A lot of good advice here. Let me add some of my own:
Your grades are important, but not as important as actual experience, so rack up those internships. Do anything that involves working in a library, even if it’s just clerical stuff. The magic words here are “foot in the door”. Get a reputation as someone who works and works and works and works herself to death and then works some more. You’ll get great stuff for your resume’ and references, and these will get you the job more than your grades.
HTML is a good start. Get into some more in-depth web programming as well. I’m currently learning basic PHP. Get comfortable around a database. Microsoft Access is a good intro. Once you get comfortable with MS Access, get a little SQL and boolean searching under your belt too. These look very sexy on a resume’. If you don’t already to make Excel spreadsheets, learn those too. Every library I’ve interned and worked in uses them quite a bit.
A BA is good. One thing they hammered us on in library school, however, is that sooner or later, you’re going to want to get a second masters. As far as I can tell, it can be in anything that interests you that you want to pursue in your library career. I’m thinking about making my second in Accounting.
It’s been noted above, but choose your location if you can do so. Go where the jobs are. As you saw in the second thread, my library career sort of ended before it began when I came to Boston. Remember what I said in above in my first point: Experience is everything.
Good job. You’ve made a great choice. There’s nothing quite like working in a library, and no matter how much I bitch about my current job, I will miss it when I’m gone, and no matter how much time I spend in corporate or how much I enjoy it, I will always have one eye on getting back into libraries when my prospects improve.
Good luck! My e-mail’s in my profile. If you have any more questions, I’d be happy to help.
So was that before or after the incident with the Chaos Demon?
I have never heard this. Everyone I talk to seems to agree “It’s all about the piece of paper (the MLS).” Any other schooling is gravy, but not important.
I’m in library school right now and love it. I am a bit concerned re employment, but I am concentrating on my school work now. I also work PT in a library (as a page, which ain’t much).
I didn’t know (and have not been told, ever) about getting a second master’s.
I am going to be 45 soon, 3 kids and a PT nursing job. If I can do this-so can you! You’ll meet lots of very nice people and lots of anal, OCD type people as well…just like in any specialty, I imagine.
I must confess: I’ve never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I can only guess that this is a reference to something that Rupert Giles did on that series. My handle here actually is not a reference to Rupert Giles.
But your screen name is Giles! And you’re a librarian! And this is the SDMB, where nearly everything is supposed to revolve around the Whedonverse!
I don’t know if my brain can handle this new information!
But if you care to know…
When Rupert Giles was in his late teens/early twenties, one of his last hurrahs before buttoning up and becoming a respected Watcher/Librarian, he and his friends summoned a Chaos Demon. It caused all sorts of havoc and branded all of the friends. Years later, as Buffy’s Watcher, the demon came back for Giles’ soul, but it was soundly defeated by Buffy.
I can’t speak to working in public or academic libraries (I’m one of those “special” librarians) but the more techie you get the more likely you are to get a job. Companies need folks to deal with databases and intranets and the like (a couple week ago at the SLA (Special Libraries Association) conference a librarian with National Geographic got an award for being tres innovative with the company’s intranet.
My MLIS is my second masters, the first is history (can you guess why I changed careers?) and is basically useless to further my career in this field. In my experience the librarians who need extra degrees are law librarians (many have JDs) and really technical librarians - it amazes me how many librarians work for chemical or high tech firms. The SLA has biomedical, chemistry, engineering, petroleum and pharmaceutical divisions.
Yep. I went to Univ of Texas and since no one ever wants to leave Austin there is a huge glut of overeducated library types who can’t find work. I left and got a job in two months.
Oh, and Knowledge Management is all the rage in corporations (the above mentioned librarian did a session on using a company intranet for that purpose). Basically, it’s the overarching collection and control of all the information (internal, external, written or just “known”) a company has. Librarians are well suited for this - if you don’t want to go the traditional “working in a building with lots and lots of books” route.
Marian the Librarian is a major character in the musical The Music Man. Professor Harold Hill sings a song to “Marian the Librarian”.
My impressions on the second master’s issue–want to go Academic? You don’t need a second master’s to get hired, but you may need one for tenure and promotion down the line. Want to go Public librarian? No one cares.
Well, I’m not saying that a second masters will automatically help, but it does come in handy in several instances. For instance, I know several archivists with second masters degrees in history. There are a slew of specialty libraries out there, such as philosophy libraries, sociology libraries, and archaelogy libraries. The top people in each tend to have extensive backgrounds, if not actual degrees in each of these subjects. True, in a more general library like mine, the second masters might be dispensed with, but once you get out of that into the high tech firms you mentioned or even academic libraries focusing on one thing, the second degree becomes desirable, and in some cases necessary.
Sigh . . . yes. Yes I am still saying that. I joke about how glad I’ll be to see the last of that desk, but the truth is that I’ll miss the patrons mightily. I’ll also miss libraries. I just got caught up in kind of a weird situation. I happened to move to a city where all the librarians want to work. While I have certain skills, I’m not experienced enough to get a good library job. At most, I might be able to lateral into another circ position, which more likely than not would be just like the position I have now with new names and faces.
If I switch to corporate now while I’m young enough, at least I’ll get corporate skills, which couldn’t hurt. Accounting experience will give me stuff that the ordinary librarian doesn’t have. Even if I still can’t get a good library job in Boston, I’ll be able to get one when we finally are able to relocate. As long as I keep the ultimate goal of coming back to academic libraries in my head, I can think of it as two steps forward and one step back.
So learn from my mistake. Don’t be afraid to go wherever you’re needed in order to work those good library jobs. Build up ten years of experience, stay ahead of the technology curve, and you’ll be unstoppable.
Have you tried to get a sales job working with librarians? Publishing, software, library furniture, databases, etc? It is a nice field with a lot of opportunities, especially if you can hold your own when talking about MARC records, Z39.50, fair use and the like.
Librarians are easy to sell to because they are trained to give accurate information freely, so you just ask them what they want and they will tell you. They will, however, cut through a line of BS faster than a Fortune 100 purchasing director.
The pay is very good, and many former librarians make a very good living in this field. PM me if you want some inside details.
Hello jsgoddess! I live about 2 hours from Columbus and want to mention one thing. If you can find Kent State’s program through OPLIN distance learning instead of driving to Columbus, it may be better. Not so much for the difference in quality (I don’t believe there is any) but for the difference in the drive. My mother did her MLS at an OPLIN building outside of Jackson, Ohio. She works for a school library now, and I know for a fact the following is true there and I think it is most other places (as a senior English major at a small college who wants to have some career plans someday - therefore has been looking at MLS schools/jobs a good bit): in most Ohio school districts, it is required that you hold a teaching license to be a librarian (at least most high schools).
Also, something you may want to look into is IU Bloomington’s website. I was dead set on going there, my wife and I were even going to look at houses out there, but we found out that she was pregnant and I decided I will probably be a little more helpful to work (anything I can get) when I finish my BA and wait to go to graduate school, or go online and work full-time still. They have a decent list of jobs for MLS degrees, especially if you plan on relocating. I know that every time I have looked, there have been several in the Dayton area, which might be near you (maybe…). The list for Ohio is here. Also, they have an RSS feed for the jobs listings here .
There are probably a ton more jobs in Columbus itself, which seems to be the place to go. If you don’t mind me asking, what area of Ohio are you in? You can email me if you don’t want to put it in this thread or whatnot - also if you have any questions for my mother, who graduated from Kent’s MLS in 2001 or 2202 (I forget)…
