in various technology industry roles, especially around things like search engine algorithims, metadata, and database design. The thing is, if you want to go into those, it's good to know early, so you can take applicable classes (and so that you don't take, say, children's lit, if you know you don't want to go into school or public library work.)

It doesn't (generally) matter where you go to school - with an exception
It matters *hugely* if the school is (in the US and Canada, which share their governing/accrediting body) accredited by the American Library Association. Libraries have their accreditation reviewed on a regular basis, and it's a somewhat complex and fraught process.

This page from the ALA answers some common questions and has useful links to things like the directory of accredited programs.

There are a couple of times when the school may make more difference:
- There are some specific specialities - archives, information management, a few others - where some schools are way in front of the others. Generally, programs make this pretty obvious, and discussions on library lists, etc. can also be very helpful.

- If you know you want to work in a particular geographical area (and you're absolutely sure of that), going to the school in the area (if there is one) can help you make local networking connections and get leads in a way going long-distance can't do as easily. Don't make this your only deciding point, though, because there are plenty of other ways around the networking issue.

- If you eventually want to get your Ph.D and teach, there may be advantages to going to one of the top schools. But again, these can be worked around.

But in general, going to a school that allows you to get library experience in some direct, meaningful form, and that doesn't put you hugely in debt is the good course.

Be a librarian because you want to be a librarian
Not because you want to go to grad school and can't decide what to do. Or are in grad school, and don't know if you can get a job doing that thing. Or because you like having a large chunk of time off in the summer. Or because you like books.

If those things are true *and* you want to be a librarian, great. But it's a lousy job for people who aren't passionate about the actual job (for the reasons described above and below.)

Also: If your first impulse is to ask a very general, highly Googleable question of a list rather than doing some hunting yourself first, librarianship is probably not be the job for you. (And if you do this on a library list, you may get mocked.) Asking questions that *aren't* readily found on Google is, of course, a whole other matter. Librarians like those and enjoy sharing them as a rule.

Part Two: Become aware of the realities of the profession
Get experience in actual real libraries.
The single most important factor in doing well *after* you finish library school is having experience in a library before you graduate. This can be volunteer experience, it can be paraprofessional experience. Getting it before you look at library schools is probably best, because you'll know more whether it's worth investing $LargeSum in your education, or whether you'd be better off doing something else related.

Ideally, you should be looking for experience in the same type of library you eventually want to work in, or in a type of library that will let you do things like what you eventually want to do. (Hint: if you can be available during some part of the school day even every two weeks or so, school libraries are a) generally delighted to have volunteers, b) do a little bit of everything and c)often have some nifty projects to work with, not just the tedious stuff.)

Get to know other librarians
We are, as a profession, a generally helpful and friendly bunch. (We are also often an overworked bunch. These things are not entirely disconnected.) Find ways to connect with other librarians that work with the overwork piece.

Email lists, online fora, sites like LISjobs.com and a whole host of other resources are useful. I suggest signing up for whatever local/state library lists appeal to you - and even some that you're not sure about. Our state Special Library Association has some great workshops and panel discussions on a regular basis, while the education list obviously does more about education.

Many librarians (library policy and time allowing) may be open to having you shadow them for a day or evening, as well, but you probably want to establish a relationship of some kind with them first somehow. Electronic discussions on local lists can be a great way to do this, but so can just showing an interest in the library in question.

Related to the overwork:
There are ways in which the job of being a librarian - especially in classic library modes - never stops. You're *always* going to be reading something, listening to the radio, having a conversation, and have stuff pop up that's work related. Plus, the working hours at most libraries don't leave time for reading current books that have a lot of buzz (but that people will ask about), or keeping up with library blogs and other information sources. Or journals. Or much of anything else.

Plus, a number of classic library jobs are trying to do as much as humanly possible with much less staff than they previously had. Basic math should suggest the problem with this equation. The ends are noble, but a lot of librarians have a tendency to try to do way more than is probably healthy, because they're passionate about what they're doing and they actively like helping people.

And this isn't even counting the issues like my +2 obsession with answering questions when asked, or the inevitable struggle when asked "Are you a librarian?" when I've wandered into my public library to pick up holds. Yes, I am, but not there, but argh, want to be helpful and leave people with a good impression of nice helpful librarians as a profession. (I usually solve this by "I'm a librarian, but not for this library system. Those nice people at the info desk would love to help you." unless it's something really quick like getting into the catalog or checking something out on the self-check scanners.)

