Applying for Academic Library Jobs, by Sarah Wingo

The job market is tough and there are any number of reasons that an application may not make it through to an interview, and many of those reasons may be as simple as “did not meet minimum requirements.” My experiences are with applying for jobs and serving on search committees at academic libraries, but I believe a lot of what I’m going to suggest is applicable across the board… with one caveat: if any of the advice given below goes against instructions for a specific position to which you are applying, ignore my advice.

The Job Posting:

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the very first thing anyone should do when applying for a position is to carefully read over the job posting. Usually the posting will contain all of the vital information you need about the position and will help you figure out what they are looking for, and whether or not you want it.

Next, look more closely for clues about what the search committee is really looking for in a job candidate. The job title, description, required qualifications, and preferred qualifications are all areas to key in on, but what you really want to be looking for is anything that goes beyond general descriptions and requirements posted to most job postings.

For example “MLS/MLIS from an ALA-accredited institution, or an advanced degree in _______ with a willingness to pursue an MLS/MLIS” isn’t unimportant, and you could see some version of this requirement on any academic librarian job posting. That alternate degree tells you what the focus of the job will be.

Resume or Curriculum Vitæ

Although most job postings will usually refer to a “resume”, some academic libraries actually want is your Curriculum Vitæ (CV). A quick google of “Resume vs. CV,” will return plenty of results explaining the difference, but this one provided by theundercoverrecruiter.com is clear and concise.

“A CV is an in-depth document that can be laid out over two or more pages and it contains a high level of detail about your achievements, a great deal more than just a career biography. The CV covers your education as well as any other accomplishments like publications, awards, honours etc.

“The document tends to be organised chronologically and should make it easy to get an overview of an individual’s full working career. A CV is static and doesn’t change for different positions, the difference would be in the cover letter.

“A resume, is a concise document typically not longer than one page as the intended the reader will not dwell on your document for very long. The goal of a resume is to make an individual stand out from the competition.”

You should look at your CV or resume with fresh eyes every time you apply for a new job. You may not need to change much, but you might want to update descriptions or reorder bullet points to highlight experience that is most relevant to the particular job to which you are applying.

As a newcomer to the profession, the amount of experience you have may vary and that’s okay. If you don’t have a ton of jobs or internships to list you might also add large projects you did in library school that are relevant.

And if you don’t know where to start, try Googling “librarian resume sample” or “librarian CV sample” and use the categories you see there. You can also turn to the career center at the school where you got your master’s. They’ll be happy to help.

Cover Letter

While having a strong and coherent resume/CV is definitely important, having a good cover letter is what will make you stand out as a candidate and may even help you to get an interview.

Some of what makes a good cover letter is personal and it takes practice to learn to write about your experiences in a clear and concise way, but there are also pitfalls that are easy to avoid.

• If the advertisement includes the names of the search committee address it directly to them, but if you don’t a general “To The Search Committee for [position title]” is fine.
• Unless otherwise stated in the application instructions a good cover letter for an entry level position should be anywhere from 1-2 pages in length. If your cover letter takes up less than half a page, you’re probably not providing enough information.
• Your cover letter should NOT just repeat information already shared in your CV. It should instead elaborate on what the search committee has seen in your CV by providing concrete examples you have had in your past work experience that relate directly to the job you are applying for. This is where your careful reading of the job posting comes into play. This is also where applicants can really shine, by highlighting the different ways in which they meet the job requirements and demonstrating their understanding of what the position is asking for.
• Your cover letter should clearly address the specific job to which you are applying. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a general overall template that you use for similar positions, but you will need to make edits, especially in the introductory and summary paragraphs.
• You also want to make it clear that you have some idea about the institution to which you are applying.  Do some basic googling, go to the university’s website and the library’s website. This doesn’t need to be anything elaborate, a simple sentence mentioning the name of the university and something that drew you to apply will be enough. You just don’t want your cover letter to be so generic that you could clearly send it to any job posting, because the search committee will be able to tell and may eliminate you because of it.

Some final thoughts

Never be afraid to ask for advice or guidance. When I was applying to jobs I reached out to a number of librarians at my graduate school. I had never met most of them I had never met before I simply found their email on the library’s website and contacted them explaining that I was a current student applying for academic librarian jobs in their area of specialty and asking if they would be willing to meet with me, they all were. I also had my boss at the time and a few of my former internship supervisors look over one of my cover letters, which really helped me to focus in on what was important and cut out what wasn’t. 

If you’re no longer in school or if you’re a distance learner, it is okay to contact a librarian at a university near you. Since taking my current job I’ve spoken to a number of people who don’t go to the school I work for, but wanted to talk to me about librarianship and I’m always happy to speak with them. We all remember what it was like to be new in the field, and we all want to help if we have the time.

