Interview Post: Jacob Berg

Biographical

Name?

Jacob Berg

Current job?
Senior Librarian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, via The LAC Group

How long have you been in the field?
Off and on since 1996, but totally all the way on since 2007.

How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?

I've got a windowless office with some bookshelves, cork boards on two walls, and a sit-stand desk. I try to stand about two-thirds of the time. There's also a table and two other chairs for meetings, and there is almost always chocolate as well as trail mix on hand.

How do you organize your days?

It's a small library, and I know I'm going to be working the reference desk for at least an hour per day, so I try to work around that. For the most part, I try to handle internal library issues in the morning, and external in the afternoon.

What do you spend most of your time doing?

Administrating, usually strategic planning, plotting a library renovation, marketing and outreach, and a bit of collection development.

What is a typical day like for you?

I'm training myself to be more of a morning person, and with enough cold brew coffee I can almost fake it. I get to work at 7:30am and scour social media and library listservs for good ideas to steal. Then I stand, check in with the other staff, check email, and start writing. Documenting workflows, strategic planning, brainstorming outreach... I'm out on the desk for an hour in the middle of the day, then I take lunch, and then I'm back at it, standing, often with collection development, and reaching out to schools and divisions within the Foreign Service Institute to see what they need, suggesting edits and editing the website, and the occasional cataloging. I leave around 4:30.

What are you reading right now?

Shadowshaper, by D.J. Older. Young adult fiction, thriller-horror set in Brooklyn. Authors take note: I am reading this primarily due to Older's excellent twitter presence, @djolder. I also enjoy longform journalism.

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?

I'm not going to declare something the best, but please, document everything. Write it down! I'll credit Becky Yoose, @yo_bj, for this through her use of #writethedocs. Also, this is a good time to mention that for librarians like me that don't have and/or haven't had mentors, peer networks are everything. Find your people, please. They're out there.

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?

I had no idea how much outreach to the FSI community I'd be doing. I'm not an extrovert or type A, so this has been interesting, to say the least.

Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?

"Piglet." Just say it with me. Hard not to smile, right?

What is your least favorite word?

Cliché, but I am one of those people who really does not like the word "moist." <shudders>

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?

Working at a zoo. Poop aside, being outside, with animals... Cheese-mongering would be fun, too, plus it's another good word.

What profession would you never want to attempt?

There are so many. Acting. Lawyering.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?

Befitting an introvert, invisibility.

What are you most proud of in your career?

At a previous job I worked with a vendor to build open access into our discovery layer, raising awareness on campus and providing access to resources that would otherwise go unfound. Also, I've been able to take advantage of DC's job market, hiring, and training library staff from a wide array of backgrounds.

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.

I am forever making mistakes. They happen. They happened. They'll happen again. If you can, please give people space to make mistakes, and to fail. I even have a tag for it on my seldom-updated blog: http://beerbrarian.blogspot.com/search/label/failure. Specifics are there.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?

Bemoaning the current state of the world online; gaming with my ten year old; talking about dinosaurs, Star Wars, and Legos with my four year old; petting dogs; gardening and cooking; reading and writing about beer; binge watching TV shows; and rooting in vain for the New York Mets, my favorite squadron.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

Kenny Nero, Jr. (@kennynerojr).

Jake tweets at @jacobsberg and blogs at Beerbrarian. This is the third post he's written for Letters to a Young Librarian. The first was "Doing Research Lets You Justify Why You’re Doing What You’re Doing" and the second was Ethics, Copyright, and Information Literacy,

What I Wish Library School Had Told Me About Government Contracting, by The Beltway Bandit

During my library program, I often heard about classmates’ post-graduation career goals. I remember plans to become public librarians, academic librarians, archivists, anywhere-so-long-as-I-___ librarians, a few corporate librarians, and even sometimes civil servants. What I don't recall, except in occasional references a few professors made to "Beltway bandits," was anyone talking about government contractors. As someone who became a government contractor after graduation, I soon realized I had not learned to ask the right questions for academia but not contracting. This post is my way of helping others benefit from what I learned as a government contractor.

Your Employer May Follow Small Business Rules

There are a lot of players in the contracting game and they vary in size. If your employer has fewer than 50 people, they follow small business labor rules. Seems obvious, but when an interviewer tells you they have employees in 10 different states, they may only mean 20-30 people. Easy to remember at a small historical society, less so at an agency of 5,000 civil servants + contractors.

