are you now, or have you ever been, A Librarian?

We use the National Library of Medicine Classification...

WD 400 = Animal poisons; spiders, scorpions, centipedes, leeches.

WL 108 = Nervous system; physiology of sleep

Cataloguing is the bane of my existence.

there are loads of jobs in the uk, people are finding it really hard to fill vacancies. money's not bad, but it does level off too early.

Today I'm scanning pictures of posters to put on our database, and having a power trip by telling researchers what they can and can't photocopy, in our new reprographics policy.

And I get to go to the society of archivists conference in Jersey, which is ace, all expenses paid, and loads of my friends are going too. boozefest!

there are some jobs specifically designed for getting experience, I know Marks and Spencers have one every year, and pay them about £17K Once you've qualified starting salaries in london tend to be around 18K, but it's not too fantastic working in county archives. business archives are where the money's at, and you tend to rise quicker too.

It's not exactly an easy path, and you have to want to do it, but it is a satifying job, even if it doesn't feel like it some days!

Archives is much better paid than museum work though. Starting salaries after the masters are as low as 12K, and doing the most boring jobs too. Quite responsible jobs are advertised with pittance salaries. The principal heritage officer post at Heritage services Herefordshire council is only offering £26,368 pa despite having a key management and strategic role leading the team.

Only one downside to being an archivist - I was absolutely devastated when I realised that I would have to change career if I ever wanted to live in a non-english speaking country. Not much use for an archivist who can't read the documents in her care!

And yes, (cough cough) I was a Librarian Assistant for over a year for anyone who's interested in that info...

none of it seemed to rub off though, since i don't really read very much.

I see that upthread I posted that I wouldn't do one because of the cost. Newsflash to self last year: YOU CAN DO IT FOR FREE! (Working at a university has finally yielded some benefit, to the tune of £2000 or so in waived fees WOO!)

So, any advice for my forthcoming studies?

Good luck with the MA archel! Just try and think of something interesting to do for your dissertation, is the best advice I can give.

Take the most technology-oriented classes you can tolerate. Learn more about that end of things than you think you'll need to know.

(Incidentally, I got my degree "for free," except that I still ended up having to take out student loans, since the stipend that went with my assistantship was not enough to live on--even though I was only spending $225 a month in rent, sharing an apartment.)

I have to take set modules but the course is newish and part of the Information Technology dept so it's all pretty down with new technologies and all that - which is just what I want.

I'm doing it part-time and continuing to work in my current job as well, so I expect I'll be ok financially though only just...

It pays pretty well (from the point of view of a recently broke-ass college student), but I'm part-time, so it doesn't actually REALLY pay that well. I've thought of going to school for a library degree, but as much as I DO actually like public service, I'm sure I'd be thoroughly burned out and hateful after ten years, and I don't want that so young in life!

Ohio seems conspicuously absent. And what about Seattle? Portland? Minneapolis? Madison? I don't know anything about libraries, but these seem like places that would keep them well-funded.

http://www.majordojo.com/photos/public_library/DSC_0558-photo.JPG

On the subject of the O.C. (and a new orchestra building): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091801393.html

I thought this was a very non Post article, in that it was pretty good.

http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/etc/game1/game1.swf

That is quite, quite insane.

We will be glad to answer questions like these:

* What is the zip code to Panama City, Florida?
* What is the capital and state bird of New Mexico?
* Who wrote the patent on the Cotton Gin?

But we will be unable to answer questions like these:

* Please give me the complete history of the Roman Empire.
* Please give me a biography of Theodore Roosevelt.
* Explain to me how the stock market works

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxax1xzJ321qz6f9yo1_500.jpg

sign otm

It is true, this.

I applied for a job as Library Services Assistant. There was a digital book sorting test and somehow I only got 11/18 from the fiction shelf correct (maybe one book messed up the rest of the books). I got 18/18 from the nonfiction shelf.