Sarah is the liaison to the departments of English, Theatre, and Romance Languages at Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library. Her library degree is from the University of Michigan and prior to doing her MSI she did an MA in English at the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute. She tweets at @SgWingo.

Big Tent Librarianship, Part 2, by Becky Yoose

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In Part One I talked about to move from one part of the Big Tent of Librarianship to another. In this post, I’ve turned the focus on those on the hiring committee, the ones who decide who can join them in their part of the Big Tent. If you took a close look at your workplace, you will probably find that the majority of your coworkers share similar life and work experiences. They will probably look similar to you too. Unless you have the power and authority to definitively change hiring practices at your place of work, you might be wondering how you can make room for folks from other parts of the library field when you are just another search committee member. How do you sway the recruitment process to venture away from the cultural “fit” default?

A major part as to why you see a homogeneous workplace is implicit bias. Implicit bias is about our attitudes toward stereotypes - both positive and negative - that are held on an unconscious level. While you might have worked on correcting attitudes and stereotypes you held in the past, chances are you only worked on the external bias that you hold, since external biases are easier to spot in everyday thinking and behavior. In short, you are biased, your search committee members are biased - and you all might not even know it. If you are sceptical that you are biased - even after all those hours and work you put in not being actively biased - take the test on the Project Implicit site. Implicit bias is a reflex that takes active, consistent work in recognizing and addressing over time on a personal level. You have probably seen implicit bias mentioned in conversations about race, gender, age, and ability, but implicit bias also plays into someone’s judgement of another person based on their school or workplace.

Combating the implicit bias present in the search committee can take on many forms. The first place to start is awareness - your HR or organization might already have an implicit bias training in place, or have a section on implicit bias in the materials that the hiring committee receives for the hiring process. If neither of those are the case, talking to HR and the hiring committee chair about addressing implicit bias in the hiring process will start the conversation in your organization.

Moving on to the job post that your committee is drafting, pay attention to the tone of the post. Look at any key words or phrases are you using that might turn off qualified candidates from applying. Take this example phrase in a required qualifications section of a job post - “experience in an academic library”. Widening the net and changing the phrase to “experience in a library setting” (or another broad phrase) opens up the candidate pool to those who have the skills but not in the setting of an academic library.

Another strategy to combat implicit bias is blind reviews. This will take some buy in from the committee and HR if your organization does not perform blind reviews already. Usually blind reviews take the person’s name or any gender or racial identifiers off of the application materials, and this is where a good portion of the literature regarding blind reviews focus on. Removing school and employment identifiers is not as commonly practiced as removing name, gender, or racial identifiers; nonetheless some organizations have taken that route. A non-library example of this is with an UK law firm who stripped out the names of educational institutions on resumes to ensure that the evaluators will judge the candidates on their skills and not the reputation of the school the candidates attended. Another company that specializes in the blind review process found that when they removed educational institution identifiers that applications from community college graduates rose 15%.

You might not be in a position to have your HR department develop a blind review process. You might not even have a say in what the job posting says when it goes out to the public. In those cases, when you see candidates who have the skills and experience but not in “right” type of library, advocate! While it is on the candidate to ultimately show that they have the skills to succeed in the position, it is on the hiring committee to evaluate candidates without penalizing for experience gained at the ‘wrong’ part of the Tent.

Further Reading on Implicit Bias

• Is This How Discrimination Ends?
• Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention
• State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review 2015 [PDF]
• For a longer, related read about how racial bias has shaped our profession - including who is part of the profession - and ways to address this problem, I recommend Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science.

Becky Yoose is the Library Systems and Applications Manager at The Seattle Public Library. This is her second post for LtaYL. The first was "Fitting” into the Big Tent: The Role of “Fit” and Moving Between Library Types She tweets at @yo_bj.

Questions to Ask When Eyeing The Captain's Chair

A friend of mine has become a prime target for headhunters looking for library director candidates, and so wrote to ask for advice. They aren't sure if they want to sit in the captain's chair just yet, but it's a possibility. So they wrote to me, asking for my opinion about questions to ask and red flags they should watch for when interviewing for library director positions. That friend is in academia, like me, so that's the bias of this blog post. If there's enough interest, I'll happily seek out a public library director to write a similar post.

