I’ve been thinking about careers for a while. One that particularly interests me is being a librarian. I have a few questions…
What is the best course of study? From googling I gather library science is a post graduate thing. What do you major in before that?
Is it a hard field to break into?
Do you like your job? Why or why not?
I’d greatly appreciate any feedback.
I am not a librarian, so I can only give you a few vague ideas. One of my best friends is working on getting a Masters (?) and is already working in a library part time while going to school.
She got her Bachelor’s in Art History. She’s apparently taken many library science classes already, but I don’t know much about that.
I would guess not, depending on where you live (my friend lives in San Diego, and before that, a suburb of Los Angeles). As far as I can tell, it doesn’t seem to be too hard of a field to break into. But then again, my friend has “librarian” written all over her (in a good way) so I’m sure she’d always have a job, as long as any were available.
She likes her current job, though some of the bosses she’s had in the past were idiots. She’s worked in business and medical libraries in the past. Kinda dull, she said, but I think she found it profoundly preferable to other kinds of jobs. One of the big “highlights” (I mean that sarcastically) at one boring job was when she accidentally caught her boss looking at porn on the Internet. She also said that she always got the oldest and cheapest equipment to use. But hey—she was the “low woman on the totem pole” at that time, so what did she expect?
I know that during her studies over the last few years, she had to buy “Virtual PC” for her Mac, because a certain class required the use of a Windows-only program. Not that this was a big issue (Virtual PC worked fine) but be prepared to get Virtual PC if you are Mac user.
That’s all I can offer up to you. It’s all second-hand, too. Woo hoo. Hope this helps, at least a little.
My mom’s a librarian at a state university, so I can give you a few ideas.
My understanding is that you can major in anything for your undergraduate study. It would be helpful to major in a relevant subject if you want to be a “specialty” librarian, like a science librarian or in government documents at a university.
If you’re planning to work in a local library, often the only thing you will need after college is your MLS. At the university level, my mom says they typically require an MLS plus a second masters’s in a specialized field of study, like history or chemistry or math, because most librarians at that level have a specialty. It’s considered very hard to get hired at the university level without that second masters’s, though it happens.
If you have more questions, I’d be happy to try to answer them.
One bad sign: our office opened up a half-time clerical position recently. Two of the applicants had Masters degrees in Library Science.
Doesn’t bode well for finding a job in your field. Of course, this is only anecdotal.
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I have an undergraduate degree in history and I’m in my first semester in the school of Information Science - it’s still library and information science, just named differently.
2. Is it a hard field to break into?
It depends, really, on what aspect you are going into. During orientation back in August, they had everyone talk about what aspect they wanted to go into. Children’s librarian/School media specialist was probably the biggest, followed by academic librarianship. But there are a lot of different jobs out there that are ideal for information professionals - if you focus on the wider possibilities.
Then too, I know that Tennessee has a shortage of school media specialists. I don’t know about other states though.
I’m currently more interested in the concepts involved with corporate librarianship - particularly enterprise risk management and knowledge management.
3. Do you like your job? Why or why not?
I can’t speak to this - I spent a long time as an internal auditor before coming back to school. But I like my classes, if that helps.
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I had my BA and MA in English Lit before I got my MLS. The people I went to school with had their undergrad degrees and other Masters in a variety of fields, mostly in the liberal arts, but not exclusively so. Some had come from a computer programming background. Library work is very computer oriented these days.
I don’t know if the MA has made a difference in my line of work. When I went for my MLS, I had planned to go into archival work, book preservation, and that’s not what I wound up doing at all.
That may depend on where you are. I spent 6 months after graduation looking for a library-related job in the Denver area without success. Then I came to Washington DC to spend a week with a friend and interviewed for a job in a medical library in Georgetown while I was in town. On the day I should have gone home, I started working (and went back to Denver to get my stuff a few weeks later).
The DC area is especially good for library jobs because there are so many of them in this area: every university, every law firm, every government agency has its own library. I’ve been here nearly ten years and have changed jobs several times, and never been out of work for very long. The worst was when I quit a job I hated, and it was almost a month before I found the job that led to the job I’m working in now.
I can only speak generally from my own experience, but once you get a bit of practical experience in library work, you can advance fairly quickly. The first jobs I had were as library assistant or technical staff, but after a couple of years, I got a job as reference librarian in a university, and then went on after that to be the head librarian and website manager at a non-profit organization.
