|
ElMudo posted:I've got steps 2 and 7. Still questioning leaving my current field for one that seems much less secure. I've always wondered why librarians drink so much.
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 18:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 13:00 |
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:I've always wondered why librarians drink so much. *sits at reference desk for two hours, uninterrupted* *is shocked and excited to see someone approach the desk* "Excuse me, do you have The Great Gatsby?" "We sure do! Which edition would you like to read? We have-" "Nonono, I mean the blu-ray. Do you have that?" "Uh, no we don't, I'm afraid. Our copy is checked out. Would you like to place a ho-" "Figures. Where's the bathroom?" "Down the hall, to your left." *watches patron leave* *chugs from stash of Maker's Mark*
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 19:19
|
|
|
Okay, so now I know why public librarians drink so much. What about academic librarians?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 19:49
|
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:What about academic librarians? You think that doesn't happen to us?  Also, add waiting lists of a dozen people for one textbook two weeks before finals and people breaking down crying at the circulation desk or screaming at you because they're going to fail without that book and it's your fault.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 19:53
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:You think that doesn't happen to us? *has circ desk flashbacks* *hands shake* (we actually don't have a reference desk where I work, so the circ desk folks got the brunt of it, meaning the paras)
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 19:58
|
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:What about academic librarians? *sits at reference desk for two hours, uninterrupted* *is shocked and excited to see someone approach the desk* "Excuse me, I need a copy of each of my textbooks." "Sorry, we don't carry those unless your professor gives us a copy, and then checkout time is a few hours." "That's bull. You guys are in league with the bookstore." "No, it's just that stocking every textbook for every student would literally cost us millions of dollars annually." "Whatever, I'm working on a paper on Aristotle, and the prof says I need sources." "Ah, well let's schedule a research consultation with our philosophy librarian." "I have to schedule a meeting? Never mind then, I'll just use Wikipedia." "Now hold on, that's not a good ide-" "Hey, where's the bathroom?" "Down the hall, to your left." *watches patron leave* *chugs from stash of Absinthe*
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 20:02
|
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:*has circ desk flashbacks* Also, I'm a Florida university librarian. We had a three hour meeting today on what to do if we have a school shooter in the library. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 20:07
|
|
|
Oh please, as if academic librarians wouldn't use an actual absinthe water dispenser
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 20:07
|
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:Oh please, as if academic librarians wouldn't use an actual absinthe water dispenser My university library does have a communal booze stash in the history librarian's office. Finals start week after next, so we've all been chipping in to restocking it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
Has anyone here witnessed the massive implosion of the videolib listserv?Cythereal posted:My university library does have a communal booze stash in the history librarian's office. Finals start week after next, so we've all been chipping in to restocking it. We only have a "food table" where everyone periodically restocks it with homemade baked goods and snacks. (I make a killer chocolate cake)
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
http://www.tv.com/news/the-librarians-series-premiere-review-tnt-141788542527/quote:TNT's new pluralized extension of The Librarian, its made-for-TV movie franchise that actually predated the Syfy drama, snatches several gifted but flawed geeks out of their day jobs to safeguard a magical warehouse/library of powerful ancient artifacts. Cue people going to library school and.... ahahaaha
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 19:50
|
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:http://www.tv.com/news/the-librarians-series-premiere-review-tnt-141788542527/ Putting world-ending artifacts into open stacks- good or bad idea? And in which MARC-subfield do you enter the artifact power level?
