Public library career advice
L.B.
bunch of veterans sitting around having one too many beers. Thank
goodness one of us was sober enough to take notes! This message may
be freely disseminated provided it remains intact and no one
dishonestly claims authorship. The authors are anonymous and we
intend to stay that way.
=====
1. Your undergraduate degree or previous experience is irrelevant.
If your background is English, you'll be assigned to the Science
Department. Fluent in a second language? Your collection development
responsibilities will be Hollywood videos. Want to work with
children? You'll do cataloging. Your acquisitions expertise will get
you assigned to the bookmobile.
2. Forget the publish-or-perish law of academia. In public
libraries, it is publish-AND-perish. Do not publish anything as an
entry-level librarian, except what you have been asked to contribute
to the library newsletter, until after your first promotion.
Attracting favorable outside attention too soon irritates your
supervisors, who labor long and hard in the unglamorous administrative
trenches with no public recognition. They feel resentful when their
subordinates develop name recognition or independent reputations.
3. You can never suck up too much. Loyalty often counts for more
than competence. Be punctual, be perky, be passive, and don't ask
tough questions. If you get called a "poor team player," it means
your boss dislikes you but has no objective basis for criticizing your
performance. Start looking for another job.
4. Tread carefully when ordering books with sexual themes or
illustrations. Remember that not all censorship challenges come from
outside: if your support staff objects to typing the order or shelving
the book, your administrators might not back you up the way they would
with an outside challenge.
5. Never forget that the public library is a political creature. It
must satisfy its board and its funders. In addition, there are always
those jockeying for their next promotion. These political tensions
and alliances can be subtle and difficult to discern but they are
there and potentially treacherous.
6. In spite of its deserved reputation as a profession where
eccentrics, nerds, free-thinkers, and "alternative" people of all
kinds can find refuge, public libraries can still be bastions of
gender conformity. As in other fields, male librarians often float to
the top. Female librarians are often promoted based on how well they
do femininity (attractiveness, wardrobe, ability to follow orders)
rather than how well they do librarianship.
7. Does administration ask for your input? Consider it a formality.
They want cheerleaders, not critics. They've spent long years in
tedious career purgatory, waiting for another lifer to retire or die
so that they can advance to where they can launch their own policies
and projects. They're not interested in yours.
8. Public libraries with low turnover and a civil service system
where promotion is restricted to insiders are more likely to be
followers than leaders in the field. This is because those with the
freshest training and most energy, the new hires, have the least power
and a longest wait to attain a position that allows them to innovate.
9. Exercise caution when seeking employment within 50-100 miles of a
library school. Unlike places far from library schools, which must
work hard to recruit and retain librarians, cities with library
schools in town do not have to treat their staff especially well
because they are easily replaced with the many new graduates
saturating the local market.
10. If your library is not unionized, start one. Historically, it is
the most reliable way to elevate the traditionally dismal librarian
salary.
LA
11. Never, EVER, say anything that could brand you a conservative. You
will be 'blacklisted' and never find employment in the profession again,
as your references will quail at the idea someone has decided not to do
the ALA group-think. They will refuse to recommend anyone in which the
brain-washing didn't take.
12. Don't worry about not knowing much about technology. You won't be
challenged. Public libraries are about a decade behind developments in
the IT world.
Bravo! Thank you for this list of truths.
LA
Brian Dickens
> 12. Don't worry about not knowing much about technology. You won't be
> challenged. Public libraries are about a decade behind developments
> in the IT world.
Perhaps in the US, but certainly not here in the Netherlands. We need to be
at the frontline of IT, otherwise we'd miserably fail to offer the people
what they want. As a result, we've got quite modern computers running Win2K
(no need for XP), CD-writers (no need for DVD-writers yet), broadband
internet connection, scanners, etc etc --- we're certainly not still using
old Pentium-60's or stuff like that.
=- Brian Dickens, the Netherlands
LA
Ah, they have that sort of household/office level equipment in the US
public libraries.
Effective use of it is a whole 'nother story.
LA
Lief
Do I sense that there is a very negative feeling about public libraries in the US?
Lief
Do I sense that there is a very negative feeling about public
libraries in the US? Why is this?
LA
because future librarians come to usenet because of class assignments,
post 10 message and decide they are experts. Masters.
They also double post.
they list email addresses of their friends and associates on usenet and
other places, so the spam bots have a heyday.
And no, not everyone in the US is negative on public libraries. But
more and more voters are not passing the tax levies necessary to keep
them running, often because the citizens are just plain tired of the
libraries allowing pedophiles and other perverts to spend the day
downloading porn on computers paid for by their tax money in the name of
"intellectual freedom".
Or perhaps they are tired of disturbing the bums (who are happily
invited in to spend the entire day and evening) taking baths in the rest
rooms, sleeping off a binge in the reading areas, dropping their
syringes in the parking lots.
All in the name of intellectual freedom.
LA
angryman
What you sense in this group is a bunch of discontents who believe
that librarians are communists who enjoy sharing porn with the
homeless, OR they are a bunch of uptight frigid ninnies who like to
censor free speech and harrass library users. Depending on your point
of view or the time of day. It's a fun place, you'll like it.