So You Want to Be a Corporate Librarian?, by Leslie Howerton-Hicks

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Like most corporate librarians I didn’t go to library school to become a soulless corporate drone (joking, I am pretty sure I have a soul). My background is in archaeology and museum studies, and I have always been interested in the more specialized side of librarianship. I always envisioned myself in a universities special collection or a museum, not a corporation.

During my MILS program at the University of South Florida (Go Bulls!), I landed a job at Hess working at their in-house technical library. Hess is an international oil company that specializes in exploration and production (E&P). The patrons of the Hess Technical Library are mostly the geologists, chemists, and engineers at the Houston E&P office, but also those who work at offices around the world.  I went into the Hess job just grateful to be getting paid library experience. I knew next to nothing about corporate libraries, so I thought I’d be working with a bunch of uptight oil obsessed men. I was wrong. Hess employs a diverse workforce in their Houston office as well as their offices around the world. I loved providing reference services to all our researchers around the globe.  I learned so much about their areas. I was hooked. This whole new world of librarianship had opened up for me and I thrived in the corporate culture. I loved the diversity of the tasks I got to perform, and I got to do it all… reference, cataloguing, outreach, project management, and archiving.

I left Hess in 2011 to move back to Oregon for family reasons. When I moved I was determined to find another corporate gig and, after a brief detour into public librarianship, I was lucky enough to land my current role. I am the Footwear Materials Librarian at a large footwear and athletic company whose WHQ is in Oregon. I will not be modest or lie to you good readers; I have the world’s coolest library job. What does a Footwear Materials Librarian do, you ask? I manage the Materials Center on our campus. I have approx. 15,000 material swatches from all our vendors. That is not including the thousands of shoelaces, webbings, and other components that are also housed in the library. Not only do I have to keep these items organized and searchable by our patrons I have to be a resource for them as well. A big part of my job is providing reference services. You need waterproof leather that has good abrasion and is sourced in Vietnam? Just ask Leslie! I also manage the day to day running of the Material Center, communicate with our raw material vendors, organize library events, and plan a bi-annual Material Show.

On one hand my job is very similar to that of a typical academic librarian; reference services, program development, research help, info literacy, etc.  On the other hand though, it is completely different. Corporate culture can take some getting used to if you have only worked in an academic or public setting. I will be the first one to admit that I work for an amazing company who treats their employees very well. They emphasize the work/life balance and provide many perks and opportunities for their employees. My favorite thing about my company is that we have absolutely no dress code. I come to work every day in jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt/sweatshirt and I blend right in.

I will warn you that not all corporate gigs are as good as mine. But they are out there! Many companies have librarian/archivist positions. You just have to look for them. Intel, Ralph Lauren, Fossil, Microsoft, Apple, all have librarian positions. Often positions will not have librarian in the title. Sometime companies do not even know that they want a librarian. I am actually the first MILS degree holding library manager in my position. I knew nothing about materials when I started. They hired me because they wanted their Materials Center run more efficiently and they wanted to increase its use by our community. They thought my past experiences at Hess and academic libraries, as well as my degree, would help them achieve these goals. All my materials knowledge has been learned on the job. I have devoted considerable time to shadowing my co-workers and learning all I can about the materials that are housed in the library. I have visited other materials libraries and talked to anyone I thought had insights. After a year and a half I feel confident giving reference help to all our patrons, but I still learn something new every day.

Does this sound fun to you? Would you too like to become a corporate drone? Here is my best advice:

• Solo Librarian. As a corporate librarian, you might always be the only librarian in the room. Embrace it! Be prepared for lots of questions about what you do. A lot of times other employees will have no idea that there is a library/librarian position. Building your own network of librarians to bounce ideas off of is very helpful. I have found Twitter is a great resource for this. Twitter librarians are the best.
• Relationship Building. I cannot over emphasize the importance of this. A huge part of my job is devoted to relationship building, both internally and externally with our material vendors. Corporations are here to make money, and they need to see you as a resource that helps them do that. Be your own advocate! Right after I started I was able to make some very simple changes to the library that drastically increased our usage (current usage is up 38% over last year). I got the idea for these changes by simply talking to our patrons.\
• Special Library Association (SLA). SLA is by far my favorite professional organization for librarians. Most special librarians and corporate librarians belong to SLA and it is a great place to network. Their professional development resources are also very good. Their conferences are always fun. I have met some of the most interesting people, with the most interesting library jobs through SLA.
• Enthusiasm. Be enthusiastic about your collection and what your company produces. I will admit that even before this job I loved shoes, especially sneakers. I also love running and working out in general, so this job was a great fit. I love all the shoes that we produce and I am super proud when I see a shoe that has a textile on it that I helped a designer pick.