So, if you already have issues of imbalance in your life around this particular kind of thing, give really careful thought to what being a librarian is going to do that, and select your classes and eventual job applications with that in mind.

Special libraries have a different set of issues - and because they're more often either in corporations or in government agencies, they've got some different ideas about investing all of your life in your work.

Recommendations:
- Read Unshelved which is a public library comic, but has some very good bits applicable to any customer-facing library.

- Even more so, read their Answers community. I post there under the name I use for professional-related stuff. (I don't link them in public spaces, but you can feel free to ask privately, and it's probably possible to guess if you know a bit of library history about Alexandria).

Part Three: Know thyself (and thy desires)
The management question
Perhaps the most important one: these days, it is more and more likely that if you have a MLIS requiring job, you will be, in some form, a manager, administrator, or something other than just a librarian helping people. There are still exceptions (academic libraries, for example, are still heavily staffed by MLIS holding librarians), but in both school and public libraries, that's getting to be less and less common.

(Also: I manage one of the single largest sub-budgets in the entire Upper School. I think the only larger one is our debate team budget which includes funding a massive debate tournament every December. In tight budget times, you can guess that makes my budget especially attractive for cuts.)

Do you like talking to people?
There's the stereotype of the librarian being alone in the nice quiet library doing their thing. This is not the reality for most libraries. Public librarians have patrons and library users of all types. The most common reference question is often "Where's the bathroom?" but you can flip from a reference question to fixing a computer problem to helping a small child to finding a compassionate but reasonable way to deal with someone with a particular obsession.

(For example, a lot of public libraries have at least one library user who calls in multiple times every shift asking for the librarian to read them extended passages of totally useless factual material. On one hand, you want to help. On the other hand, you don't want to be on the phone for 30 minutes not helping other people.)

School librarians and academic librarians have similar issues, though often more meetings and time with faculty, as well as students. And while I adore working with passionate, energetic, thoughtful teenagers, they are not generally relaxing.

All of them also deal with behavior in the library - everything from someone being a bit too loud to the perennial cell phone conundrum to the more complex issues of someone trying to load porn on public computers, or making people using the space actively uncomfortable (threats, physical violence, behavior that puts others at direct risk or scares them). Dealing with these challenges in a way that's caring of all of the perspectives in the mix can be really hard - and it's even harder if you're a person who doesn't like confrontation of any kind.

The introversion/extroversion problem
A lot of librarians are introverts. A lot of library jobs expect them not to be, these days. This is a challenge. Knowing how you handle it, and what helps you cope is a critical piece of the equation. (In my library school - and admittedly, we're in the upper midwest, and I expect Minnesota skews results this direction *anyway* - but two different classes who did the Myers-Briggs as part of class had results where 80% or more of the class were INFJs, one of the least common personality types. The few extroverts really stood out.)

But my job involves being out in the public eye for at least half my work day, actively engaging with people. And I eat lunch in a (loud, crowded) cafeteria keeping an eye on general student behavior. And I have a homeroom, and supervise space for tutorial periods, and a whole lot more.

Public and academic libraries are a little more flexible - either they're small libraries (in which case there may be substantial periods when it's pretty quiet) or there are set desk hours (usually 2-4 hours a day) and the rest of the time, you're either in meetings or in your office working on focused projects.

And special librarians often have long stretches of time when it's quiet - but may also have to do significant presentations of material, or handle highly-stressed personalities who want specific information immediately. Which has its own challenge.

Process vs. customer service
One of the other challenges of a lot of classic library work is that we're divided between wanting to build a nice stable process to take care of all the lovely resources we have (so that people can find them, use them, and return them so other people can use them.)

But at the same time, we want to have real actual humans use them - which means that the detailed organisation schemes that are pretty and precise might also be very confusing. It means that people will have personal crises that mean that books don't get back (or come back damaged). It means that other humans will disagree with our choices. It gets messy. Sometimes you'll have to set boundaries. And often, those boundaries will be imperfect compromises that people gripe at (because they *are* imperfect), but they're the best you can do right now.

Prepare yourself to deal with specific ways the profession can stretch you
Here's the thing about being a librarian. It's not about you and your preferences. It should be all about the library collection, the library users, and the community at large those things exist in.

