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Librarianship

For Soon-to-be Librarians with Little Professional Involvement and Networking

Sep 22nd, 2010
by Bohyun (Library Hat).
10 comments

Lately there has been a lot of discussion about getting the first job after finishing the MLS program. There have been many dozens of emails posted on NEWLIB-L (See “How Did You Get Your First Librarian Job?” thread) and LITA-L listserv (See “What advice would you give someone considering LIS school?” thread).

Not only current MLS students and recent graduates expressed frustration and anxiety about a long job search process during the depression period but also many experienced librarians shared thier own experience, advice, and wisdom. Other librarians offered practical tips and resources. (See the recent post in Library Scenester and four other posts mentioned there: Kiyomi Deards’ phone interview advice, Julie Strange’s 10 tips for landing an interview, Patrick Sweeney’s 5 tips for successful librarian interviews, and Bobbi Newman’s resources on becoming a librarian).

In those listservs, some asked those who have recently gotten a job to share how they prepared themselves and succeeded in managing difficult interviews. In response to this, many librarians emphasized the importance of networking and being professionally involved through library organizations such as ALA, SLA, etc.

While I wholeheartedly agree that this is an excellent advice, I could not help thinking about myself while attending a MLS program. I had almost zero networking and was absent in about ninety-five percent of school activities that were going on whether it was a library association student chapter event or writing a publication in a newsletter or a LIS journals. I was working full-time, barely managing two evening or weekend classes a semester at Simmons. Often my primary concern while I was on-campus was how to feed and caffeinate myself during the short and precious time before an evening class immediately after work. Going to a professional conference or actively participating in school activities was never a real possibility.

So if you are like my past self in these respects and cannot change your pattern of behavior due to various personal and family-related reasons, what can you do to increase your chances of getting a job after the MLS?


Post-MLS Job SearchI think that work experience is one thing that speaks a volume about a candidate’s potential, and as such every job-seeking soon-to-be librarians should have a compelling portfolio of what kinds of library work they have done and how that fits with their interests and the positions they seek as a MLS program graduate. One should start working at a library as soon as getting into a MLS program, if not before. Library paraprofessional positions rarely require being in a MLS program. Why not test water first before committing oneself to a two-year study when the market prospect is less than ideal?

Just as important as getting library work experience is doing the kind of work that one “wants to pursue” after the MLS. If one’s dream is to be a systems librarian, working at a circ desk would add very little in the job market no matter how long the work at the circ desk has been and how good one did the job. If it is not possible to get a job or work as a cataloging or a reference assistant while you are in school but cataloging or reference is the job you would like to go for after the MLS, you should consider other ways to get that type of work experience such as volunteering and part-time and/or term-time positions. In reality, MLS programs provide mostly vocational education, and as such, work experience often trumps high GPAs and other academic achievements. Going for the work experience in the field one wants to be is THE type of risk and investment that any future librarian must take and make. I know it is hard to ditch or work in addition to a full-time non-library job (often with benefits!). But getting relevant work experience is not an option but a must for a post-MLS librarian position particularly if you are attending a MLS program part-time and cannot afford investing time in networking and being involved in professional organizations as a student . In that sense, all pre-MLS positions are essentially temporary positions as long as one aims to become a professional librarian.

It is also good to play on one’s existing strengths and personal interests. If you already have a Master’s degree in business, you are likely to qualify highly as a reference librarian at a business school. If that also matches with your interests, why not pursue reference-related work experience while at school? If you have teaching experience as a teacher or a tutor, you must have quite a bit of knowledge about lesson plans and learning objectives which are important elements in library instruction. So applying for an instructional librarian position emphasizing this asset of yours would work favorably. If you tend to catalog every CD, DVD, and book that you own, probably you are already half way to becoming an excellent cataloger or metadata librarian. So make sure to engage in real-life cataloging at libraries beyond one or two classes at school.

It goes without saying that networking and active professional involvement during your MLS education will benefit your job search. Even more benefit would be gained if you attended professional conferences, presented, got a scholarship, and/or published an article. But due to the constraint of time and the tight budget, many MLS students are simply unable to fully participate in these activities. But guess what? If you love working at a library, you can still build a solid foundation for getting a job after the MLS through the work itself. After all, one cannot do everything but what it matters is at least trying the best one can.