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 20:11
|
|
|
Lord help me, I just spent a few minutes checking Bibformats and debating over a few options.  Never work in government documents, kids. The boredom is beyond telling.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 20:33
|
|
|
You may all laugh but right this minute I am sure there are catalogers debating the right schema to use
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 20:44
|
|
|
I have some colleagues who currently have to read the RDA rulebook from start to finish in order to school the rest of our catalogers. I sometimes fear for their mental health.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 20:54
|
|
|
gipskrampf posted:I have some colleagues who currently have to read the RDA rulebook from start to finish in order to school the rest of our catalogers. I sometimes fear for their mental health. I did original cataloging work in an unpaid internship during my last semester of library school. Then got hired at an academic library and the only people here allowed to do original cataloging work are paid literally double what I am.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 00:38
|
|
|
I kinda like cataloging. It's relaxing and allows me to listen to the Stones or nerdy podcasts while doing it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2014 13:17
|
|
|
Ah, our Admin has forbidden the use of earphones by employees as being "unprofessional" and instead we are encouraged to listen to music through our speakers "on a low volume". That's not annoying at all! Right now it's finals week here, I work in an office with metal walls that don't reach the ceiling, there is student seating on the other side of our walls, and this isn't a quiet zone. It sounds like a noisy restaurant at the moment. That's why I'm posting here instead of doing my retrospective cataloging, and this is apparently less unprofessional than actually attending to my work while wearing earphones. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2014 20:00
|
|
|
My library has embarked upon a peculiar project. Our previous dean, six or seven years ago, insisted that we store all book covers for items we add to the collection, but remove and store the covers in a back storeroom, leaving the books on the shelves without covers. That would be well and good, but lo and behold what's probably a few thousand book covers take up space in storage, and a couple of months ago we asked the upstairs folks what we should do with all of these book covers in storage. The dean's solution is to have us look up every single cover's book by hand, find it in the collection, put the cover back on, and make new spine and barcode labels for the cover. Again, thousands of book covers. And she insists that we not use our student workers to handle the grunt work of looking up the books (by ISBN off the cover) and retrieving them from the shelves.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 00:01
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:My library has embarked upon a peculiar project. Our previous dean, six or seven years ago, insisted that we store all book covers for items we add to the collection, but remove and store the covers in a back storeroom, leaving the books on the shelves without covers. That would be well and good, but lo and behold what's probably a few thousand book covers take up space in storage, and a couple of months ago we asked the upstairs folks what we should do with all of these book covers in storage. "Oh no! A fire! Someone's gasoline collection spilled everywhere while an unruly student was smoking in the storage room! Luckily all the damage was confined to this small area and no one was hurt!"
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 00:21
|
|
|
Solution. Hire a student worker as an intern for uh..... Interdisciplinary reasons. Everyone wins! Also what was the rationale for the book covers? To highlight books in the collection if they're put on display other than the stacks? Insane Totoro fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Dec 11, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 00:52
|
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:Also what was the rationale for the book covers? To highlight books in the collection if they're put on display other than the stacks? Nope, we have special cover protectors for books on display. I have yet to find anyone who has a good explanation as to why we were storing the covers to begin with, beyond that it was the previous dean's idea and no one thought to change that policy.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 00:59
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:My library has embarked upon a peculiar project. Our previous dean, six or seven years ago, insisted that we store all book covers for items we add to the collection, but remove and store the covers in a back storeroom, leaving the books on the shelves without covers. That would be well and good, but lo and behold what's probably a few thousand book covers take up space in storage, and a couple of months ago we asked the upstairs folks what we should do with all of these book covers in storage. If not for this, then why do you have student workers?
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 13:00
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I did original cataloging work in an unpaid internship during my last semester of library school. Then got hired at an academic library and the only people here allowed to do original cataloging work are paid literally double what I am. This is pretty much me embarking on an archives rant a few years ago, when it turned out interns working towards their degree weren't allowed to describe/catalog records, but people from the employment agency with no education were.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 13:25
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:My library has embarked upon a peculiar project. Our previous dean, six or seven years ago, insisted that we store all book covers for items we add to the collection, but remove and store the covers in a back storeroom, leaving the books on the shelves without covers. That would be well and good, but lo and behold what's probably a few thousand book covers take up space in storage, and a couple of months ago we asked the upstairs folks what we should do with all of these book covers in storage. The first paragraph is exactly our situation, too, but we talked Admin into letting us run a campus-wide "upcycled art" contest using unwanted library materials, and our entire book cover collection has been donated to the pile.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 14:16
|
|
|
Thanks guys I had a nightmare about barcodes
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 17:52
|
|
|
a friendly penguin posted:If not for this, then why do you have student workers? Helping man the circulation desk, reshelving books, sweeping the library and stacks for stuff that needs to be reshelved and misbehaving patrons, and fetching stuff from the stacks for ILL. This isn't much more complicated than anything they're already doing, and the explanation I got was "Because I don't trust the student workers to do this." Which, in my opinion, is a bit bullshit. Yeah, there are a few student workers we have who I wouldn't trust with this, but likewise there are a few who could probably do the job of an LTA (Library Technical Assistant, AKA low-ranking para) with a few weeks of training.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2014 23:35
|
|
|
Despite my neurotic posting a couple weeks back, I'm happy to report I received - and accepted - a job offer for a position squarely in my (very narrow) field. (Rare books / special collections and Eastern European studies.) In the event anyone else is looking into RBMS librarianship, I can't stress enough the utility of a couple additional languages. Not even fluency, just a rudimentary grasp will assist you in so many ways. I have one class left to finish my MLS and will be doing it in spring or summer 2015.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2014 09:21
|
|
|
Congrats!