I have been very lucky that I haven't needed to use FMLA, because that's something my employer doesn't offer as a result of being so small. Additionally, I buy my health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchange because my employer is a small business located in another region of the country and they did not have the staff or investment to negotiate good coverage or plan options that work in my region.

Advice: Ask. Not "hey, will I get FMLA?" but "So tell me more about ____. How many librarians do you have? What other contracts do you have?”

You Work for Two Different People

You work for your employer. You also work for your agency. At times, your agency will treat you as an outsider. Your employer may not always act in the best interests of your agency. Many contracts also have a subcontractor. My boss and I work for different contractors. It gets a little weird. I might get put on his contract next time or he on mine.

This disconnect is something you will have to live with. From knowing plenty of other contractors, I can say that it's more prevalent at some places and less at others. But it's still there.

Advice: Ask whether you want to do job X or whether you want to work at agency Y. If this job matches the kind of work you want to do, take it. If your motivation is that you really want to work at ____ agency and you think the job's good too, great. If it’s a great job but you’re not keen on the agency, take a step back and ask evaluate how you’ll feel about being slightly outside. If you don't like the job, take 30 steps back. You don't want this unless truly desperate. In which case, I can relate, I'd been on the market for quite a while when I finally got this job.

It's Not in The Contract

If I had a nickel… Contracts thoroughly spell out the work they do and don't include. That awesome new reference service or cool digital project idea you came up with? Sorry, that’s probably outside the contract. Some offer flexibility. Mine's fairly rigid. It protects me from new tasks I’m not getting paid for but it limits me, too. You can hit limitations in any library, but it’s quite painful when everyone agrees with you, you have the resources and even the time to do it, and you’re still told to twiddle your thumbs instead because of The Contract.

Advice: It’s not unreasonable to ask your interviewer to describe what’s covered in the contract, how they handle changes, etc. Or, if nervous, ask whether they've done any special projects recently or what new service excites them.

Conclusion

At this point, I feel compelled to point out that there are upsides to working on a government contract. Many agencies contract most of their library jobs, so if you want to do a particular kind of library work for a particular kind of agency, this may be your only opportunity. Some contractors pay more than the civil service (find them!). Many manage multiple contracts and may be amenable to giving you internal candidate status for a job that comes up at an agency where you'd rather work.

Beyond what I shared above, I have three more pieces of advice for people considering a job in government contracting:

1. Put some time into research. It can be hard to research the company, so I'd suggest researching contracting in general.
2. If you've been looking primarily at academic jobs with 10-15 days of sick leave alone, be aware that the contracting world follows corporate norms. 15 days combined sick and vacation is normal. When considering a salary, take this into account. Academic salaries are not comparable, as you have less buffer for illness. Any additional sick time comes out of your salary, and your sick leave may not roll over. Mine doesn’t.
3. Figure out why you want to work for a government contractor. It won't necessarily get you closer to a civil servant job or make you really a part of that agency. But it may allow you to build skills and gain that experience you really needed coming out of library school—and that's a perfectly good reason.

The Beltway Bandit is an obvious pseudonym, for obvious reasons.

So, You Want to be an Academic Military Librarian?, by Lauren Dodd Hall

Source

When I started my MLIS, I imagined myself as a public services/reference librarian in a community college setting (where I had already experienced as a student worker) or at a traditional university library. I was open to other options, of course, but I didn’t have the full scope of what that could be yet.

Thanks to a great professor, I discovered the world of special libraries. I became comfortable with the idea of working outside a typical library setting, but I admit that I especially loved the idea of working in an academic special library--it seemed like the perfect hybrid of my interests. Thus, I sought varying experiences during grad school - I held simultaneous assistantships/student jobs at the main campus library and the science and engineering library, and pursued an internship at an academic health science library.

Near the end of my program, I learned of a paid internship opportunity in an academic military library that had the potential to turn into a full time job after graduation. I had never considered working in military libraries before, but only because I hadn’t realized they existed. When I questioned whether or not I should apply, since I had no experience with the subject matter, I got some all-around great advice from my special libraries instructor/mentor (who had witnessed others getting hired through this internship program over the years): “It’s an entry-level position. They’re not hiring for your military resource knowledge; they want someone with a good attitude and a willingness to learn. You’re intelligent, you’re capable, and you should absolutely go for it.” Long story short, I interviewed and was offered the internship, which did convert to a full time position after graduation. This was the start of what has become, so far, my academic military librarian career.

So how does working in this type of atmosphere differ from your typical university library? Well, like any library, it depends on the mission of your organization/community. Here are two differing examples from my work history.