Getting Published in a Peer-Reviewed Journal

Aug 10th, 2010
by Bohyun (Library Hat).
6 comments

My very first scholarly article in a LIS journal is about to be published in the fall issue of the Journal of Web Librarianship!  And I have two more articles submitted to two other journals, the Reference Librarian and Technical Services Quarterly.  As you can imagine, I am very excited.  But on the other hand, I still find it difficult to believe that my article is actually getting published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Getting published can be a daunting task for new librarians. Considering that a two-year LIS program may well fail to provide sufficient practice and experience for LIS students to gain confidence in writing a scholarly article, new librarians without prior experience in scholarly writing are likely to not know where to begin.  I am personally divided on the issue of the faculty status of librarians and the resulting obligation of publishing.  But that certainly is not an excuse for avoiding writing.

As to many others, the major problem to me was how to begin.  The pace of my work was extremely fast as I was working towards opening up a brand-new library.  My work life as a librarian seemed to leave no room left for scholarly writing.  Moreover, I  wasn’t sure what my true scholarly interests were and whether I knew enough to write about anything.  This is to say that, like many new librarians, I was not sure when or how I was ever going to get published “ever.”

National Maritime Museum - A flight of three Supermarine Southampton Mark II Flying boats in the air over HendonI was lucky to attend the ACRL New Members group meeting about “Academic Librarians and Getting Published” at my first ALA Annual Conference that I attended in 2009. Not only did the three presentations given by Emily Drabinski, Lisa Carlucci Thomas & Karen Sobel, and Linda Hofschire offer excellent and practical tips for writing but also this session helped me realize that writing is something everyone struggles with and being rejected is part of the process of getting published. Even though we all know that writing is horrendous to many others, not just to us, we tend to believe that those who have been published are somehow quite different from us who have not been published.  This session effectively demystified this misconception of mine.

In this session, one of the presenters gave this tip: “To get motivated, use deadlines, generate good ideas, write them down right away, set aside time to write–get up 30 min. early everyday.”  Although I liked this idea very much, I just could not sit down everyday to write for 30 minutes.  I could not get up 30 minutes early and I could not spare 30 minutes before going to bed.  It could have been a lack of the will, a doubt, busy work, or numerous other things.  But the real reason was, I think, this crazy thought of mine that I would get published “once” I first figure out my interests, do some thorough research, generate some worthy ideas quite different from others’, and am convinced that I am ready to write an article of a journal.

Oh well, I can tell you as the first-time author who wrote for a LIS journal that things don’t work that way. Period.  But I used the most important part of this tip to get started: “Use Deadlines.”

This is how I started writing.

  • Read some blogs on which CFPs are collected and listed.
  • Pick one CFP and write a proposal.
  • Get the proposal accepted.
    (This is generally not difficult.)
  • Announce yourself the deadline forced by the journal editor.
    (This is hard but could be the best thing that happens to your writing.)

The deadline for the article was Halloween last year and I submitted a very unorganized and hard-to-read draft.  The thing is, until somebody tells you this, you cannot wash the fish scale off of your eyes, which make you so completely falsely believe that your paper is half-way presentable.  Interestingly enough, you cannot see how truly bad a writer you are until you get the dreaded peer reviews.  I was not devastated but simply agreed with the feedback I had received, which was beyond devastating.  For some unfathomable reason, my truly nice editor, Nina McHale, gave me a chance to revise with wonderfully helpful comments. This lead to some agonizing time I spent trying to re-write my own paper that was practically-impossible-to-read now that I could read it through others’ eyes.

US National Archive - Older Women Doing Hand Ironing in Laundry Where General Lay-Out Is Good, But Women Apparently Have No Seats

So the second deadline came.  I was convinced that my paper would be rejected. I was also so tired of the topic by then.  But my wonderful colleague, Marissa, who patiently read through my paper and gave me plenty of helpful advice and comments, kept telling me that I had some good ideas.  The most surprising thing was that I thought better and more clearly when I was in conversation with her than when I was writing alone.  Writing is basically a dialogue between a writer and his/her readers.  But we write as if writing is a soliloquy.  Marissa also gave me the very useful tip that by changing font-size and style, and page orientation, I can more effectively proofread.  I also read aloud my entire paper before submitting it this time.

