Overcoming Gaps, by Jill Hames

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Let me give you a little background before I get started: I finished library school in May 2006. I started my first library job in May 2012. What did I do in those six years? For five of them, I traveled in the United States, working seasonal, non-library jobs. (My reasons for traveling aren't relevant to this post, but I'm glad I went.) From August 2010 to April 2012 I searched for a library job.

When I began applying for library jobs, I realized the application skills needed were different than those I knew. I began to think of seasonal work as a previous career and applying for library jobs as a career change. The process of applying to libraries felt more formal than I was used to and I was unsure if my application materials hit the mark. In a case of getting in my own way, I am shy about showing people my work, so I didn't ask for help. Instead, I read advice from all over the Internet and made mistakes that make me cringe even today. Avoid my mistake and ask for help from people who know what they are doing.

That, of course, means you must know people who know what they are doing. When my last seasonal job ended, I was determined to get into a library, one way or another. I asked at a local community college about volunteering and was given the director's contact information. Intellectually, I know library directors are just people, but emotionally, I dislike using the phone, never mind calling "scary" people. I called anyway, stuttering something by way of opening.  She quickly grasped the situation, "You want to get your foot in the door."

I blushed at how crass it sounded, but agreed. On September 1, they set me at the reference desk, signed me into a computer, and left me on my own. I spent hours getting familiar with the collection or running searches in the databases. When I saw something I thought I could do, I asked, and normally received permission.

I greeted each staff member every time I came in. Initiating small talk is difficult for me, but in time they began speaking to me first. After a few weeks, the library director gave me projects. Things progressed from there and when, over a year later, they needed a temporary librarian, they asked me. Moreover, I developed a working relationship with a librarian who has worked in both public and academic libraries and has recently been on hiring committees. He gave me advice on interviewing, but I was too uncomfortable to ask him to look over my written application materials.

Through creating volunteer opportunities for myself, I learned that when you want to do something, formulate a plan that will require minimal effort from the organization, decide what you can offer the organization, and then ask. Sometimes, when you present your plan, the answer is no. Sometimes, the answer is yes, but things don't work out satisfactorily. Sometimes, things work out better than expected. The only way to find out is to try.

I was getting library experience and developing professional relationships. Now I had to convince people that I wasn't a job hopper. If anyone took the time to look at my job titles, they could see that the jobs were designed to end after a few months, but if they only looked at the dates, all they would see is an average of two jobs a year. Maybe nobody cared, but I worried about how all those dates looked. Applications that required only a cover letter and résumé were a boon. I could put the focus on my skills. Applications that required a complete work history meant I listed over 20 jobs in 10 years. I can't help but think some automated system or human resources person took a look at that, labeled me as unreliable, and tossed my application. Maybe it didn't happen, but I wonder.

Most frustrating were enticing openings that required the applicant to have graduated in a specific year. Once, I wrote a cover letter, making the case that I qualified as a recent graduate, regardless of my degree date. The day after the opening was posted, it was taken down, so I never got to find out if my argument was convincing.

Personally, I'm glad I took the time to travel. Professionally, it might not have been a good choice. I could argue for all the things I learned about working with people or quickly adapting to new situations, but realistically, I don't think those skills without recent library experience are enough. [Editor’s note: This isn’t across the board. If you can sell yourself in the cover letter, explain how you’re a good candidate even though you might not fit their listed requirements, and show how you’ll be an asset, you could still get a call. I’ve seen it happen.]

I don't have any sure-fire answers on how to get hired, but I will emphasize this: decide what you want to do and find a way to do it. Try to make things easy on the people you ask for help, but find a way to do what you want. The way you find might not be what you first envisioned, but take what you can get. The process might take months longer than you want; keep asking until you find a way in.

Is it easy? No. Will you occasionally feel you've made a fool of yourself? Probably. Is the benefit from success worth the mistakes? Yes. Now, I'm not saying be obnoxious or be a salesperson. Use your best judgment on how hard to push. Even so, if you have a plan of what you do and don't want and can explain how your help will benefit the organization, eventually, you should find someone who says yes. Transitioning between careers is hard. Don't underestimate how difficult it will be, but if you want to work in a library, find a way to work in a library.

Jill Hames is a public services librarian at a small town library. She has her own blog, The Learning Librarian.

