Recommend good places for a librarian to live and work.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hello all,

I am graduating with my Master’s degree in Library and Information Science in a month, but I’ve been applying to librarian positions for the last several months and not having any luck yet. The job market is really bad in Florida, especially after a recent vote in favor of a tax cut resulted in budget cuts and hiring freezes for public services like libraries and universities. As much as I’d like to stay in the Orlando area, I am slowly widening my search and applying to jobs elsewhere, out of state.

I have a good resume and I can usually charm anyone once I make it to an interview stage (or win them over with my desperation and earnestness), so now I just need to concentrate on some new markets to check out. Ideally I’d like to get hired and relocate by the end of the summer, but beggars can’t be choosers. And with that in mind…

Places I definitely don’t want to end up:
South Florida (I grew up in Miami and hate it down there).
Anywhere that is very cold (eliminating most of the Midwest and Northeast).
Anywhere extremely rural, remote, and/or desolate.

Strong selling points:
Mid-size cities and college towns, ideally in the South, Southwest, and West Coast states.
Good public library systems, colleges and universities, law schools, and law firms to work for.
Affordable cost of living, decent economy, low crime.
Places with good restaurants, bookstores, movie theaters, coffeehouses, live music venues, culture.
Safe, dependable public transportation would be nice, but not a deal-breaker.
Relatively enlightened communities with young populations, ideally places where libraries and learning and tolerance would be appreciated.

Areas that interest me:
Raleigh, North Carolina (and the rest of the Research Triangle: Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham)
Austin and San Antonio, Texas
Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada
Seattle, Washington
Portland, Oregon
Pretty much anywhere in California (although I worry the high cost of living would make it an impossibility to realistically relocate there).
Athens and Savannah, Georgia
Anywhere in Arizona and New Mexico that might fit my above criteria

What can people tell me about those places, and what am I missing?

2

Don’t forget Charlotte, NC. It’s the up-and-coming place to be for young people these days.

3

I understand that it’s extremely difficult to get a librarian job in Austin. We have a Library science program here and many grads want to stay so there’s lots and lots of competition. My friends with degrees in Library Science either move away or are not working in their fields. I would expect that you may have similar problems in other cities with large universities.

4

How are you defining “Northeast”? The Baltimore-Washington area gets snow in winter but is not otherwise “very cold,” and meets all your other criteria in spades (except for “low crime,” but the high-crime areas are relatively easy to avoid).

5

Congratulations, Lou! It’s good to see a fellow classmate finishing up their studies; I seem to be one of the few who are doing it full time, so it seems like I’m breezing past without a moment to pause.

Are you on the ALISjobs list? If not, you should. There’s tons of jobs through that. Also check out USAjobs.gov; it’s the government’s job site, so you’ll likely find something on there that might pique your interest. From what I’ve seen on Floridalibraryjobs.org, Florida State is hiring, as are Bethune-Cookman, Barry University, and Orange County Public Libraries. (Though, from our combined experiences with the last one, I’d avoid it.) There are a handful of jobs in the Orlando region, but branching out a bit more should give you better results. I’m going to be in your situation about a year from now, so I understand what you’re going through. Best of luck!

ETA: Arizona has a statewide hiring freeze for gov’t jobs, including libraries. I’d scratch it off your list until it gets lifted, which may not be for at least a year.

6

http://www.lisjobs.com/ is pretty good for job hunting too.

7

Hate to ask you this, because I know you were fairly well sick of the law when you changed careers, but do you have any interest in working in a law library? I’m thinking more along the lines of a large County law library, not one in a private firm. You could leverage your JD as well; there aren’t many dual MLS/JDs running around.

8

The Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area is excellent. I think you’d like it, based on your criteria. You will face competition from the UNC-CH library school grads. On the other hand, a lot of people want variety on their staff, so it is still worth a try. UNC, NC State, and Duke are the main academic libraries. Some RTP organizations/companies have corporate libraries. Wake County (Raleigh) has a good-sized public library system. They are very “popular” in their orientation–get a bajilion copies of all the best sellers, then start selling them off after a year or two. Lately they have gotten very, very forgiving about fines. They are not a “hard-ass” library system, IME. Durham may have more opportunities to work with underserved communities.

