Things I would tell someone applying to library school
(Thanks to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.)
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.)
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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.)