That means that if you end up in a role where you select books, you will need to be able to select books you may fervently disagree with, or hate passionately, or think is the worst thing since [pick your most hated title here]. It means you will need to take questions from people who like that thing, and deal with them professionally, when they ask for more books like that. It means you may find yourself buying books you think are actively dangerous if they're requested or otherwise suitable for the collection. (This is why libraries have collection policies. And it's why MLIS degreed folks take classes in collection development and information policy.)

Now, often, you can avoid *some* of these things, much of the time. But chances are good, sometime in your librarian life, you will hit one of those times when you need to put aside your personal preferences, your deeply-held beliefs, and do your best to get someone the information or source or whatever they really want.

The other thing is that you need to accept the idea that even though you don't have to read *everything* that comes along (and nobody can, so that's good), you will be a much better librarian if you are willing to devote some of your 'free' time to reading books and other materials that get a lot of buzz or attention.

Nancy Pearl - reader's advisor extraordinaire - recommends reading at least one book in a genre or type you normally wouldn't pick up at least once a month that would still be relevant to your library. (You can, under this model, ignore stuff that just isn't of interest to your library's community: I do not, for example, include either Westerns or 'high interest, low skill' books on my personal reading, because they just don't apply here.) If the idea of doing this for the rest of your professional life appalls you, you want to look somewhere other than public and school libraries.

If you're in a special library, or working in a technology industry job, or whatever, most of these things apply less. But in most customer-facing library roles, it'll come up sometime.

Part Four: Do things with lasting value outside of library school
The last part of my advice is in many ways the simplest: do things that you'll be glad you've done no matter what road your library career takes. Don't hem yourself into a particular aspect of the profession too fast or too hard if you don't want to.

(I mean, if *all* you want to do is be the best children's librarian on the planet, then yes, specialise. But otherwise, a variety of courses will serve you really well.)

Likewise, see how many of your projects you can build that turn into something tangible you can show people who might want to hire you. Basic web skills don't hurt. Being able to link to a portfolio of work doesn't hurt. Being able to talk knowledgeably about a particular interest, or point to relevant publications doesn't hurt. Starting a blog and talking about what you're learning, and why it's interesting, and hey, there's this cool book I read doesn't hurt. (Just make sure that you're not sharing more info than you'd like attached to your professional identity.)

[1] Ok, here's the degree thing. The Master's in Library and Information Science (or the earlier version, Master's in Library Science) used to be the dividing line between paraprofessional library jobs and professional ones.

Among other things, the MLIS *should* mean some substantial additional training in things like professional ethics, dealing with complex reference questions (and getting at what people actually want/need, not just the thing they initially ask for.) plus a lot of other things - cataloging, information policy, management, etc. One of the things people in the profession worry about is how people without that theory, background, and training will handle issues like book challenges, books that raise important but painful issues, etc.

Some do very well - but some really fail badly. Often they mean well, but because they don't have the background understanding of the broader issues, some of which have to do with complicated bits of legal background. Having the MLIS degree isn't perfect, but it at least ensures some kind of general base (plus, if you know what school someone went to, and what classes they took, you can make a whole bunch of other general guesses.)

Comments

[branchandroot]

If your first impulse is to ask a very general, highly Googleable question of a list rather than doing some hunting yourself first, librarianship is probably not be the job for you.

And when you live with a librarian, you find yourself increasingly trained to Google and unable to ask simple questions. It's all "So, what /are/ the sources of the figure of the Devil in Western literature and religion?" And then your spouse demands the computer for an hour or two so he can look for the answer.

[jenett]

Very much, yes.

But on a couple of my library lists (specific ones) there's this bizarre tendency to have people show up asking things that are so easy to Google it's mind-boggling.

(Stuff like "I want to be a librarian. What are the ALA accredited schools in [state]?" Which does tend to lead to the list going "If you want to be a librarian, this would be a good way to start. Go forth and Google.")

I had an exchange with someone in email yesterday where she asked a question, I said "Let me go check on that" and she sent "Argh! Didn't mean it that seriously, don't go to any trouble." (The reason I wanted to check was to double check some dates, which I found in under 10 minutes, which is not bad given that I had to go dig in a Yahoo group for them.)

[jesse_the_k]

This is an outstanding and helpful post!

Thanks so much for taking the time to share it.