1. Do your research on the institution. I like GlassDoor.com, but if it's a small enough school they might not have a lot of ratings so also consider asking friends you trust if they know anyone who works there.
2. Comb their website like crazy and learn everything you can about them. Especially look for their Clery report and for the things they don't say (like student/faculty ratio).
3. See if AAUP has said anything, good or bad, about them. It's especially important to look if they've been censured.
4. Also look to see how they are doing with their accreditation(s). Different regions report to different bodies - and the US Department of Education has a still decent website to determine who covers where. But you'll also want to look deeper, especially at professional programs. The American Bar Association visited my campus recently to look at our paralegal program.
5. There's a big, neon warning that I ignored in the past: I didn't listen to my gut. I knew the place was bad, but I let my excitement about a move up get in the way of listening to my instincts.
6. Make sure to ask all the normal interview questions like, "How will I know if I'm successful after the first year?" and, "What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the successful candidate?" but also pay attention to the questions they ask you. I've learned you can hear what they didn't like about the director who left if you think about their questions for a second. Example, "How do you institute change? How do you make your decisions about what to change?" can be code, depending on their tone, for, "We want someone who isn't going to change anything" or, "I hate it here and want you to change everything."
7. The adverts are also going to be telling. How long is the ad? Super short is just as worrying as super long. Also, are they looking for the mythical unicorn? 
8. Ask about the budget. How big it is and how decisions are made about what gets spent. Be sure to save this question for the appropriate person - the provost or whoever is the boss of the library director. If they won't tell you numbers, whoa that's a bad sign.
9. Finally, look around you. Look at the people - is the group diverse, or pretty uniform? Look at the students - do you see a lot of them in the library? Do they seem happy? Look at the infrastructure - are the buildings in good repair? Is there decent parking? 

I know I'm forgetting something, but these questions and this approach helped me so very much with my most recent job search. In the past, if I'd taken the time to listen, I'd've heard the robot from Lost in Space warning me - "Danger, Jessica Olin! Danger!" But now? Now I feel like I get to ride a fire-breathing unicorn pretty much every day at work.

For those of you who are also in some sort of administrative position in libraries, what did I miss?

Tell Me About Yourself: How to Handle the Dreaded Elevator Speech

It's something I've heard so many times and kind of thought was bunk - that you need to have an elevator speech ready to go whenever you meet someone who could help your career and/or has power over your job. But as I've been introduced to different parts of my new community, I realized that the "bunk" of elevator speeches isn't that you need to have one - it's thinking that you need just one.

This all came to a head last night as I was introducing myself to our board of trustees, who are essentially my boss' boss' bosses. They have hella power over my building, my department, and my job. When I spoke to that group, I talked a little about my previous job and how I came to be here, but focused more on why I'm happy to be at my new job. "I've been nothing but impressed with this school since the moment I came for my interview all the way to today." On the other hand, when I've had get-to-know-each-other meetings with peers like deans and associate deans and similar, I've spoken more about my passion for student success and spent more time talking about my education. Another group I've spent time with recently is peers at nearby libraries. With them, I spend a lot more time talking about my path to my current job and have even been talking about leadership training I've done.

What I'm doing in each instance is establishing my credibility.

Here is how I decide what to say to whom - I...

• Ask myself, "who is this person to me?" If they are a possible partner it's a very different speech from how I'd speak to someone who might be working for me, and both of those are very different from how I introduce myself to people who have power over my budget. 
• Highlight appropriate accomplishments. The fact that I've been a librarian for 14+ years or my second master's degree might be important, but other times it will be the path I took to an administration job. If you're newer to the field, it might be a project you accomplished in your graduate program or the particular focus you took with your classes.
• Keep it as short as possible while still getting across needed information. With the BoT, there had been time to mingle before the actual meeting started, so I was able to abbreviate my introduction to about a minute. When I attended a meeting of all the math, science, and career education faculty...? It was five minutes.
• Make it stick. A good turn of phrase will take you so far with these things. One I've used over and over again, because it's so true of me, is, "I'm persistently cheerful, but also cheerfully persistent." It captures, in seven words, a main tenet of my approach to librarianship. It's not to say that I never get mad or anxious, but that over all I can turn on the happy face. Also, I am stubborn when I have an idea I want to see in action.
• Make it resonate. When I can do a little recon about someone ahead of time, I try to figure out what works best with that person or group. Sometimes numbers works best, other times stories. Smiling and positivity work with almost everyone.

I can come up with these things mostly off the top of my head at this point in my career, but thinking on my feet and being able to communicate clearly are two of my biggest strengths. Don't be afraid to practice these things with peers or even with close friends (who will be willing to give you honest feedback). One of the first questions you get asked in every single interview process is, "Tell me about yourself," and you want to be ready.

When Opportunity Knocks, or A Young Librarian’s Guide to Community College Librarianship, by Monique K. Clark

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If you decide to make the leap, you might discover that a community college library is  the place for you. They combine the best of academic and public libraries, yet offer a unique environment that reflect value we hold dear as librarians. You never know what each day might bring and which one of your awesome talents might be called into action to help a patron, solve a problem, or come up with ideas to improve your library, your college, and ultimately, your community.