I had not heard for months again.  The peer-review process can really takes eternity.  I was dreading the rejection notice.  I could hardly believe when I was told that my paper was accepted.

The hardest thing in writing is to say what one wants to say. I spend so much time writing something that doesn’t speak and rather misrepresent what I want to say.  Now that I have gone through my first experience of writing for a peer-reviewed journal, I realize that a scholarly article is not just a product of an author.  It is so much more than that.  My article would not have been written that way without the comments from my editor and the reviewers.  Although being reviewed can be a dreadful experience, this is a boon to new librarians since it means that they will receive much-needed help and get invaluable comments for their writing.  I will be forever grateful for my editor and anonymous peer reviewers who took upon themselves reading my awful first draft.

I am not any better writer and I am not any more knowledgeable.  But through my experience I have learned that writing begins with a deadline and beginning is nearly the half of the work of getting published.  Well, that and making a bibliography one-hundred percent correct in the asked citation style is no less than art (and I say this as solemnly as I can as a librarian).

Librarianship and Burnout

Jul 27th, 2010
by Bohyun (Library Hat).
4 comments

It was so unexpected that I didn’t even realize when it came – burnout. It may very well be the case that I need a vacation since this summer has been quite hectic. It wouldn’t hurt to prioritize all the tasks and projects on my to-do list to make my work plan more realistic and reasonable. But there is also this nagging feeling that seems to contribute to my burnout, which I suspect may not be easily cured by a vacation or a re-prioritized work-plan.

Despite my two years of experience as a professional librarian, I have doubts about what a librarian should be and questions about who I am as a librarian. The fact that librarians do so many different things and yet can be all called “a librarian” doesn’t help dispel my confusion. What do librarians share other than the fact that they all work at a library building and somehow contribute to a library’s daily operation and they all went through the MLS program at one point? What a cataloger does is so different from the daily work of an instruction librarian just as the work of a web services librarian doesn’t overlap at all with the everyday work of an inter-library loan librarian. What ties these individuals together as one group – a group of librarians?

Fire hose turned on the fire by Oregon State University Archives.

Fire hose turned on the fire by Oregon State University Archives on Flickr.

I know this is a trite answer. But it seems to me that the family resemblance of all librarians, to borrow Wittgenstein’s term, is not so much the nature of individual librarians’ work as a shared belief and faith: the belief that information and knowledge is to be treasured and someone must work to deliver and preserve this information and knowledge accumulated throughout human history to the public, the faith that access to information and knowledge is a basic human right and it should be equally provided to anyone who desires to learn. If someone asks what I do and asks again what that means when I reply that I am a librarian, this is the answer that I should give rather than enumerating all the mundane things like setting up e-resources for a trial, filling out the paperwork for my grant project, updating web pages, and going to lots of meetings.

The problem is that this belief and the faith that are at the core of librarianship are often lost to a librarian’s view who has to battle with bureaucracy, red tapes, indifference, and often the lack of understanding, support, and recognition, in order to get seemingly the most mundane things done. But at heart, librarians are ideologues and dreamers, ideologues who do their legwork, dreamers who do act upon their dreams, sometimes to the degree that leads to the loss of the sight of their collective identity.

I always loved librarianship because of its practicality. But making the practicality coexist with the belief, the faith, and the ideology of librarianship side by side is not an easy task at all.

I have turned to librarians on Twitter for advice and have received 17 amazingly wise and helpful answers ranging from the suggestion of a new author to read and the recommendation of a hearty portion of ice cream and chocolate to the quite sound advice that I could be digging the ditches instead (quite true!). I am sharing them here for other librarians suffering from burnout like mine.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on. by alicia rae.

@lspags
depends on source of burnout;often reading profl lit recharges, other stuff (leadership lit 4 me) to reconnect. &convos w/ peeps.

@flexnib
change jobs/roles so that you’re not doing the same thing over & over (why I became a manager instead of continuing w reference)

@acbtanya
part of it’s realizing burnout happens to all. accept it & put energy elsewhere, you’ll end up w/ new perspective

@lisapisa77
think about what u can let go of that isn’t interesting or v. important. Keep working on at least 1 thing that is exciting to u.

