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.
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Date: 2013-03-06 02:01 am (UTC)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.