If you’re just starting your career as a librarian or you’re thinking of making a change, community college libraries might be the place for you. Community colleges address social issues that librarians support such as diversity, inclusion, and open access. They provide access to education for people of all backgrounds by offering classes that people need to meet their lifelong learning needs. As a result, community colleges tend to be very diverse in terms of the social, economic, racial, educational, and national background of the students and staff. However, this also means that community college libraries face unique challenges in meeting patron needs and supporting the institution's mission-- for example, ideas and strategies that work well at a four year college library or a public library won’t always be successful at a community college library. Librarians who thrive in a two-year setting must learn or strengthen skills that will help them serve our patrons and contribute to the college’s mission--attributes which can be useful in other contexts. Community college libraries are an excellent place for new librarians to develop skills such as teaching, collaboration, and management.

Although I’m no longer at one, it was a great way for me to start my career - even though it was mostly by accident. I didn’t initially plan to work at a community college, but like most people nearing the end of library school, I needed a job to pay the bills and I was lucky enough to land a full-time library specialist position at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) one month before graduation. Six months later, the library director encouraged me to apply for a library technology specialist position that had become vacant due to a promotion. I worked as a technology specialist for nearly three years and then I applied for and received a job offer for a campus library manager position at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, NC. The knowledge and skills that I gained at both places are integral to my work at a public university and I learned to keep an open mind when new opportunities become available.

The community college environment offers many opportunities to learn new skills and collaborate with people within and outside of the library. Community colleges libraries are insanely busy in the fall, slightly less so in the spring, and even slower in the summer. During the academic year, all hands are on deck which means that you may have shifts at both the reference and circulation desk (depending on your library’s policies) or you may be asked to do a variety of tasks such as shelf reading, selecting materials to purchase, teaching a one-shot class, fixing uncooperative printers, or serving on a committee within the library or elsewhere. Flexibility, a willingness to pitch in where needed, and a great deal of patience are essential to the overall function of a library; it’s also a great way to learn about other library roles and to gain skills in those areas. Committee work can offer another perspective on the library and its relationship to the parent institution. For instance, hiring committees aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but as a result of volunteering for so many committees, I learned a lot about applying for jobs, interviewing, hiring, and institutional values.   

In community college libraries, the summer is an ideal time to work on new or existing projects, do committee work, try new ideas, or engage in professional development activities such as attending conferences or taking classes. At NOVA, we piloted a single service point for reference and circulation interactions, something that couldn’t have happened during the academic year due to heavy foot traffic in the library. At CPCC, I co-chaired a strategic planning subcommittee which allowed me to work with my colleagues in the library and other departments to meet student needs, promote the library as place of learning and collaboration, and contribute to institutional success. If career progression is your goal, taking on projects and actively participating in committee work can be a good way to showcase your talents and demonstrate your value to the library.

Working at a community college can sometimes lead you to unexpected places. I told myself that there were certain things I would never do, but ended up doing them anyway thanks to working at a community college. I remember a comment I made to the library director at NOVA about how I would never want to be a manager. A year or so after having that conversation, I ended up applying to (and being selected for) a position at another community college that involved managing a small regional campus library and two part-time employees. Being open to taking on new responsibilities can be the push you need to challenge yourself and to flourish as a librarian.

Monique Clark is currently a reference and instruction librarian at the University of Baltimore. Prior to that, she spent five years working at two large community colleges on the East Coast. She can be found on Twitter at @wizardinglib.

Editor's note: this post presents one person's experience with working in community colleges. For other people, community colleges are their end goal. Personally, I recently moved from a small, liberal arts college to a community college. The point of this post is to encourage librarians new to the field to be open to all opportunities.

"Fitting” into the Big Tent: The Role of “Fit” and Moving Between Library Types, by Becky Yoose

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Library workers perform and specialize in similar core duties throughout different types of libraries: aiding patrons with their inquiries, organizing information, maintaining and preserving physical and electronic collections, providing services and programs, and so on . One would assume that, provided that the worker can perform the duties, the worker can work in a variety of library types in their career, including academic, public, special, and school libraries.

I am a firm believer of Andy Woodworth’s Big Tent Librarianship philosophy. No matter what type of library or information environment we work in, we all share a common core of beliefs and skills that we can use to benefit all library and information organizations. Outside of the common core, we all stand to learn from each other in terms of challenges faced by each organization type. Cross pollination is a sign of a thriving environment.

And yet the reality is much more... quirky.

When I applied for an IT manager position at The Seattle Public Library, I was concerned that my lack of public library experience would negate all the other qualifications and experience I gained in my many years in academic libraries. Why? A sizeable portion of that concern results from the well documented bias in hiring committees surrounding “fit”. Like tends to seek out like, which makes it harder for those who want to transition from one organization type to another. You’ve probably experienced this roadblock if, for example, you are a public library worker applying for an academic library position, and vice versa. The “fit” roadblock extends to within organization types, creating another level of frustration for workers. Community college transitioning to a four year research university, rural or small public library transitioning to an urban or large public library - if you haven’t experienced the difficulty for yourself, you probably know someone who did.

In short, you have your work cut out for you.

What can you, as an applicant who wants to make the transition, do to better your chances?