Yes. I’ve liked most of the jobs I’ve had. Even the job I hated enough to quit had more to do with personality conflicts with my boss than the work itself.
Right now, however, I’m not in a library; I manage a website for a government agency. But the library is just across the hall and I’m kind of connected to them–we’re all “information disseminators”–and I’ll help out whenever they’re short-staffed.
Undergraduate major is totally irrelevant. Mine was English. I’ve worked with librarians who had undergrad majors in psychology, history, elementary education … and a bunch of various stuff I’ve forgotten.
Not in my experience. You make it easier for yourself if you can be flexible. Be aware of the different types of librarianship: public, school media center, academic, and special (everything else :)). The more focused in on any one of those you are, the harder you make things for yourself. In my case, I knew not only that I wanted to be a public librarian, but also which library I wanted to work at. I interviewed at a total of two libraries I had no intention of working for before I got my interview at the one I did want. I didn’t get the job, so I got a little more flexible and looked at some systems I had deliberately ignored to that point. I got the next job I interviewed for. Now, part of my good fortune was the skill set I brought to the table. I had 4 years experience in public libraries as well as another 3 years experience troubleshooting PCs and Windows problems; as it happens, the job I got needed somebody who had those qualifications exactly, and the MLIS part was just gravy. However, it got me in the door and just over a year ago I was able to dump the tech support job and become a “real” librarian. Hosannah!
Also, not all MLS (or, as my school called it MLIS) graduates become librarians. Because of my background in computers, I briefly considered going into the automation industry side of things. I had also thought seriously about becoming a cataloger for OCLC or one of the big jobber houses (Baker & Taylor, IIRC), but I didn’t want to move to Tennessee.
Love it. It has moments, of course, but the older you get, the more you realize that every job will have moments. If you like helping people find things and can stand the fact that you will answer the same question approximately 500,000 times a week, you can succeed as a librarian.
Good luck!
I am totally ignorant about Librarians. So forgive me if these following questions seem…well…ignorant.
Why do you need a degree to be a Librarian?
What do you do as a Librarian?
How much (roughly) do Librarians get paid?
[slight hijack]
For some reason most people think reference librarian whenever they hear the word librarian. Don’t misunderstand me! Reference librarians are the salt of the Earth, but they would be nothing without the friendly cataloguers.
[/slight hijack]
What about Collections Development? Do you need a lot of field experience before you can land a job in this department? What about Rare Books, say for a college?
(I worked in my college library – Acquisitions – for 3 years as an undergrad, and these two areas looked the most interesting.)
Because libraries want to be sure they hire competent professional staff who have completed a standarized core curriculum designed to provide a broad-ranging yet specialized set of skills including, but not limited to answering reference questions (which involves knowing how to interview the patron to elicit from him/her what the actual information need is, which resources are best suited and most reliable, and how to introduce the patron to those resources), understanding the cataloging system being used, management skills, and collection development.
Job duties vary greatly by type of library. As a public librarian, I mostly sign people on to Internet computers and tell them where the bathroom is. 
Seriously, as a reference librarian (my system actually calls me an “information specialist”), I help people find what they came in looking for. Sometimes this means (as was the case last night) knowing (or being able to find out) that Dick Estell has a list of all the books he has read on Radio Reader so that I can help someone find a book to read that they heard part of two years ago and were interested in reading the rest of.
According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, median salary in 2000 was $41,700, with the lowest 10% earning less than $25,030 and the highest 10% earning more than $62,990.
Honest, I’ll stop monopolizing the conversation. There are lots of other folks here who have much more experience and expertise than I have.
No, but you need a lot of experience to be good at it. The thing about collections development is, it’s the same everywhere you go because it’s different everywhere you go. The needs of the community your library is serving are going to be different from the needs of the community the library one town over is serving. It takes experience in a system to be able to know what will work and what will be needed.
I have never known a system that didn’t consider Rare Books to be a very highly specialized job requiring the most of its staff. Basically, you are expected to know what’s in every book and where it is in that book. Presumably, this is to minimize the amount of flipping through those delicate old bindings.
KneadToKnow, I like the information - I actually hit the reply button to Meatros’ post, then realized that I am so new to the field that I couldn’t answer it accurately. So, thanks.