The academic library for Air University on Maxwell Air Force Base (which is known as “the educational center of the Air Force”) is geared toward students who are already airmen. These airmen pursue various levels of professional military education (PME)--ranging from an 8 week course for captains to master’s and PhD level degrees in military/airpower subjects for higher ranking officers. These programs are very specialized, and the resources and databases reflect that. I had to obtain a security clearance to work in the library, since we housed classified materials onsite. No information literacy classes are taught; students receive “library briefings” and library tours from their program liaisons at the beginning of their coursework, and continue to work with their assigned liaisons throughout their respective programs. There is a continuously staffed reference desk where all patrons can seek help, but most in-depth reference questions are referred to the student’s library liaison, with that librarian working one-on-one with the student.

At my new organization, the United States Military Academy (West Point), the student population consists solely of undergraduates, or cadets, who are commissioned as 2nd lieutenants in the U.S. Army after graduation. While the resources the library provides are much closer to a typical academic library (less military specialization than Air University), the cadets maintain a much different college life than a typical undergraduate. Almost every hour of their day is regimented and accounted for (down to eating breakfast and lunch with the other 4,000 cadets--yes, at the same time), so we have to squeeze in instruction and outreach wherever/however we can. Another difference is that students can’t even enter the library in civilian clothes. We have a reference desk that is continuously staffed with reference librarians who are on-call in the morning and at the desk in the evening--for now. We have liaison librarians for each academic department--mine is Physics and Nuclear Engineering, thanks to my experience at the science and engineering library--and we attempt to embed ourselves with department office hours and in courses, while collaborating with faculty on collection development. We’re constantly brainstorming new approaches to take within our framework of cadet time limitations, faculty buy-in (or lack thereof), and other obstacles, so... fairly standard academic librarianship, with some caveats.

So, if you’re intrigued by the idea of pursuing a similar path, but wondering what exactly you’d be getting yourself into, here are some of the biggest differences you’ll find:

• There is no such thing as tenure in the academic sense - faculty status for librarians would mean being hired as contract faculty, with a teaching load and everything that entails. Most military librarians are either GS (general schedule) federal employees, though they can also be NAF (non-appropriated fund) employees or contractors. However, at the libraries where I’ve worked, professional development and travel are both encouraged and supported--when there is funding for it. THAT is a whole other post.
• There are typically no student workers - only librarians and library technicians. Sometimes interns will be allowed.
• Along similar lines, there are no “community” users - most military installations do not allow unescorted civilians, and most installations have a separate, community/general purpose library for those with a military affiliation (spouses, children, etc.).
• Adopting the latest technologies can be very difficult, depending on Department of Defense/your military service’s guidelines, and can take years...by which time the tech is long outdated.
• Speaking of technology, sometimes websites are arbitrarily blocked. At the Air Force base, I couldn’t read most blogs on my work computer (for some inexplicable reason). Since I read a LOT of blogs for professional development, I’ll admit this was a bit maddening to me.
• Contracting. In my positions, I haven’t dealt with any kind of purchasing with government contracts--which are basically your most complicated vendor transaction x 1000. I don’t know much about what this entails because everyone always seems to be rendered speechless after those meetings.

In spite of the differences/challenges, I love the unexpected turn my career has taken. Every day I drive up to armed military police, flash my government ID, help undergrads who sometimes parachute out of helicopters next to the library, and brainstorm ways to drop info lit knowledge on them. So, young librarians, if you’re still intrigued: watch for DOD-specific opportunities within the federal government, especially the Pathways Program; check out the SLA Military Libraries Division and its awesome conference stipend for students; and always feel free to reach out to those of us academics who are just a little bit “special.”

Lauren Dodd Hall is an Access Services and Reference Librarian at the United States Military Academy Library, West Point, NY. She graduated from the University of Alabama SLIS program in 2011, and was a proud member of the original Hack Library School team. Reach out to her any time via Twitter – @laurendodd – or through her website, http://laurendhall.com.

