Thus far...

I'm really good at planning. When an idea pops into my head, I start charting the course to bring it to life. Lists, diagrams, budgets, daydreaming—it all goes into my planning process. Library school took two years to map out, and the prep to travel to Ireland on my own was at least eighteen months. (I know. Who has that kind of time, right? Shouldn't I just be living life, instead planning it?) Most of the time, my planning will bear fruit. Then there are the ideas that float back and forth through my brain but never really stick. Plans form, but then fizzle out before they really have a chance to take shape.

A timely example is the intent to get experience in the field during my tenure at grad school. I knew going in that I didn't have the experience that would help me to get that job at the end of the road. A semester on the circulation desk during my undergrad years nearly a decade before adds only a blip to my portfolio (I’m still in shock that it has been almost ten years since I graduated from college. I swear my ten-year high school reunion was just last summer.). So I started to envision getting involved. I would join all of the student chapters of professional organizations, volunteer at libraries and historical societies, and make a general nuisance of myself. Unfortunately, I let a full time job and school work get in the way of all of that.

What work and school also curtailed was the early start on the job hunt. That had been another of my more elusive ideas that escaped my planning it into the ground. All I really did was think about future employment, tinker lazily with my resume, glance through the job opportunities on the listserv, and comfort myself with the fact that I had time. I mean, I didn’t want to start applying for jobs months or a year before I graduated, especially since I wanted to maintain the flexibility to relocate, which I wouldn’t be able to do if I got a job before I completed the program. There was also a very big mental block: That knee-jerk resistance to change. I’ve lived in the same place all of my life, with the same people, in the same insulated world I’ve made for myself. And while I’m chomping at the bit to make a change, it still doesn’t alter the fact that I’m terrified. We all know that fear is immobilizing.

And immobile I am, several months post-graduation. I still have full time employment, which makes me a very lucky woman, as many others can’t say the same as they look for a job. It may not be in my chosen profession, but it pays the bills and lessens the urgency that would otherwise propel me further into the search. I have applied to—wait for it—five positions. With the exception of one in the southeast, I seem to be directing my interest westward. One public, one academic, and the rest archival, I have made my selections carefully. I don’t know if it’s because I am currently employed, but I don’t see the value in playing the numbers game (which is how I feel about dating and probably why I’m terminally single). It's hard to keep your information straight when you apply for 50+ jobs in a short amount of time. I also think it shows that you are less interested in contributing your skills and ideas to a specific organization than you are in just getting a job. I don’t want just any job that I am remotely qualified for; I want a job where I can and want to contribute to the mission of the institution. This is a career, into which I’m going to invest a lot of time and energy and knowledge. I know we all have to start somewhere, and I expect to start low on the totem pole. I just think that that totem pole needs to be relevant to my career goals. So I look for archival processing gigs and digitization projects, because those are my interests. This is my method for now, and it's too early to tell if it's working or not. If it doesn't work, I'll try that numbers game I'm so skeptical of, because I don't always (or ever, for that matter) have to be right.

Maybe I’m too picky. Well, I know I’m too picky.

And I'm open to suggestions.

Number Ten

I'm still not over his regeneration.

Photo from Ballistik Coffee Boy. License: Creative Commons Attribution.

He's pretty.

Library school lied to you

Libraries of the future are big news in the information field. Despite the fact that libraries have been using technology since computers were developed (while it extends much farther back, I can remember using the automated catalog and article database at my local branch at least fifteen to twenty years ago), the emergence of social media onto the library landscape has had tongues wagging for the last few years. Well, maybe that's the way it seems to me because I've been steeped in the issues surrounding the profession for the past two years.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that like anything else, libraries have to change with the times, and when libraries change so do the roles librarians play in the services they provide to patrons. I've seen that in the job ads I've scoured since October. Position titles like "systems librarian", "digital asset librarian", "web librarian", "metadata librarian", "e-archivist", "IT archivist", and "digital archivist" litter the listings. Jobs today require a whole new set of skills beyond that of the traditional public librarian I envisioned becoming when I first enrolled in library school.

So, my expectations were not met in that one regard. Certainly there were other surprises, but I made sure I knew what I was getting into before I applied to graduate programs. I read about the profession, I shadowed librarians and interviewed others, and I checked the job outlook. Even before I enrolled, news on the public library front was grim, with hours and staff being cut, and buildings shut down when millage taxes failed. (And it's still desperate times, as this recent blog post at librarian.net attests.) So, when the American Library Association recruited library school students with guarantees of jobs due to the mass retirement of current professionals, and information science programs used the same line, I took it all with a grain of salt. I knew I was taking the risk that I wouldn't find employment easily, but I knew this was the direction I wanted to go in and had faith.