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2014 13:21
|
|
|
Anyone on the east coast have skills in business/econ analytics and statistical analysis? Job opportunity. Please send PM. It'll probably hit the job lists soon anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2015 15:03
|
|
|
Bitchkrieg posted:in my (very narrow) field. (Rare books / special collections and Eastern European studies.) You are my more successful spiritual twin  But seriously, congratulations on the job!
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2015 15:17
|
|
|
Hi everyone. I know this thread's been quiet for a while, but I have a super long  question about whether to take a job. It's mostly talking through it to myself, so feel free to ignore.  I often feel overwhelmed and inadequate in my current position (I work in web services at an academic library, doing web design and maintenance). I taught myself HTML and CSS and design principles way back in undergrad, so I lack a firm foundation--my degrees are in LIS and anthropology. I can see a not-far-off future in which we have to homegrow all the apps we use because nothing vendor-provided is ever quite good enough, and all I could really contribute to that effort is front-end work. Which is important, but doesn't help ease anyone's workload. Like every library, we're understaffed, underpaid, and overworked; right now I'm at least 2 months behind on projects because more just keeps coming in. But I think I'm finding my niche, and if we had a couple more staff members and I had more time to concentrate on this new area I could be fairly content here. Anyway, I applied for a newly-established position at the same library. I thought the job's duties included working on metadata standardization and control of our new scholarly communications and data management initiative. Over the course of the interview I spoke to 5 different groups of people (the dean, her advisors, my boss, the hiring committee, the new position's colleagues) and all 5 seemed to have a different idea of what the job was. There are 4 new committees/working groups that the candidate will have to join, all of whom have been working on the standards and services for the SC initiative. (I'm on 8 already and I don't know if I'd be dropped from any.) There's a deadline of mid-March to finish a big important task involving our digital collections' metadata (which is my weak point--I'm only passing-familiar with most metadata schemas). The position will be running our institutional repository and also a journal hosting system. It will work face to face with faculty and national institutions. Basically, I came away with the impression that either nobody really knows what the job is supposed to be, or they're trying to avoid hiring the 3 or 4 badly-needed open positions by glomming all that work onto 1 new position. At other libraries these duties are scattered throughout the staff. Pay-wise, I'm not sure yet. The stated pay was significantly lower than my current salary; during the interview they said there was a range and they didn't know the upper end of the range. If they can't keep at least my current pay it's an easy no. Stress-wise, amount-of-work-wise, it seems likely to worsen my problem rather than ease it. Someone mentioned that it sounded like a scapegoat position and I think I kind of agree. Later-hirability-wise it seems like a good move. Many libraries don't have their own IT people so it's been difficult to find a similar position to my current one elsewhere. Interesting-work-wise, it seems like no contest. Right now I am often just a substitute for "web design skills" for librarians who already know exactly what they want right down to the positioning of elements on a page. In the new job I'd at least get to read some interesting research. Also, it seems like it would use that expensive MLIS a bit more than my current job. Plus I'd get the "librarian" title without the hassle of tenure-track. What do you think? Run? Go for it? Drink a lot? (I'm gonna drink a lot)
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 19:49
|
|
|
Lower pay possibly? Unclear position description? Somehow the job does more real capital L Librarian work and pays less? Trying to cram three jobs into one person at a library? I cannot emphasize how many warning bells are going off. Furthermore, experience in library IT will probably trump any experience as a Librarian Librarian. So unless this job specifically feeds into what career you want, I wouldn't go for it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 19:56
|
|
|
Holy hell I just reread that a second time  What I would do right now is talk to your supervisor, arrange for you to get additional learning opportunities in web services, negotiate more help for you on the projects that you can't keep up on, work together to set realistic goals, and to clearly define what is the strategic plan for your department in terms of your job and how it relates to everyone else. Also no matter what people tell you, unless you're willing (or other people are) to commit to supporting a homegrown app for years and years don't even go down that rabbit hole. Just don't. It should not be on you to fill the software gap where your library is unwilling to pay (or change its structure) to make existing software work.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 20:00
|
|
|
Jesus christ I need a drink after reading that Edit: If you have half the skills that you say you have, I would just start putting my resume out in as many places as possible and find a better job
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 20:00