@willkurt
remember there is always another larger, more interesting problem to tackle, and don’t be distracted by the mundane

@yo_bj
@ranti Vacation? What’s that? That’s the weekend, right?

@ ranti
vacation(s), do variety of stuff, go walk and eat a bowl of ice cream. ;-)

@r_anstett
examining the WHY I am doing something helps make the HOW I am doing it more relevant & energized

@jpannone
remember that it’s just a job. In 100 years from now, someone else will be doing it. Keep some distance & perspective. ;)

@kongtemplation
perspective, new challenges, great colleagues and working environment :)

@Sara_Mooney
Find someone with a diverging viewpoint about what I do or am passionate about (metadata). Gets the juices running again.

@annehaines
Talking to library school students helps sometimes – they still remember why they want to do this :)

@library_chic
take the vacation time you get and use it for non-work/library stuff. have hobbies & interests outside work.

@pat2pattern
Hang around positive people. Make our home a sanctuary. Also, I take responsibility for my choices. And Cats. And Chocolate.

@mwphillips75
I remind myself that I could be digging ditches…

@jimmy1712
I always try to keep looking a different things…If I spend too long on one thing I tend to get bored and tired!

@LibrarianRy
Try to remain positive and passionate to the profession. Reading anything written by Alberto Manguel helps

Looking back at “What is Your Library Doing about Emerging Technologies?”

Jun 30th, 2010
by Bohyun (Library Hat).
3 comments

Who knew that I, the second-time attendee of the ALA annual conference, would be organizing and moderating a panel of a dozen librarians? But I have. Just a few days ago. And I still find the experience amazing and hard to believe because partially I found ALA hard to be involved with initially (I wrote about that here before). It was mostly due to my ignorance that I undertook the responsibility of organizing a program and agreed to be a moderator. I had no idea how much efforts would be required and how much logistics will be involved in doing so, although I am glad I was part of this program.

This program, “What is Your Library Doing about Emerging Technologies?” has originated almost accidentally at the last ALA Annual in Chicago. The LITA Emerging Technologies Interest Group meeting attracted dozens of Emerging Technologies Librarians, many of whom were young in age (considering the median age of librarians) and also new in profession. Those librarians including me, who came to the meeting, voiced confusion and challenges in this new role/position in the library profession. Since the job title was so new, the job responsibilities were not yet clear, and there was no established procedure existing for Emerging Technologies Librarians to follow in observing, evaluating, testing, and implementing emerging technologies. Also hotly discussed topics were the fact that there was no agreed-upon clear definition of emerging technologies and the lack of a library’s clear vision and organizational effectiveness in managing emerging technologies.

The way this program was planned and its proposal was submitted was unique – at least I think it is – in that the program proposal was 100 % based upon the voice and concerns of the librarians who came to the Interest Group meeting. Many times, we find conference program topics focus on chasing after the most recent trends, the most popular topics, and the most advanced technologies of the library-land. Although these programs keep us up-to-date and give us an opportunity to peek at the shiniest new programs or technologies being implemented in the leading libraries often by the experts of the fields, we get a bitter taste in the mouth when we come back to our own beloved but less-leading library and try to somehow make the shiny new awesome programs or technologies work for us. This program was definitely not one of those programs. Someone at this year’s Emerging Technology Interest Group said that the program was “complimentary” to the widely-popular LITA Top Tech Trends program (after I said “opposite”). And I think that is a very accurate observation. We need both types of programs. One that focus on where we want to go; the other that thoroughly examines where we really are.

In organizing this program, Jacquelyn Erdman, the vice-chair of the LITA Emerging Technologies Interest Group, and I, tried to be true to its origin. Rather than soliciting several presentations on the hottest items in emerging technologies or showcasing the successful cases of emerging technologies implementations, we focused on the question of what emerging technologies mean when they are discussed in the library context and why the uses of this term could be problematic. We also wanted to cover what Emerging Technologies Librarians do in the real life and what the challenges are in both managing emerging technologies and implementing them at libraries.