Librarians, is this a sign that I won't be hired?

on librarian-porn literature

I dropped out of my library grad program today after two weeks.

I thought I would love it, but it turns out that at this juncture, my brain just can't click with it. I deferred, technically, so there's always the future (if someone can convince me that it's worth it and I don't find a sick gig in the meantime), but I have to admit that I don't think I want to be a librarian any more!

good move. you strike me as creative and it's not a great career for creative people ime.

this thread is partially responsible for me taking this path and i should have chosen differently but seeing as how i'm finally securely employed w/ decent benefits in a quiet job with no looming budget cuts (at least this year), i'm going to stick with it.

Thanks for yr thoughts, map.

It's funny, I'm very good at certain types of tasks that are distinctly uncreative— editing papers, proofreading, building spreadsheets, etc. But for some reason, you ask me to dwell upon questions like "what is a document?" or whether records can ever be neutral and I'm just like, "this is so obvious as to be incredibly boring, why am I wasting my time with this shit." I almost feel like my own understandings of the way the world works got in the way of my being able to really click with the discipline in some way.

Kudos to you on getting a decent job, tho. I'm hoping that with some work and study, I'll get a proofreading/editing gig soon enough.

i got my MLIS about a decade ago and have been working in libraries, but after getting laid off from my most recent library gig, i'm back in the corporate world and not a librarian anymore (though still working in research/info organization, so technically still using my MLIS). ironically i used part of the severance payment from my last library job to finally finish paying off the grad school student loans from getting my MLIS. the degree seems pretty pointless for the most part, it's sad that it has become almost mandatory for most professional library jobs because it's not really necessary to do the work of a librarian in most cases.

i went to library school thinking of it mostly as a trade school, i.e., trying to get the skills and knowledge i needed to do the work rather than a deep-dive into the philosophy of information sciences or whatever. from that perspective it was pretty frustrating.

best to you table, i hope you find something decent soon.

in retrospect i have the opinion that if a person doesn't have a pretty clear idea of what library job they want from the get-go and are like dead set on it they should probably not be paying $ for library school.

I am most interested in digitization and preservation of analog media such as VHS cassettes and tape cassettes, as well as small press books, flyers, and other cultural ephemera. I don't really care too much about the philosophy of information sciences— I just want to find solutions for objects like my pre-condom VHS gay porn collection, which seems like it is important to queer studies and media studies fields.

there really isn't a lot of technical know-how involved, it's more about who you know for that sort of thing, and who has money to fund it. i did attend a rare booksellers' school (weeklong symposium thing) where i learned that a lot of specialty booksellers have gotten into acquiring and and then selling archival material to academic institutions and private collectors.

tbh i'm glad that i'm no longer employed by / working within higher ed especially after this year but a lot of that is due to my own personal experience of disillusion.

Yeah, I guess that I thought the MLIS might help get me into a position where I might be able to work on such projects in a real way, but I'm pretty certain it's not worth it! I just wish I had the resources to do all this work myself.

Heya folks -- friend of mine (here in the US) just contacted me saying this:

wanted to pick your brain for a sec - my partner started her library science masters last fall and is coming up on the end of her first year. as you can imagine zoom university has made the whole ordeal less than ideal and she's been looking for help to kind of guide her into her next year and potential specialization.

Since I'm an assistant and not an MLIS holder nor currently on top of what hiring trends/hot areas are like, I said I'd ask around -- would anyone who feels they can provide some good perspective be available to help? If so, send me contact info via ILXmail or elsewhere and I'll pass it along. Much thanks!

Keep reading about these old school Library Apartments in Manhattan.

I was a librarian at school, on my second shift I was told that a pen had been lost, found the pen, labelled the pen with a post-it-note saying "the lost pen" then labelled all the other pens with "not the lost pen." Then I was told off for wasting post-it notes and was suddenly no longer a librarian.

Not a librarian. I married one.

drop out of school immediately

Drop out of BU.