●    Research. Obvious first step is obvious. If you come charging into a hiring process saying “I can do x, y, and z!” without any knowledge as to how x, y, and z would fit into the new environment, then you’re no better off than the applicant that hands in a generic cover letter and resume. If your mind glazes over when looking at the hiring library’s information, here are some starter questions:

○     Which populations do they serve (along with major demographic factors)?

○     What are their popular/prominent collections, services, classes, and programs?

○     What is their strategic goal/mission and how does that fit in current operations?

●    Create the crosswalk. Now that you have a sense of the hiring organization, your focus now is to see how you can take your current skills and knowledge and convince the hiring organization that those skills can benefit them. Organizing programs and classes in one type of library can transfer over to another: securing event space, working with organizations/individuals outside the library, marketing, and volunteer wrangling are some common threads in program/class organization. Organizing and managing information can be crosswalked as well, including tools and standards.

●    Be prepared to answer “Why?”. Indeed, during my interviews with SPL, the question came up - “Why are you wanting to work in a public library when you’ve worked in academic libraries?” You will get this question on multiple occasions during the interview process. Spend time reflecting on this question before the interview process - if you need a starting place for your reflection, look at the hiring organization’s mission statement or the community they serve and work from there. The most important thing, in the end, is to be honest in your answer.

With some crosswalking of skills, additional research, and a concise answer to the inevitable question of “Why?” (and probably a good amount of luck), I managed to successfully make the transition from academic to public libraries.  Again, I could have done all those things and still not made the transition due to hiring committee factors, and you might find yourself in the same place. Many hiring committees are still unaware of the “fit” roadblock that they made for applicants in the hiring process. Because of this, the burden shifts to the applicant (you!) to prove that your skills are valuable and applicable to the organization, no matter which part of the Big Tent you worked in the past to gain those skills. It’s more work on your end, but until we see a more systematic way of addressing bias in library hiring processes, it’s what we have at the moment. Nevertheless, there is room to move under the Big Tent - go forth and explore all the corners of the Tent!

(“But wait,” you might say before going off to explore, “what can be done in hiring committees to address the roadblock? And how do I make sure I don’t fall into that same trap when I get onto a hiring committee?” Stay tuned for part two which focuses on the hiring committee part of the process!)

Becky Yoose is the Library Systems and Applications Manager at The Seattle Public Library. She tweets at @yo_bj.

The Do's and Don't's Of Asking For References

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A local business called me recently. They called to ask about someone who used to work in this library. "[name] listed you as a reference. Do you have a moment to talk?" After a brief pause while I shifted mental gears, I happily spoke with the caller. The former employee was someone we'd been sorry to see go. But after I'd hung up, I was left feeling a little awkward. I said lots of good things, but coming out of the blue like that - with no idea exactly what the job entailed - I didn't do as good of a job as I could have.

This was the most recent instance, but this isn't uncommon. I'd say I get calls like that five or six times each semester. I've only been a director for three years, so I can't imagine how often people who've been bosses longer get those kinds of calls. I can pretty much always come up with something helpful to say, but these calls that come with no warning always leave me feeling caught flat-footed.

In the interest of cutting down on this feeling, or at the very least helping other people to not be caught out the way I was, here's my advice for how to handle references.

When you want someone to serve as a reference (for whatever circumstance)...

• Ask them well ahead of time. "Graduation is coming up fast and I'm going to start looking for a job. May I list you as a reference?"
• Be professional, but polite, when you ask. 
• Warning people again when you apply for a job - each and every time you do, not just at the beginning of a job search.
• Always let your references know as much as possible about the job(s). Sometimes all it takes is, "I'm applying to be a substitute teacher while I look for more permanent gigs," but if you can I recommend including a link to the job advertisement.
• If it's been a while since you talked to/worked with/took a class from the person, let the know how you've changed and what you've done in the intervening time. Send them a recent resume/CV, a transcript, etc.
• Even after all this prep, you need to be prepared for people to say no. You obviously want to ask people who you think have a good opinion of you and will help your case (different application processes ask for different kinds of references, such as coworkers or direct supervisors). However, the biggest reason you need to ask ahead of time is what if this person doesn't like you after all. True story: I've turned down more than one person who asked me to be a reference.

When you need a letter of reference...

• All of the above still applies.
• You should also offer to write a draft letter for them to use. If you're unsure what to include in a letter like that, turn to your friendly neighborhood search engine and look for "[grad school/job/etc.] recommendation letter." Alternatively, a lot of college/university career placement centers have samples you can use. Most people will turn you down, but some will take the letter you wrote and sign it.
• Give the person you've asked for a reference as much warning as possible. Being available for a phone call is one thing, but writing a letter can be a serious time commitment.

In general...