This turned out to be a difficult task. Our panel has become quite large in order to ensure that the discussion would reflect the general voice of Emerging Technology Librarians; we found that the use of the term “emerging technologies” often inconsistent or even contrary to its accepted definition in other fields; many Emerging Technologies Librarians belonged to public services rather than Systems/IT/Web services as was originally assumed; the foremost challenge in managing and implementing technologies as an Emerging Technology Librarian was found to be introducing and leading changes without necessary authority in an organization that is often intolerant of risks and fears changes – which is a very sensitive topic to discuss in public.

Some of the attendees of the program criticized that the program didn’t have enough depth. That is partially correct, but it was also difficult to avoid because the intention of the program was to raise the issue that have not been discussed much before, and in order to do that it was necessary to give a broad perspective on the matter of emerging technologies in libraries. But we had some very interesting discussion in this year’s interest group meeting, and I think we will be submitting a program proposal “with depth” this time around for the next year’s Annual.

Ideally, the program would have been a big informal discussion in which both panelists and attendees sit around and very informally chat, asking difficult questions and honestly discussing the challenges and problems we face at work in managing and implementing emerging technologies. I realize now, however, this is unlikely to happen in the Annual Conference. Regardless of how much of what we intended as organizers was materialized in the actual panel discussion, the program was well-received. The room was packed, and more importantly, many librarians randomly stopped me and other panelists to remark that they enjoyed the panel discussion or that they didn’t attend but heard good things from those who did so. Both types of comments made all the program participants quite happy and we swapped stories about that among ourselves.

Although I keep thinking about a hundred different ways in which I could have improved the program in retrospect(!), I am satisfied with the fact that I was part of the program that went for something quite different from typical ALA conference programs. I also sincerely thank all the librarians who initiated this discussion about emerging technologies at the last year’s Annual and hope the program helped to clear and answer some of the confusions and questions raised in the last year’s meeting.

Lastly, thanks everyone who came to this program!
(The Twitter Archive for this program is at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/emergetech?sm=6&sd=2&sy=&em=6&ed=31&ey=&o=&l=500&from_user=&text=)

Persistence and Some Other Virtues for Solo Web-Services Librarians

Feb 3rd, 2010
by Bohyun (Library Hat).
Comments are off for this post

Last September, I did an online presentation through OPAL (Open Program for All).  The topic was “Web Services for Underfunded and Understaffed Libraries.”   After the presentation, I uploaded my slides on SlideShare and then completely forgot about it.  A few days ago, I got an email from SlideShare that notified me the number of views of these slides.  How interesting!  Anyhow, so I remembered. Right, I did that presentation, and what was I thinking back then?

I felt funny realizing that what was a burning question to me only about four months ago seemed already close to some distant memory.  The presentation was part of my efforts to make sense of the challenges and difficulties I have encountered at my work as a new solo web librarian at a small academic library.  I was feeling overwhelmed because I was fully aware of many innovative things I wanted to try, but also there was a very clear limit to what I could do in reality.  Also I was somewhat depressed by the fact that some really awesome things other libraries were doing couldn’t be done for various reasons related to limited resources, funding, staff, etc.

Does the fact that I almost forgot about the presentation mean that I came to some kind of  conclusion on that topic?  Well, probably not.  I think it would be more accurate to say that I have rather gotten used to my environment.

However, now that I look back, I think I learned something about patience in getting things done.  Trying new things requires dealing with some procedures and forming a teamwork  whether it is with some university offices or within one’s organization.  Inevitably, it takes time and efforts – sometimes in a seemingly inexplicably large sum.  Unfortunately, there is no real shortcut in dealing with all the steps whether it is bureaucracy or paperwork.  So what becomes quite important is, more often than not, persistence.

Persistence is also an important virtue and one of the most valuable weapon in a solo web-services librarian’s arsenal.  I mentioned in the presentation that almost everything technology-related becomes the responsibilities of web-services librarian in a small library. So, it is unavoidable that things that need to be done pile up while one solo web-services librarian tries to get all the technology-related things requested as well as other things s/he deems to be important done.  Some of them cannot be done in the time frame desired and/or requested.  Some of them have to go down on the priority list, so that more important things, which keep popping up anew, can be taken care of. But if there are things that need to be done whether it is next month or next season, they have to stay on the list and a solo web-services librarian needs to find time for those.  This sometimes requires persuading others and enlisting their help.