[sofiaviolet]

Thanks for posting this! *is going to be an archivist*

[silveradept]

The library professional approves. Does he ever. Even knowing this, I probably would still end up being the person I am (satisfied with being a Mid-Boss on the way to teenager video game prowess, and a silly children's librarian), but this is definitely something worth spreading far and wide to the candidates. I think it would be great submitted for publication.

[jenett]

Yay! I'm glad it reads well to other librarians.

And definitely, it's not meant to say "Don't do this". Just "Don't do it without knowing what you're getting into."

[silveradept]

Yes. It very much reads that way. I like it. I think a lot of people tried to take refuge in librarianship when other things didn't work out for them, only to find that there were a lot of librarians who weren't planning on retiring like the projections said they would.

I think the stuff in these comments might make for a good second post and the beginnings of a nice guide.

[finch]

Thank you very much for this. Mostly it's made me pretty sure I'm not making an enormous mistake considering this. (Now if I can get my company to pay for it, I won't have any concerns. XD)

I had actually planned on getting into rare books and preservation but the way you talk about your job has made me think about being a school librarian, which I hadn't thought about since I was actually in high school. This will require more thinking once, you know, I actually get into a school.

I've been reading Unshelved off and on for years. :)

[silveradept]

School librarianship often also carries the extra requirement of a teaching certificate, so you may have some extra classes to take so you can get certified as both librarian and instructor. Just so you know.

[finch]

Good to know. I'd been thinking about that anyway. :)

[jenett]

There are lots of things I like about school work. (And silveradept is right about the teaching license - though if you do what I did and go for independent schools, you may not need one. Some of the Catholic schools locally require one, some are happy with the MLIS, and most of the other independents want either the school library licensure *or* the MLIS.)

I'm not as sure how the market prospects are for rare books and preservation - I suspect not as horrible as the profession as a whole, but that there aren't still a lot of jobs out there.

I should probably do the ramble on the three limits of getting a library job sometime soon, too. (Location, type of library, and focus)

[lilalanor]

This is a really lovely post, thank you! (I'm currently studying to be a librarian in Australia and pondering international job opportunities, particularly in the United States so all this is very useful)

[jenett]

Yay! Glad it was helpful!

(I know only a *tiny* bit about library studies in other places.)

[lilalanor]

It definitely was (my ultimate aspiration if I end up going in to libraries is something like the Library of Congress or a parliamentary/government library. Or something archives related).

Australian library education is...well mine is shorter, I think (a year, after three years of undergrad) and is a Diploma/Masters course. Also I am doing an information management course (mostly because in my state, the more library/archives focused course is not offered, so while it is accredited I am mostly taking classes focused more on IT students)

[heartequals]

Oh gosh, this is a wonderful post. I scored a student job in my college's library working in preservation/conservation and I've been tossing around the idea of grad school for the past several months. This is such a useful, wonderful thing to read, thank you so much.

[jenett]

Yay! Thanks for the appreciation.

I really wanted to aim for not turning off anyone for whom it really was the right thing - just that people go into it with their eyes open, especially on the practical issues.

[elekdragon]

I need a librarian icon...

Or because you like having a large chunk of time off in the summer. Or because you like books.

This this this omg THIS. I can't tell you how many apps I get from people who say "I love books, so I figure working in a library would give me time with books." As an academic librarian, I get no time for books on the job unless it is part of either a class I'm doing or a research project I'm overseeing. And I never get the summer off--even when I worked in public libraries, I was working all summer. Only very specific jobs let you have the summer off.

There's the stereotype of the librarian being alone in the nice quiet library doing their thing. This is not the reality for most libraries. [...] A lot of librarians are introverts. A lot of library jobs expect them not to be, these days.

*draws stars around this* In some libraries I've worked in, they expected cataloguers to outgoing, work at the reference desk, set up parties... People who went to library school expecting to work in tech services with cataloguing titles are suddenly thrust into the spotlight. I've seen people who were not hired because they weren't considered outgoing enough to be a cataloguer.

I spend a great deal of my time in front of people, talking to people, working with people. I'm actually not naturally extroverted, but after being on the ref desk a goodly number of years, I learned from my job how to be outgoing, ask people if they need help, constantly be on my feet answering questions. I go to meetings, I give presentations, I talk to classes, I talk to faculty, I talk to my student workers... Depending on the job, you are absolutely expected to be working constantly with people. When I'm in my office, I'm often fielding email questions, planning out a class session, answering the phone, directing traffic, etc. I'm probably more involved with people at a small university than I was at a huge university library.