• Keep in touch with professors and former employers and anybody else who could serve as a reference, when you can. This can be hard, but since these people are likely past mentors, you might already be in touch anyway. Don't force it, though.
• When you decide who to ask, remember that you'll want them to be able to speak to your qualities and experiences with the people (person) in charge of hiring decisions. I have a list of a group of people who I can ask, and not all of them are former supervisors. Letting your references know why you've asked them, such as "Jeff, I'm asking because you and I were part of the team that rewrote that part of the core curriculum, and faculty collaboration is a big part of the job description."
• Be respectful of other people's time. 

Those of you who are asked to be references: did I leave anything out?

And good luck with your job searches.

Living the Double Life of a Dual-Library Librarian, by Brianna Hoffman

Working two jobs to make ends meet (or student loan payments) is not unheard of in the librarian profession. I have seen a lot of librarians, especially those new to the profession, do this. For the last fifteen months I have been one of these dual-library librarians. I graduated with my MLS in the summer of 2013 and, for a multitude of reasons, moving for a job was not an option. After spending six years working part-time at a municipal library, I accepted a part-time position at the busiest branch of an 11 branch library system. Since I have been doing both jobs for a while now, I have definitely experienced pros and cons of this “secret agent” life.

The biggest advantage of being at two separate libraries has been the variety of experiences I get. Since my libraries are not part of the same library system, they are very different. I work with two different ILS’s, service models, service populations, and two sets of goals and expectations. I do feel like I have been able to use the differences between libraries to enhance my level of service at the other. Working at both libraries has also given me the chance to work with multiple communities. My city library is very focused on the one community it serves, while the multi-branch system serves all of the other cities and counties around it. I have the opportunity to work on a variety of programs and initiatives, and I have learned a lot about each community’s individual needs. One of the really cool things about working at both libraries is it feels like I am getting twice the amount of experience. One full year doing both positions felt like two years of experience. I know that this is making me a better librarian.

Despite the positives, I have definitely experienced challenges. The biggest challenge has been maintaining or even achieving balance. It can be very difficult to give 100% to either library when you are only at each one 50% of the time. For me, it sometimes feels like working more, yet contributing less. This has been especially difficult and something that I continue to struggle with. And yes, there have been a couple of days where I have had to remind myself just which library I was working at that night. I am however proud to say that after 15 months, I’ve only answered the phone wrong twice. Scheduling is also difficult because each library has their individual staffing needs, and as the employee, I do my best to meet them. Both of my libraries require evening and weekend shifts, so I work late three nights a week, every Saturday, and every other Sunday. Maintaining this schedule has caused me to take a hard look at my priorities and how I spend my free time. I have learned to focus on what is important to me and choose what can be “back-burnered”, or even eliminated. Working both jobs has also forced me to be ridiculously organized (check out my giant, color-coded calendar), but this has actually been a good thing!

The one thing I did not expect was how my communication skills would be tested. I am lucky in that I have a good relationship with the management at both libraries, which makes communication easier. I have had to be open and very forthcoming if I was struggling. I have had to ask for help, which is not easy for anyone to do, but it has been essential in order to maintain a work/life balance of some kind.

Even with these challenges, I can say that I am enjoying my time as a dual-library librarian. The experiences I’m having and professional – and personal - relationships I’m building are well worth it. If you find yourself presented with the opportunity to take on two libraries, I would recommend that you don’t shy away from it. I would also recommend that you keep a few things in mind:

• Take time to decompress. Even allowing 15 minutes to mentally “leave” one library before going to the other can make a huge difference. Take time to decompress at home, too. Read a book, put your headphones on, or watch garbage TV. Do SOMETHING that doesn’t involve work.
• Be honest with your management and yourself. If you are struggling, reach out to them. I finally had to ask for a change in schedule because for a while I was working 14-16 days in a row with one day off. Neither of my managers knew I was struggling because I didn’t tell them. They were more than happy to change my schedule.
• It is also important to keep in mind that working at two separate libraries means you are going to have access to confidential information at each one. I have a rule that if you can walk into the building and see it, or find it on the website, then I will tell you about it. If it’s part of personal communication, or plans and services that haven’t been made public yet, I won’t tell you about it.

The best piece of advice I can give you if you’re looking to take on this double life is to embrace it. Embrace the experiences, learn from each institution and, most of all, learn from the communities. You will learn so much from the variety of people you serve. You will become a better librarian because of it. I know I have.

Brianna Hoffman splits her time between the Richland Public Library and the Mid-Columbia Library System in Southeastern Washington State. A little bit loud and a lot curious, she loves pop-culture and exploring new places when she’s not catching up on sleep. She tweets @Librarian_Bree.

Brace Yourself: An Invitation to Join a Search Committee is Coming, by Erin Milanese

If you’ve been at your job for a year or more, then brace yourself: you will probably be asked to join a search committee in the near future. In May, I will hit my three year anniversary at the small liberal arts college where I work, and I am currently serving on my 5th search committee. This includes 3 search committees for librarians, 1 for a staff position, and 1 for a teaching faculty position.