Good luck on your search!

9

Thank you for all the information, especially the bad news about Arizona. I’ve been on ALISjobs since enrolling in our program, and actually found out about both of my current part-time jobs through it, as well as my paid internship with OCLS in 2006 (not that they return my calls now, of course…). I check FloridaLibraryJobs.org daily and probably already applied to most of the openings you mentioned. It’s hard to keep track sometimes. I’m REALLY hoping Barry comes through, though. I spoke to one of their bigwigs on the phone back in mid-February and they still haven’t made a decision yet.

Oh, by the way, I’m DYING in our class (which I wouldn’t have picked for my final class if I had known how labor-intensive it would be). I hope you’re having more fun than I am!

Thank you! I’ll add that to my daily job-searching routine. Oh, I’ve always thought of myself as the “Graphic Novel Librarian,” even though I haven’t had a chance to work in YA materials or collection development and push my favorites yet.

Believe me, that’s my big gimmick. I work days as a law firm librarian, splitting my time between eight firms, but it is still part-time work and I’d like something more stable and permanent (with benefits). I actually won two big scholarships in 2007 for being a badass JD/MLS (or maybe just because there aren’t that many of us, and I went to the trouble of applying for them). I’d love to be a full-time law librarian somewhere… anywhere… but I’d be just as cool with academic or public work.

I have a good friend in Raleigh, so that’s a major selling point for me, and he is making it seem like the promised land. I have an application in at NC State right now, and I’m hoping for the best.

Thanks to all for your advice and support so far!

10

And I forgot to congratulate you on your degree. Welcome to the brotherhood (and sisterhood).

Though I haven’t practiced in the field for years…

11

Thank you! What do you do now, do you mind if I ask?

12

BBVL,
<joking> Any chance you want to move to NE Ohio and fill one of the two full-time jobs that I do part-time while I work at another full-time job? </joking>

My primary job is consumer health in a hospital library and I work at two small colleges.

Really, there are still a surprising number of jobs here, despite the large amount of MLIS grads in the area. But it’s definitely cold!

13

OCLS is interesting, especially from my perspective working in the neighboring county; they work so differently that I’m probably not going to rely much on applying there. I don’t necessarily think it’d be a good fit for me, even though they do make good money (for public) and reasonably good benefits. I just can’t see myself working well for very long in the Wal-Mart of public libraries.

I’m not doing so bad in that class, but our group project isn’t finalized yet. We’re all slackers with great ideas, though, so it’s not so bad. Those reference questions are killer at times, though, and our prof. is one of those “lots of work, lots of reward” types. I don’t mind so much, though; I got a few of those as an undergrad in Anthropology and Museum Studies classes.

I’m going to be interviewing for a second part time job that I found on ALISjobs; I figure that a little more money coming in and not having to arrange for an internship in an academic library would be a good thing. If only it weren’t in Lakeland; it’s going to eat up a bit of my potential paycheck just to drive out there, but it’s (strangely enough) an easier and quicker drive than most of OCLS’s branches.

14

If you would consider those, you should also consider Columbia, Charleston, and Greenville, SC.

15

I tried to talk him into it earlier, but nooooo. Mr. Snobby Pants has something about wearing shoes.

16

Well, lah-di-dah.

:slight_smile:

17

What about good places for librarians in the Rocky Mountain states? I’m graduating with an MLS next month (concentrating in cataloging) and want to move out of Boston tout de suite.

18

BBVL, here is the link to the Nevada Library Association website. They have some full-time positions posted, but not sure if any are exactly what you are looking for.

Las Vegas is definitely a change from Florida (weather wise) and public transportation is, well, pretty much limited to buses and cabs. If you are wanting to avoid cold winters… Reno gets really frickin’ cold.

19

Hey, I’m not a snob! I just wanted to focus on areas I was either somewhat familiar with, or where I knew people, or places my girlfriend and I were specifically interested in. I’ve actually been to Charleston and loved it, but I just don’t know anything about Columbia. I certainly didn’t mean any offense.

20

:slight_smile: Hey, it’s all right. I forgive you.