Likewise, see how many of your projects you can build that turn into something tangible you can show people who might want to hire you. Basic web skills don't hurt. Being able to link to a portfolio of work doesn't hurt. Being able to talk knowledgeably about a particular interest, or point to relevant publications doesn't hurt.

YES!!!! So many times yes yes yes yes yes! Web skills, another language or two (especially if you're a cataloguer), a masters in another subject area if you're going into research university libraries, academic publishing experience, teaching experience, video editing and equipment experience, creative writing experience, legal studies experience... there are so many things beyond just Library School that can go into helping you land a good job.

A lot of libraries are looking for those cross-over skills so you can be grown into a particular need. You may be interviewing for one position, but because of your skills in another area, you might be hired in a different position. Any kind of skill that is "non-traditional" can become part of your library job. It makes you look good. And libraries are looking for people who can come in and teach these skills to other people--video editing, sms reference, chatting, graphic design, etc.

Awesome post. :)

[jenett]

I'm a school librarian, so we do legitimately get summers off - that said, we also get paid less because it's a 9 month contract not a 12 month one. Trade-offs. (I anticipate another post about some of this stuff in the near future, actually.)

On the introversion: I think the thing that saves me, and I suspect saves a lot of other people more on the introvert side of the line, is that most of what I do is one-on-one conversations. And I work in a small enough school that at least half those conversations are with people I have an ongoing interaction with (teachers, students we see regularly, etc.)

It's just lots of one-on-one conversations in a row. (Presentations are different, but I actually recharge from those, so they're not as difficult as say, a 5 person meeting.)

And on the skills - I'd say that any strong Web 2.0 skills are also hugely useful these days, even if you're not looking for a tech librarian job. I've gone a long way on 'able to pick up tech stuff fast and reliably' too, which is partly practice, and partly a learned skill, and partly inclination )and the first two parts can substitute a lot for the last one.)

[maewyn]

Coming in late, but thanks for this! I think about being a librarian off and on (usually as a refuge, when some other part of my career isn't going well). You've given me lots of questions to answer for myself if I ever want to take those idle thoughts more seriously. (Step #1 is Find Some Job In An Actual Library. It may be difficult, but it's better than trying to go to library school and THEN thinking about jobs etc.)

[jenett]

Glad ot help! (Also, realise you're close to one of the top library schools in the country - Ann Arbor) I suspect it's done similar things to the (relatively local) job market as is true in the Twin Cities and Madison: there are lot of underemployed MLIS holders out there, which can make getting a relevant job harder.

Not impossible. Just trickier.

(Congrats on the move, btw!)

[krinndnz]

I don't hold out much likelihood that I'll become a librarian, but this was a neat article to read anyhow, because I plan on spending time interacting with librarians.

[faithinseeds]

Thanks for this informative article. I really want to become a librarian/archivist, and have been accepted into a couple of fairly pricey private schools, and am currently trying to decide on whether to defer for a year, or go ahead taking out a ton of loans. Ideally, I would love to go on, and get my doctorate in library science, then come back to my home state, and convince the adminstration there to start a library science program with the state university. My primary interest is how to help people find information in the quickest way possible, although with my history background, preserving history for future generations is also one of my passions. But yeah, it's made me do some serious, common sense, thinking for my plans for next fall...

[jenett]

Glad it's helpful. On the loans - it really is tricky right now. One thing you might do is talk to the school and get real hard numbers on employment rates for recent graduates - I'd look as much as 10 years back, because the last couple of years have been hit by the other economic issues.

I do know people who went to school full time and did it fast (it's possible but not very common in the program I went to, and two friends did it with Simmons) but I'm sort of conflicted about which way is a better idea.

(My older sister, who's a library science professor, does say that there's still a demand for people interested in teaching the subject, and I keep eyeing that one really thoughtfully.)

[faithinseeds]

Quick question, as I am about to head off to bed: do you have school media certification? I don't seem to recall you having mentioned it.If so, what were your classes like? At my Simmons interview, I was informed that it was mostly going to be classes about grammer and I would have to take the Mass. teaching exam in order to work at a school. Did you have to become licensed as a teacher? I think it is differen because you work at a private school but still. I'll respond to the rest in the AM, when my brain is more awake.