This post is about what to expect after you agree to be on a search committee, though your mileage will vary.  While this post is not written for job hunters, I hope that those on the market can see through this post how systematic and difficult search committee decisions can be. And, knowing more about the behind-the-scenes process can definitely help applicants.  

So. You’ve been asked to be on a search committee. Should you do it? YES!

What to expect:

1. Meetings - so many meetings!

When the committee first forms, you will likely meet with Human Resources to go over policies and procedures. There will be meetings to write the job description (or review the old one) and discuss where it should be posted, then meetings to clarify job requirements and create a grid to rank applicants, then meetings to review candidates, then meetings to create interview questions, and finally meetings to discuss final decisions. [Editor’s note: And, if you’re very lucky, you won’t have a failed search which will necessitate doing it all over again.]

2. Lots of waiting

Search committees vary in length - one search committee I am on has been working to hire someone for almost 18 months! Others move much more quickly. It depends on the type of library and the type of position you’re filling. Regardless, there will be lots of waiting. After the job ad is posted, you wait for applicants. After the initial review, you wait to hear who will accept invitations for phone interview. When your committee makes a job offer, you wait to hear if that offer will be accepted. Finally, you wait for the new employee’s first day of work!

3. Grids & Lists

Not until I served on my first search committee did I realize how systematic and organized the process of hiring is. At an early meeting, the search committee will create a grid or checklist that prioritizes the qualifications the job requires. For my last librarian search committee, these qualities included education requirements (MLS), reference desk experience, instruction experience, problem solving ability, and institutional fit. This grid was used to write the job description, develop interview questions, and to rank applicants.

As you review applicants, it is helpful to create your own list, ranking the candidates and their qualifications. The search committee will do the same as a group, likely creating three piles of applications: yes, no, and maybe. In my experience, for each “no”, we had to give HR a reason. This was where the grids & lists came in very handy. Usually the reasons were things like “candidate does not meet the educational requirements” or “lacking experience in reference which is essential to the job.”

4. The development of odd personal passions

When there are lots of applicants for a position, narrowing it down can be really tough. The grids & lists help, to an extent. However, as you look through application packets, you’ll start to develop some personal preferences and annoyances. My big pet peeve? A poorly formatted resume (come on, it is not that hard to have all your bullet points line up!). I also tend to ding candidates if they submit materials in a format other than PDF. This is why hiring is done by committee: one person’s pet peeve could be another person’s holy grail.

5. Decisions: tough ones, easy ones

I have been on search committees where the final decision was incredibly easy: the candidate came to campus, nailed the interview, had great references, and seemed like a great institutional fit. Usually, though, the decisions are much more difficult. What if one candidate leads a great instruction session but bombs the Q & A with the search committee? Sometimes, after multiple rounds of interviews, two candidates seem equally qualified. As a committee, you’ll meet (again!) to discuss and decide who to make a final offer to.

Serving on a search committee means a fairly substantial time commitment, but it’s a valuable professional service. You will collaborate and engage with colleagues in other departments, learn a ton about the hiring process at your institution, and most importantly help shape the future of your organization. And don’t worry, if it’s your first time, people will be happy to help you through it all.


Erin Milanese is Head of Learning Technologies at Goshen College in Goshen, IN. She tweets about libraries, technology, and her super fat cats @tad_overdue.

A Job is More than a Paycheck

The Kentucky state bird: the cardinal

There's been a lot of talk on social networks about a recent job posting for a library director opening in rural Kentucky that will pay the successful candidate $7.25 per hour. I didn't get involved in the Twitter conversation, but I'll admit it: I had the same initial reaction of outrage that a lot of people had. "Minimum wage? For a job that typically requires not just a bachelor's degree, but also a master's?!!"

I'm admitting my gut reaction here so that you know I understand why some people said the things they did. I haven't made minimum wage in decades. To be honest, I don't know that I ever did. I've also predominantly lived and worked in fairly affluent parts of the country, with the exception of when I lived in a part of the Rust Belt that barely noticed the beginnings of the economic downturn in 2008 because things there were already a financial nightmare. I'm clearly biased.

And that bias is the thing I've been thinking about as I mull over how to add my voice to the conversation. For sure I want to show my support for the library and outgoing library director in question, but there are people who have already written better than I could. Further, I've been emailing and tweeting with Dolly Moehrle (who has written a guest post for LtaYL in the past) about ideas of how I can, more concretely, help. I highly recommend you click through to see what Dolly wrote at her own blog in a post called "The Kentucky Challenge," and if you can please add your voice. So rather than write a "me, too!" post, I decided to take a different tack.