Oh, and resourcefulness. That probably would make another blog post. So I won’t talk about it here.

Another thing that I have learned since the presentation is that one library can’t do all and each library’s environment is unique.  This seems quite an obvious thing to say.  But still many times, libraries waste a lot of time trying to replicate what has been done successfully at other libraries without realizing that there are very different dynamics at work.  Particularly for small libraries, it only makes sense to focus a small number of things that they can excel at rather than spreading thin their resources and staff in many different things.

From time to time, I think I should remind myself of these new lessons I have learned, so that I won’t get unproductively frustrated or disappointed and stay positive and efficient at the same time.

The question which still remains in my mind as an unanswered question is how a solo web-services librarian should deal with necessary R&D.  Unlike at larger libraries where there are multiple programmers and a large IT staff for example, it is extremely difficult for a solo web-services librarian to engage in any productive and meaningful R&D activities because there are so many daily tasks to be handled that come before R&D.  (Also remember many of these librarians are trained first as librarians and not necessarily magical in programming and writing codes?)  On the other hand, without R&D, a solo web-services librarian is likely to be burned out and  get outdated at the same time.  Sadly, I don’t see any systematic support for R&D in small libraries.

This is probably not an issue that can be solved by a lay librarian nor at the scale of individual small libraries.  My hope is to see some larger agencies that  support continuing education/R&D for library technology staff – maybe funded by multiple libraries – and those libraries again committing themselves to allowing time for such continuing education for their technology staff.  Oh, well, wouldn’t that be nice?

For what it’s worth, here is my past presentation at OPAL. I am glad SlideShare sent me the notice. Otherwise I would have completely forgotten about all these questions.

OPAL Program Archive: http://www.opal-online.org/archivelis.htm (Sep. 17, 29009)

Finding a Mentor

Jan 31st, 2010
by Bohyun (Library Hat).
2 comments

“Mentor/Mentee 101:  Developing a Career Essential Relationship” is this month’s topic for ALA/NMRT (New Members Round Table) listserv. One of the contributors to the discussion mentioned the experience of unclear expectations on both a mentor’s and a mentee’s side. I was sending a reply to this discussion Friday, but the listserv didn’t let my email through. So I failed in posting my reply. But it got me thinking a bit about mentoring in librarianship.

I think having a mentor can be of great help for new librarians.  But not all librarians necessarily need official mentors. Often new librarians can rely on their supervisors or other colleagues as their unofficial mentors.  This approach works best at a large organization where a new librarian can find experienced colleagues with similar interests to hers/his. But I also heard about situations where colleagues tend to hoard knowledge rather than sharing. Also for a new librarian who works as a solo-librarian or at a small library where each librarian specializes in a different field, participating in a mentoring program can be quite valuable.

I suspect that a mentoring relationship through emails between two librarians who do not know each other and work at different organizations would be inevitably less strong than between those who know each other well and work at the same place. On the other hand, via email, mentors and mentees can discuss any questions and issues without worrying about the local context and/or, sometimes, politics.

Everywehre Questions

(Image from Flickr: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1098/1404539812_16fdf956d0.jpg)

I count myself lucky having found a great mentor through the first mentoring program I participated in.  I was paired with a mentor whose work is very similar in nature to mine. Common interests make it easy to start a conversation. One thing I excel at is asking questions. I may not necessarily understand answers, but I ask a lot of questions. Often I got illuminating answers, which come from my mentor’s experience. And those answers helped me understand certain things that at first glance looked strange or downright irrational to me. So if I have one recommendation for new librarians in mentoring relationship, that would be to ask lots of questions without worrying about whether they are  stupid or inappropriate. At what other times would one be free to ask such questions if not when a new librarian?

My expectation for the mentoring program was relatively simple — to find someone experienced who can give me advice about things I have difficulty in understanding, not so much about career development or skill sharing.  So I am not sure how mentoring would workfor more experienced librarians with different kinds of expectations. But one thing I try to remember as a mentee is that mentoring is a big time investment for mentors. So I try to be specific, honest, and clear as much as possible when I ask questions via e-mail.

I wonder when one graduates being a mentee and can begin to help others as a mentor. Maybe when there are less questions that strike one’s mind everyday?

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