You Say Paraprofessional, I Say Professional

At times, when I think back to what I was like as a brand new librarian, I cringe. Oh my, I knew everything about everything. All you had to do was ask me and I’d pontificate about any library related subject. Of course, relatively speaking, I knew nothing. Thinking back to those first couple of years, though, makes me feel so grateful to the people with whom I worked. If not for them, I can’t imagine what kind of librarian I’d be now.

Of course, I’m indebted to the MLS/MLIS holders who I encountered in those early years, but in some ways I’m even more grateful to the other members of the staff.  Each of them had been working in libraries since before I’d figured out I wanted to be a librarian, in some cases decades before. I really dislike when I hear people like them described as “paraprofessional.” When I think of how hard they worked, and the kind of ethic each of them had, it seems ludicrous to call them anything other than professionals. Don’t get me wrong: I understand the meaning of the prefix “para.” It’s just that I can’t help thinking of parapsychology and the negative connotation “para” has in that context. Attaching “para” to any of those people feels like I’m insulting them.

I guess part of it is that I now know how much I still had to learn when I finished my degree program. Sure, I had my MLIS – from Simmons College no less – but I had almost no practical experience. I’d worked in a bookstore and volunteered in a children’s room at the local public library. Not that I needed much; it was an entry level position after all. But it still boggles my mind that I, the know nothing punk kid fresh from school, was the professional while those people who taught me so much, those people with decades of experience, weren’t called professionals. Truthfully, I’ve never met a “paraprofessional” who wasn’t a true professional.

What about you? What do you call non-MLS holders? Why?

Do Titles Make the Librarian?

We librarians do love our labels. I think that all that our subject headings and metadata lead to cross-contamination (cross-pollination?) with the way we think about ourselves: academic librarian, cataloger, public librarian, etc. (Don’t even get me started on the professional vs. paraprofessional labeling.) Sometimes it gets even more specific. For instance, my job title is “Information Literacy/Instruction Librarian.” There are actually lots of descriptors that I apply to myself: academic librarian, information literacy librarian, outreach librarian, programming librarian, instruction librarian, adjunct professor, researcher, cat-owned, Chewbacca-obsessed, etc.  I could go on and on. Sure, to some extent this kind of quantification can be useful. An example: my “fiction selector” label helps me identify catalogs and listservs and online discussions. On the other hand, though, I’ve noticed that all these descriptors lead to a tendency to pigeon hole. I’ve started to fight that tendency, started trying to look beyond the specialist level. At a basic level, to bastardize Gertrude Stein, “A librarian is a librarian is a librarian.” I know that’s still a label, and still a kind of pigeon hole, but it’s a much bigger one. More elbow room.

It's a curious thing and I wonder how many other professions do the same. When discussing this idea with a friend, she made me realize that I’m not sure how much of this propensity is internally vs. externally imposed. I know that it would get awfully confusing around here – especially for the higher ups – if we were all just called “librarian.” So yes, there’s a need to have some distinctions, but when I think about how long it took me to even consider what other kinds of librarians are doing, I can’t help wondering if all my descriptors get in the way.

I bring this up because pretty much everything Cari Dubiel said in her guest post applies to all librarians (and librarian-alikes). Yes, some of the particulars she listed are more appropriate for public librarians, but her general ideas, especially how we need to “recognize that [we] don’t know everything,” are important skills for everyone. Having so much in common with her reminded me of how much I’ve learned from librarians who don’t inhabit the same pigeon hole as I do – and of how important that has been to my career’s evolution. My ideas about graphic novel collections in academic libraries? Completely adapted from public libraries and *gasp* book stores. Gaming in libraries? A gift from my friends in the teen librarian business. The way I teach research skills that reflect what college students actually do instead of some perfect model of how I think they should? Straight from the research of someone who started out as a school librarian.

What I’m trying to say is this: Just because you intend to be a [fill in the blank] librarian doesn’t mean you have nothing to learn from individuals who work in other parts of this profession. Instead of concentrating on the differences – a tendency towards which we are predisposed by definition (Subject Analysis, anyone?) – concentrate on the similarities. You never know what you’ll learn.

What about you? Have you ever borrowed an idea from someone who works in a library that’s very different from yours? What was it?

Come back Friday for another guest post. This week you’ll be hearing from Ayanna Gaines. Ayanna is an incoming Associate Librarian at Ventura College in California. Prior to her 3 years as a part-time reference and instruction librarian at Ventura College and 1 year at Cal State University Channel Islands, she was quite active in the Illinois library scene, working as Assistant Librarian at Elmhurst College and being on more committees than you could shake a stick at.