Instead I want to talk to you about how you decide where you want to work. I don't mean public versus academic, although that is an important consideration. No, I mean where in the country (or world, even). I've moved a lot for school and for my career. Delaware, my current state, brings my total states up to seven, although I've lived in Massachusetts more than once. There have always been a lot of factors that go into how I decide where to apply, such as the politics of the state and access to nerd culture and how good is the hiking. But one of the most important things I research is how much it will take me to maintain a standard of living in the area near the library/college, and will the library/college be able to afford to pay me that much. And that's before I even consider the kinds of benefits provided by the institution, like educational opportunities and health benefits.

One other thing that is crucial to me: will I be valued and respected in my role? Funding is frequently out of the hands of the administrator, either within or above the library. Doing more with less is a fallacy, but fit and feeling like you contribute are values that are worth more than money most of the time. One of the best paying jobs I had in the past was dreary and unfulfilling and I felt utterly unappreciated.

I'm not saying you should apply for the Kentucky job that caused all this furor. Actually, I think that search might be closed now, but when it was open people immediately saw the minimum wage and disregarded all the other factors. I'm just saying that before you write a job opportunity off because of money, do your research. A job is more than a paycheck. We're librarians, after all. Research is what we do.

Don’t Believe the Myth, You Can Change Library Types, by Maribel Castro

Source

After 14 years, it was time for a change.

Though an accomplished school librarian, I had hit a plateau and needed a whole new set of challenges. The choices for me were to either seek these challenges within the world of school librarianship or to look to a whole other area of the library profession. As it happened, a move to a new city resulting from my husband’s job change served as the perfect opportunity to pursue try something new.

I had always held a deep interest in academic librarianship and polled a number of my academic librarian friends regarding their work. I was excited about the new possibilities and applied for two research and instruction positions in my new home town. My ego took a hit when I received two rejection letters. I had assumed that because I had name recognition as an active member of our state library association that I would magically receive an interview. Since I needed a job, I accepted a position as a high school librarian working with an incredible team, but still held on to my goal.

I continued to eye every academic librarian job that was posted and continued to seek advice of friends who are academic librarians. I periodically updated my resume to highlight my most recent jobs, duties, and titles. I had no idea that it would be three years before I would see the perfect posting for an academic librarian. This time, I took a whole different approach.

Doing an Honest Self-Inventory of Your Skill Set

I began objectively assessing my challenges in applying for this position. My strategy was to emphasize my skill set through my years of instructional experience, my expertise in electronic resources, and my experience as a systems librarian- areas where my academic librarian competitors might be at a disadvantage. I printed the job description and became intensely familiar with it. I placed check marks next to each of the required and preferred job qualifications and listed my skills separately. I stayed honest and did not “inflate” any of my skills.

I also agonized over every single word of my cover letter, particularly since my academic librarian friends informed me that hiring directors and search committees “weed” out applicants based on the cover letter. There are many online resources to help librarians who are in the job market write the perfect cover letter. Additionally, online resources are valuable tools to assist in “selling” yourself, as well as avoiding the tendency to sound prefabricated and indistinguishable from the pack.

In essence, my self-inventory served as the guide for my cover letter. It provided me with the foundation I needed to stress my qualifications.

Getting “The Call”

After the intense work of looking at my skills through a new lens, I was thrilled to receive an email from a library director requesting a “time to talk” about my candidacy. It happened very fast- I answered the scheduled call that was, indeed, a phone interview. After I hung up, believing I did not do well, I felt it was pretty much over for me. However, as I pulled up to our home, I received the call inviting me to a face-to-face interview. I was still in the game!

While I did not yet have the credentials as an academic librarian, I knew that my mission would be to demonstrate my confidence in my abilities during the job interview. By the time I got to the job interview I had committed the job description to memory. In addition, I had spent countless hours becoming intimately familiar with the university’s library site, its resources and usability. The library website, I determined, was in need of an overhaul.

From my instructional experience, I had a keen sense of how students interacted online when seeking information. I would leverage this skill in the interview. Furthermore, I planned to constructively utilize my perspective as an “outsider” to delicately critique areas of need. For example, the job description specified duties pertaining to electronic resources, but what improvements would I recommend?

When asked by the library director toward the end of my interview if I had any questions, I asked, “Are you happy with your online interface and presence?” The exchange between us for the next hour clearly indicated to both parties we were the right fit for each other.

It’s Been a Year!

Just last week, my library director mentioned to me that I had simply “jumped into the deep end of the pool” when I started my job, now over a year ago. It was a challenging first year to say the least. I conducted 82 research classes, migrated our library site and guides to LibGuides CMS, learned to code to a much more sophisticated level, and took over the duties of managing our electronic resources within the first term. Becoming a subject specialist, understanding tenure, publishing, university committees & politics, outreach, are next on my plate, but I was right! I knew I could do this job and I’m so thankful to my library director for taking the leap with me.

Maribel Castro is the Electronic Resources & Instruction Librarian at Lubbock Christian University Library. She tweets @eatdrinkbooks.