So, You Want to Be A Government Librarian?, by Naomi House

Source

My first official librarian job was for CSTI contracting as the Reference, Acquisitions and Marketing Librarian at the US Census Bureau. Oh, and one small thing, I was only half way through my MLIS online at Rutgers SCI program. How did I do it? Was it my grades? Was it through networking? Was I recruited? Nope. My grades were excellent but they didn’t even ask for a transcript until later and I did not know anyone at CSTI or the Census Bureau. No job recruiters found my resumé no matter how many places I had it posted online. No, what helped me find the job was a keen desire to advance that made me much more aware of the resources I already had. I was a member of DC / SLA and received emails with job ads in them regularly. I had no idea at the time that the contractor had only posted on two listservs, the Catholic University LIS student listserv and DC / SLA’s listserv. Contractors are often not just library specialists and actually do much, much more so they were unaware that they should have posted on ALA JobList or on SLA’s main jobs site. What got me my first job was reading my listserv jobs notices, a good interview where I smiled a lot, experience working as staff in a library, and a smaller pool of candidates due to the limited number of people on those listservs.

Not all jobs in the federal government are federal jobs: many are run by outside contractors. Also, not all jobs LIS professionals and students are qualified for are strictly in libraries. I highly recommend informational interviews as a way of sussing out what working in these different types of environments and agencies is really like. But if you are anxious or ready to start job hunting for federal work, here are some places I highly recommend you check out first!

In: Federal Libraries

There are many jobs each month in federal libraries both in the US and around the world. (Note: mostly they are only open to US citizens.) The first place I recommend librarians and MLS students look for a library job is the Careers in Federal Libraries Google Group and email list. Nancy Faget and her team scour the federal jobs sites and put all new federal positions into an email with hyperlinks so you can easily apply. Well, applying isn’t easy and each application takes hours to complete, but at least Nancy’s team makes it easy to know what is available.

Second, set up a USAJobs.gov alert. You can set up an account on USAJobs.gov with a resumé that federal HR people can browse as well as set up alerts for specific jobs series (types of jobs). Librarians and Archivists fall under the 1400 series, for the most part, which means the job can be a 1400 or a 1410 or a 1411 and it goes on like so. Alerts, just like the Careers in Federal Libraries email list, take the search out of the job hunt and save you tons of time. You are going to need it! Applying for a federal job takes hours and you need to be repetitious in the application. Jobs apps are sorted by machine first so saying the same thing twice is something that a machine sees as quantity. Machines see repeated phrases as evidence that you are an expert so say it once, twice or thrice, that is OK. For further advice on getting a job in the federal government check out my review of a DC / SLA and Careers in Federal Libraries event online.

Out: Non-Library Jobs in the Federal Government

Not surprisingly the very best resource for non-traditional jobs is also Careers in Federal Libraries. Nancy Faget is a federal librarian and President of Federal & Armed Forces Libraries Round Table. She has been working for years with many LIS professionals and was well aware that it is not just the 1400 series that LIS professionals can work in. In addition to the 1400 series librarians are often qualified to work in jobs families such as the 1000, 1700, 2200, 0300, 0000 and 0001 series; these are some but not all we may be qualified for. These include the Information and Arts Group, Education Group, and Information Technology Group. Heck most of the NewFeds (a group of new federal and contractor LIS professionals) I know do not work as traditional 1400 series librarians. I was a rare exception.

All Around: Contracting

You may have heard of contractors before and wondered what it was like to work for them. Where do you go to work each day and who do you report to? While each place is different, basically you are an employee of the contracting company who goes on site to the government agency and does the required work (cataloging, reference, acquisitions). The company you work for is your source for human resources, but you will also have a contracting officer or contracting officer technical representative (COTR) who you take directions from and work with.

As I mentioned listservs are a great source for finding these jobs and no there is no database of all jobs for contractors. Contractors win bids to get those contracts and can be secretive about who knows which jobs they have open. Yep, that is right, that does make it harder for them to find good people. Now here is a secret; contractors actually use Monster.com and other job scraping services that let you post your resumé to find candidates. It happened to my friend and to one of her previous bosses. You will need to update your resumé at least once a month so they see it but this actually works! Of course Aflac will call you too but one sternly worded “take me off your list” and you should hear from them no more.

So there you have it. LIS professionals can work in a variety of positions in, out, and all around the federal government. And the jobs may not make it onto the traditional websites you scour already so be sure to be signed up for listservs too. Part of the reason I founded INALJ was to help people find all these jobs in one spot, and we do a great job of finding many of them but there is no substitute for also signing up for every listserv that fits your bill. Make your own luck by not missing a thing that comes through your area. I know I am glad I did.

Naomi House, MLIS is the founder, editor and publisher of INALJ.com, a library jobs board and webzine.  She founded INALJ (I need a library job) in 2010 after her own successful job hunt lead to her first librarian position as a government contractor at a federal library.  She believes well sourced quantity is quality.  Find her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the INALJ LinkedIn group.