|
|
|
Holy crap Get a drink, then run as fast as you can and never look back. Even if this is what you're looking to do in the field you'll get swamped in no time as more work is dumped on you to meet vague, undefined goals. Red flag city here.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 20:10
|
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:Holy hell I just reread that a second time I'm glad I'm not just crazy and/or lazy.  Most everyone I've asked so far has replied with some combo of "wtf??!"We are currently rewriting a bunch of .asp apps that our predecessors wrote--things like our student timeclock, our helpdesk/ticket system, our consortial database access system--and it definitely sucks rear end. From our perspective the problem is that the librarians want ridiculous things from the software that no vendor can provide at our budget. (We're in the Deep South and are poor for any expenditure other than football. It doesn't help that our dean just turned 80 and doesn't computer too well.) I don't have any concrete career goals that this position would fill (I really don't have any career goals period apart from "feed my kid" and "support my book purchasing habit") so unless I receive some secret wisdom I will probably let this one go. Maybe in a year or so when the guy who accepts the job gets fed up and runs away, and the higher-ups have a better idea of what they want out of this job, I'll apply again. Maybe not!
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 20:21
|
|
|
My main advice to you at this point is to search inside you and find out what kind of job you DO want. You have a masters degree right? And you have a humanities degree. And you say you don't like metadata and web design and IT aren't really your thing? And you enjoy research and working with faculty? And if I'm reading you right that you have far more than 5+ years of professional experience? And you also have some quantifiable skills and experience in technology related to libraries? Sounds like someone needs to get on track to be an academic librarian! No really, you sound like a good fit for a lot of subject specialist/selector jobs that would involve working with faculty, developing curriculum, collection development, integrating technology into the classroom, library instruction, etc. etc. But I would talk to a career counselor at your university, former faculty, supervisors, etc. about what sorts of work you might want to get into. If nothing else, letting a supervisor know that you have ambitions (and a certain skill set) will let them know that you have ambition and desire to excel. And then I would browse INALJ, ALA Joblist, The Chronicle ads, etc. and see what people are looking for in a librarian. Do you fit those job listings? Are you unhappy at your current job? Okay, so start applying or start educating yourself so that you can apply.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 20:28
|
|
|
Insane Totoro posted:My main advice to you at this point is to search inside you and find out what kind of job you DO want. You have a masters degree right? And you have a humanities degree. And you say you don't like metadata and web design and IT aren't really your thing? And you enjoy research and working with faculty? And if I'm reading you right that you have far more than 5+ years of professional experience? And you also have some quantifiable skills and experience in technology related to libraries? I have actually applied for a social sciences reference position here in the past. The guy in charge of the hiring committee spoke to me about it some time later and gave no indication that he'd even read my CV. He's retired now, thank god. At any rate, I'm always looking for something similar elsewhere, or even a public or school position (I loved my time as a teaching assistant and would love to teach again) and when the right job comes along I'm outta here. There have been some family issues in the past few years that have kept me from looking too far afield--my husband's father and mine both died, our moms are on their own, we had a baby, etc. so it's hard to think about moving too much further from "home." Plus I have loans to repay and my husband's work is pretty intermittent, so a pay cut would be very hard to swallow. But we'll make it all work somehow.My boss has indicated that they were considering adding liaison work to my duties, and while I would love to do that work, I don't necessarily want to do it *on top of all my other work* and especially not for no more money. I made it very clear to them, I hope, that we have got to have more staff before I can change anything about my duties, because as it is we can't keep our core systems going because we have to jump on the new hotness every few months.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 20:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 13:00 |
|
|
Having taken two disastrous jobs where the responsibilities were nebulous, and I was (like you surely would be) chosen because of a few in-demand bullets on my resume; either get them to clarify exactly what they would expect of you, or walk. If they expect you to be able to do a whole bunch of different poo poo, they're going to end up expecting you to do all of it at once. If they're hiring you for expertise in one area of the job, odds are some assholes there are going to get upset if you aren't equally expert in the other aspects. Unless you can get some really solid trustworthy assurances from and about the managers at that job, you don't want it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2015 22:59
|
|