I still have faith. Unfortunately, there are others who are feeling bitter and their faith is wavering. A recent thread on the listserv of the university I attended dived a little into the anger some students feel about being bilked out of thousands of dollars for what they consider to be a useless degree. I’m sorry they feel that way, and can even agree to some extent (the middle child in me insists that I see both sides), but I also feel that they're being harsh when they insist that library school lied to them. There are jobs out there, maybe not the kind of library jobs one might expect, and certainly not in the numbers that the ALA predicted, but they're there. But, the availability of jobs is never a sure thing, anyway. In the case that retirement would mean abundant jobs, the guarantee of a sure thing is even trickier. Retirement is an individual decision. There may be an average age to do so, but when an economy is depressed, the luxury to retire becomes a more remote possibility, and the positions needed filled become fewer. Second, educational institutions market their programs like any business does its product, and when doing so, it is not the best course of action to say, “Come to our school and you might get a job. On the other hand, you might not.” Finally, this is the information field, in which a primary skill is the ability to know how and where to find the right information and use it effectively. The ALA has one opinion and others, usually those in the trenches who have personal experience of what may be the real situation, have another, and they were and are expressing it. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that.

It takes time, money, effort, and determination to get through grad school. Most of us do it, not to put another degree on the wall, but to grow professionally. When that ability to grow is stunted by a poor economy, changing times, etc., it creates a very big stain of disillusionment. I haven’t reached that point, but I have worried. I can’t blame the school for it, though. The program I went through is very good, with instructors who root for you to succeed, and career help and mentorship programs of which I should have taken more advantage. The burden of success is more on my shoulders than theirs. Like I said, I knew what I was getting into. I just have hope anyway.

"Stay out of the shadows."

When the Doctor advised Donna Noble of this in "Silence in the Library" in series four of the 2005 revival of the long-running show Doctor Who, it was very good advice, indeed. (Rarely does the Doctor dole out anything but the best of recommendations.) The Vashta Nerada, "piranhas of the air", are flesh-eating swarms, microscopic in size, and resemble shadows. They make shadows very scary places to be.

However, for someone who considers herself socially awkward, shadows are only dangerous insomuch as they tempt her to stay hidden, to avoid the light, and the nerve-twisting, misery-inducing experience of social interaction. What this results in are days on end of inaction, of sitting on the couch watching Doctor Who marathons, of failing to grow and to express herself.

I certainly love my time spent with the Doctor and his companions in the impossible TARDIS. I also love to write, and I love to talk, both expressive qualities. But most of my great conversations are those I've had with myself, and most of my great prose has been for my eyes only. It's boring, this attempt at becoming an island.

So, I'll heed the good Doctor's advice and stay out of the shadows (I really don't want the flesh gnawed off my bones, you know). A blog may be no big step towards becoming more out-going and a go-getter, because with a laptop I'm still on that couch, but it's a step.

Finally, "Silence in the Library" and the second part of the episode, "The Forest of the Dead", are two of my favorite installments of Doctor Who. They feature a planet-sized library (presumably a public library), centuries in the future, that still has books. As a recent library school grad who has heard the assertion by some library users that libraries are nothing more than Internet cafes, and that books are obsolete because of the World Wide Web, it is lovely to see that, at least in episode writer Steven Moffat's mind, books are still integral parts of the libraries of the future.

Photo by elmindreda (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

Hiya

Let's face it: I'm late to the game here. Blogging is at least ten years old. For someone who enjoys writing so well, I'm surprised that I haven't ventured into virtual self-revelation before. On the other hand, considering I still drive a car with a cassette player, my idea of making mix tapes has only just advanced to ripping tracks off my CDs and burning CD-Rs (iPod? Huh?), and I still have a VCR and a large assortment of VHS tapes onto which I still record shows (how does that TiVo thing work again?), maybe it shouldn't surprise me. I really am a late adopter.

But, I do adopt, or adapt, sooner or later. Since enrolling in library school in 2007 that has shifted more to sooner. Everyday I learned about how libraries and archives implement technology to make their collections more accessible to users. The more I learned, the less intimidating it all was, and the more interested I became.

I am a traditionalist at heart. I prefer books to Kindle. I like to write in whole words and complete sentences (I have accepted Web acronyms into my vocabulary, but very reluctantly). And I still believe in the importance of actual, physical human contact. I'm just no longer a technophobe.

And this is just a long-winded way of saying, "Hi. Welcome to my blog."

I made the decision to finally start a blog after my first professional conference two weeks ago. It was held in Bloomington, IN for graduate students and recent professionals in the archival field, which was my concentration in library school. For the first time I had the opportunity to meet with my peers beyond the classroom. I certainly had a little envy for the recent graduates who had jobs, but I was more interested in what they were doing in those jobs, and I started to imagine myself contributing to similar projects. I left the conference with newfound motivation to become more than just someone with a degree. I have no prior experience and no participation in professional organizations, but I love the information field and frankly, I can't worry about the past. I can only move forward.

I want to keep that motivation moving me in that forward direction. Since my immediate future consists of the daunting task of finding that first job, it won't be easy. So I need to talk about it. I'll document the process, what I do right, what I do wrong, my misplaced optimism, my fantasies about the ideal job in the ideal location, and my down time when I just get too discouraged to submit another resume. I'll use this blog to brainstorm ideas for creating opportunities for experience, chew on archival and library issues in the news, and anything else that strikes my fancy. I'm eclectic, so that really could be anything, starting with the next post, which outlines a more personal reason for this blog.