[jenett]

Nope, no school license here: St. Kate's didn't really offer it when I started, and when I went back, it would have meant an additional 6 classes or so, and wasn't worth it to me.

(In general: public schools require it, independent schools want licensing *or* the MLIS, and seem to generally prefer the MLIS, and Catholic schools seem to fall somewhere down the middle: some want the school license, some want the MLIS, some don't care which. Charter schools also seem to be variable, at least around here.)

[rin_x_x.livejournal.com]

(This is Rin from TC. :) )

Just wanted to say thank you for posting this. I'm doing some research for an informational interview I have to go to as part of my application process to get into my Library and Information Technology course. I'm not sure how exactly it will be helpful, since technically I won't be a librarian (nor will it be a BA or Masters degree), just a librarian technician... which is according to them a level below an actual librarian? Or something to that effect.

It does make me kind of nervous on if I chose the right thing to do. Some of my reasons were the ones you posted here to NOT do it for (quiet, secluded, like books, just because I think it would be a good fit), and it does make me seriously re-consider if this is what I should do. I still have the opportunity to pull out at this point, and I'll come back to it after I go to the interview.. but I still think at this point I could do it. I would have to work more on my "people skills" as it were (I'm a horribly introvert and get nervous talking to people, but it's one of those things where if I do it regularly, I get better at it), but if I had to see myself doing /something/ with my life, I could see it being in a library. I suppose it's because I'm still getting used to the idea of looking at this as a career, rather than "just another job", and my brain is still trying to make sense of it.

I'm also looking into seeing if I wanted to continue an education with library sciences somewhere down the road, like with a higher degree, but that's well... down the road. :)

[jenett]

Honestly, I'd suggest the same thing I do for people interested in the MLIS - before investing a lot of time or money in education, spend some time volunteering in a library.

I'd also ask some very careful questions about job prospects - a number of formerly MLIS-requiring jobs are now going to people who don't have the MLIS degree.

But in the bits of the US I'm aware of, a library technician certificate won't help much (you're just as likely to get hired with a BA in something different, as long as you can demonstrate you can do the work), and a degree in something else and library experience (whether as a volunteer or employee) will help even more. (That said, this is partly because there mostly aren't very common or very good library technician programs: some libraries essentially create their own.)

[jellocat]

I am about to apply for library school in a couple months. This is something I've wanted to do for several years now and now I find myself in a position where I can go for it. I've worked in public libraries since 2006 and cannot think of anywhere else I would like to be. Your blog entry here has helped reassure me on a lot of things and I just really want to thank you for writing it.

You originally wrote this blog entry 3 years ago and I was curious as what your outlook on the field is now.

[jenett]

You're very welcome!

Since I wrote that, I left that job (a few months after writing this post, in fact) - they did not renew my contact: complicated story involving major health issues and a bunch of other pieces. I spent a year out of work and job hunting, and have now been the IT librarian at a small college campus for the past 18 months.

I think the job market still sucks. I think it sucks less for people with substantial work experience in libraries, and for people who are very careful about building a variety of skills through their academic program as possible.

I think even more strongly than I did that tech skills are a big way to make yourself more attractive. (I sort of hate this, because I think the people skills are an even more important part of being a good librarian. But I look at the job ads that come across places I'm passively reading and... the more variety of tech comfort and moderate skill you have, the more options you have.) Being willing to move is also a big thing.

During my hunt, I was aiming for the upper Midwest (where I was living), New England (where I grew up), and a bunch of other points - but I looked at jobs even outside my geographic range when they were a good fit for me jobwise. I'm *really* glad I ended up in Maine (and in fact, my best ratio of job interviews was 'places in New England that are not Boston Metro' - there's a lot of small libraries and small colleges in New England that need librarians, and anywhere more than commuting distance from a sizeable city has a much smaller applicant pool.) It's definitely not for everyone, but I love my life now, and I generally love my job a lot.

Hmm. My job now involves a lot less public interaction - I work in an office on the 3rd floor - so I'm basically only around most of our patrons during my reference shifts (3ish hours a week), if I get called down to help with something, alternate week evenings once a week (we have an alternating evening shift schedule) and the occasional Saturday. I miss patron interaction a lot some days, and I really miss getting to work with the same really awesome teenagers for several years. But I don't miss having someone ask me questions every 3-5 minutes when I was working on larger projects, and I like being able to have headphones on sometimes, and being able to not be in public all the time.