Cool, thanks for stomping out some ignorance.
Thanks for the great info so far! I’ve been thinking about my future for a while now, and this is the one idea that has excited me the most. I love books and I love helping people (I can handle a computer too.) I’d be the most interested in a public or college library position, but anything as long as its interesting. I spent 5 years in retail before I quit to stay home with the kids, and I desparately do not want to go back to a soul-sucking, dead-end job.
One more thing I’d like input on, is it too late to start for me? I’m in my late 20’s, and I’ve never taken a single college course. I should be able to start taking classes next year, and I’m going to CLEP as many as possible. I’m just afraid I’ll be 40 before I’m done with school.
LunaSea, I’m 29 and just started this fall. I expect to be 30 when I’m done (it’s a 2 year program), and I certainly don’t think it’s too late!
And I didn’t see until after I posted that you haven’t taken any college courses yet.
I still don’t think it’s too late - my former boss started college at 35 or so (once all her kids were in high school, I think).
You’ll be more together for wanting to be there, really. Also, I’ve found it means a lot more when you are paying for it yourself (or will be over the next 10 years if you do student loans!)
Also, if you’re not in a town with a MLIS program once you get to that point, a lot of schools are doing distance education classes - here at UT, there were more DE students than on campus students beginning the program this fall.
Public librarian chiming in.
You can get an undergraduate degree in anything. I’ve met a wide variety of people with BAs in all sorts of topics. And even some with BS degrees.
The MLS is a necessary evil. It’s not a very exciting program in my opinion. But you’ve got to do it. If it’s any consolation, the classes are not overwhelmingly difficult. Besides, the types of classes offered now are so different from what I took back in the old days of 1988.
If you want to go into public librarianship, you should be able to find a job quite easily. Most systems have many openings. Of course, you may not wish to be a children’s or a YA librarian. If you do, you’re set. You will be snapped and wined and dined and recruited to no end. And if you’re not a total idiot, you will be promoted very quickly. Children and YA positions are quite visible positions in a library and the people that run libraries like seeing kids in reading programs and such. Gets TV and newspaper people to the library.
If you want to work on the adult side, there will be a little more competition. Also, a lot depends upon where you work. If you work in a small library, you better like the people you work with. Or else you will be in for a miserable 40 hours/week.
If you want to work in an academic library, the competition is quite fierce. Those jobs are highly prized (although for the life of me I can’t figure out why). Academic librarians, in addition to doing reference work, also have to teach classes and undertake research and get published and all sorts of crap like that. Why do that when you can waste company time on the Internet.
And academic librarians don’t get paid much more (often less) than public librarians. YMMV.
One thing about public libraries you need to remember is the word PUBLIC. Pretty much anybody can walk into a public library. And pretty much everybody does. Many of these people have no homes. Or they have no jobs. Or they are kids whose parents dump them there.
You may have to deal with: patrons pulling knives on each other to figure out who is entitled to a particular public Internet station, or just resorting to fists. The latter happened today and the former happened Saturday. Or you may find people having sex in the public restroom. Or shooting heroin. Or using books and furniture as TP.
I mention these in the spirit of full disclosure. There is a certain image that people have of libraries. They think they are nice quiet contemplative places.
After 14 years of working in them, I haven’t found one that is like that.
This is not to say I don’t like my job. I am well remunerated. I get to learn new stuff every day. I get to learn about computer technology and I get some really fast Internet access for free whenever I want it.
And as a guy, I can say that being a librarian is an instant way to get an attractive woman to run far, far, far away from you. One day that woman won’t be able to run away fast enough and then I’ll settle down and get married.
With this great wealth of information, I have a somewhat-related question.
Does anyone here have any experience with distance learning, specifially for an MLS? Is there anything missing by interacting with people online instead of in a classroom?
I don’t think you’re anywhere near “over the hill” for becoming a librarian.
Case in point: my mom graduated college at 22, but didn’t earn her MLS until age 30. She worked a few years, then took 20 years off from the job force to have kids.
The first job she was hired to after her 20 year lay-off from the work force was a university library professorship. She didn’t even have the second masters’s degree that is usually required (though she did have a paralegal certificate and some very attractive work history as a teacher and corporate librarian from her pre-kid days).
At age 55, she started working towards tenure.
If you’re not even 30 yet, I don’t think age should be a worry for you.