Even though I never planned to be a corporate librarian, I am very happy that I ended up here. I feel like I found my “happy place” in the library world. Every day I go to a job I love, and work with people who are passionate about what they do. If you are interested in this type of work please reach out to us “special” librarians. From my experience we all love talking about what we do and how we do it.

Leslie Howerton-Hicks is the Footwear Materials Librarian at a large Athletic Footwear & Apparel Company based in Oregon. She graduated from the University of South Florida SLIS program in 2011. Reach out to her on Twitter @librarianninja.   

A Crooked Path to the Library, by Giso Broman

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Library school was an accident for me. I submitted my grad school application after the deadline, and consequently was accepted into my program off of the wait list, three short weeks before classes started. Mine was not the realization of some childhood dream; I was just anxious to get back into the workforce. I’m one of those suckers that decided to study what interested me, in the hope that the “money would follow,” rather than choose a path with a high ROI. Let’s face it; very few librarians go into the field to amass large sums of money.

Ironically—painfully sometimes—my first career is often characterized as quite a gravy train. I worked for the Postal Service, as both a clerk and letter carrier, for 14 years. I was there long enough to earn the top pay level and got a generous amount of time off every year. The wages aren’t excessive, but generous when you consider all the overtime. It’s not an easy job, but neither was it especially stimulating. When I decided to return to school after more than a decade and a half, it was more to prove to myself that I could finish my bachelor’s degree than to do anything specific. And therein lies part of the problem.

My bliss-following undergraduate work was divided between two majors: (human) Geography and (Brazilian) Portuguese. A BA in a language or one of the social sciences will these days almost invariably lead to… a temp agency, as it did in my case. I really don’t know what I was thinking, looking back at the summer before I started my library science graduate program. How could I have gotten so many A’s and still have been so stupid about the job market? Luckily, I had been wise enough to hedge my bets by applying for library school. People I knew and trusted had liked it. I would be good at it. “It's a professional degree…”

I found I was not alone. Although there are an awful lot of “my mom is a librarian” and “I just love books” library students, a lot of my friends were of the “trying to figure out the next step” variety. By the time my second year rolled around, I had a pretty solid handle on what I was interested in: technical services at an academic library. That’s specific enough, I thought. I did a practicum in the preservation department, got some cataloging experience from one student job, and did some digitization at another. I felt like I was really playing it smart.

With graduation (and unemployment) approaching, I elected to do a one-year paid internship in corporate archives and records management, rather than end up with no paycheck at all. I’m now in my ninth month of that internship, and the position has been good, but not great. I’m learning (and earning), but I’ve also lost a lot of the momentum that I had while in school. It took me several months to realize, but I am glad to have some clarity now. And I’m glad to share it with you here.

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Broadening your horizons is great, but only up to the point where you’ve identified where you want to be going. Practically speaking, you can really only aim at one target at a time.

I started library school without a clear sense of what I wanted. I knew that I was interested in the organization of information, but nothing more than that. I didn’t want to limit myself. I’m glad that I discovered through my coursework and conversations that I wasn’t that excited about reference or instruction. I had done a lot of training in my postal days, and I felt comfortable with those skills. Instead, I focused on technology and metadata. I really enjoy cataloging and digitization; in fact, it was harder to leave those two student jobs that I had than it was to quit the Post Office!

But then I did a dumb thing. Instead of seeking out more opportunities using those skills that I really loved, I returned to the wide-net approach, so as to not end up at the temp agency again. I abandoned my passion no sooner than I had found it. Who’s to say whether I would have found my first elusive cataloging job last summer, had I not been busy at the corporate records management internship? I might well have ended up packing boxes in a warehouse, just as I had been two years prior. But I do regret that I didn’t truly follow my bliss. I went after it for a bit, but then chickened out when I started imagining myself penniless and in the soup line. I compromised too soon.

I expect that now that I’ve regained my focus, I will continue moving in the direction that I really want to take my career. If you recognize any part of your own story in what I’ve written, I hope that can get back on track too!

Giso Broman will complete his internship in archives and corporate records management in May 2014. Plans and possibilities are changing daily as he continues his job search—inquire within! When he isn’t occupied with work (or the pursuit of future work), he spends slightly too much time on the couch watching crime dramas, reading grammar textbooks, and messing around with XML. You can find him at giso6150.com or on Twitter at @giso6150.