I think that comes out to "Basically the same, but be really really sure you want to do it, and if you want to stay in the area where you are now, do everything you can to learn about your actual realistic options for upward job mobility." Those are very different in a large public library system than a small one, and so on. And very different somewhere there's a bunch of possible libraries from somewhere there's very few.

[jellocat]

Yes, tech skills are a plus now more than ever. I am quite comfortable with computers myself. I've even built a few! I am always eager to learn new software and catch on quite quickly.

I do live in an area with about 10 different public library systems of varying sizes within an one hour radius, but I do realize the likelihood of any of them having an opening about two years from now is small so I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably have to move. I would like to stay in my home state though if possible, if only to make family visits easier.

I must say there seems to be a lot of negativity about the field right now, especially on the Internet. I'm not referring to what you have wrote, you are just being realistic. I talking about far more negative attitudes and I can't help but wonder if it is just the Internet magnifying this or I'm just happening upon only these negative people? :/

It has made me somewhat uncertain about the path I am about to take but I have also received a lot of encouragement from current and former co-workers in the field. I just want to do something that I know will enjoy doing for years to come and I feel strongly that this it. Even if I'm still just a littttle nervous about the whole thing heh. :)

Thanks for talking to me, I appreciate it. :D

[jenett]

Oh, excellent question. (Also, I have a professional blog I do not link to this identity in public-searchable spaces, but if you'd like to email me or PM me or whatever, I'd be glad to share. It has more detail about my job hunting experience, in particular.)

Anyway. I think there is a lot of negativity. I think it's coming from a bunch of places.

Let me see how to say the next bit diplomatically: a bunch of the people I see complaining about this most bitterly are people where, when I read their comments, I wonder how much of that is coming through in their cover letters. Desperation is not attractive to employers. Bitterness is even less so.

Sometimes it's people who don't seem to have recognised the realities of the field in advance, or have done their due diligence research (and if there's any field where you should be able to expect people to check out the details before committing, it really ought to be librarianship.)

Sometimes it's that they clearly have stuff out on the public 'web that makes it really clear that they're desperate. Or that their communication skills are not that great. Not all hiring librarians Google candidates (some places don't allow it) but again, it's sort of the thing you kind of expect people to consider doing, at least in simple terms.

Sometimes it's people who have clearly painted themselves into a corner (limited speciality/experience, but who also don't want to move. I *think* it's probably possible to find a job in one of the following [preferred type of library] [preferred type of work within libraries] [preferred location as long as it has a reasonable number of jobs]. But if you start insisting on two or even three of those at once, you may have a very very long wait.

People who - like me (because my pre-MLIS experience was in a school library, and school libraries do a little of everything - I did cataloging, I did ILL, I did circulation, I did reference instruction and help, I did technology support, I did displays, I did online resources, I managed websites....) can go a couple of different directions within the field, or who are open to more than one kind of library, or more than one geographic area, have better luck.

(And then, well - I did something like 150 applications for 25ish phone interviews, and 6 in person interviews, over the course of a year. My stats are actually very respectable within the field, but it's hard to say that that's easy or simple or anything else.)

I also think a lot of people are both lousy at writing cover letters/resumes and don't realise they are: I read Ask A Manager (http://askamanager.com) regularly, and she talks about this a lot. Once I started following her advice for cover letters and resumes, the number of interviews I got went up sharply - and interestingly, it went up sharply for jobs I wasn't sure I was going to be a top candidate for. (Including, interestingly, the one that hired me.) Her tips helped me get a lot better at putting the stuff that would make me (legitimately - she doesn't do the sleazy stuff) stand out, and turn it from "Oh, yes, another cover letter" into "We really want to talk to this one."

But again, that's people doing due diligence for the research. Your library school isn't going to do it for you. Your library organisations aren't going to do it for you. You've got to do it for yourself.

In larger terms, I think that the field's in a very challenging place right now. Libraries who are hiring are especially looking for people who seem like they can roll with that. And there's *so* many candidates that if someone gets a whiff of "This person is going to gripe if we change how we do things." that it's really easy to find someone who seems less likely to do that.