Keep on working hard

Well, first of all, I’m extremely lucky. Or hard working. Or a combination of both. It wasn’t easy finding a full time (or a well paying part time) job right after moving to Chicago in 2010, so I took on babysitting and security-guarding to pay the bills. (the sign language bit was in undergrad–while also working two part time jobs to pay the bills at that time.) THEN I got really lucky, landing my first FT  library job in my first semester of grad school, although it wasn’t mentioned in the story. And it’s an union job that’s actually quite well-paying.  Other people I know aren’t always so lucky. It greatly depends on location, timing, and your work experience.

As I said in the story, “Just stopping to realize things take time. Things will eventually go my way.” It just takes a little while, you know?

I remember seeing statistics somewhere that it can take up to a year for recent college graduates to get full time work. Sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes shorter. I do believe that it depends greatly on your work, internship, and volunteer experience in order to get those jobs. Education is important, but it alone won’t necessarily get you the job. Your work experience and initiative will really help move you to the top of the pile.

Job vs career

That leads me to another point. I tried to make a difference between a “job” and a “career.”

Currently, my job exposes me to a lot of what librarians have to do in order to reach out to college students and improve services, but it is still just a clerical job. I hope for a capital-L Librarian job one of these days, where I can put my knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm toward reaching out to people, myself. I’d love to plan story times. I want to create guides for using databases for undergraduates, and I’d love to start sitting at the reference desk and start solving whatever people throw my way.  I especially want to try to get in a place where I can really help ensure accessibility, too, but I need to move up the totem pole a little bit more.

I enjoy the job I have (it sounded like I was an unemployed person in the story, kinda), but I’d love to be a librarian. In the fullness of time.

(Can I plug I Need A Library Job (INALJ) here while I’m talking about jobs? I volunteer with the Illinois page, so go take a look! There are so many great blogs written by my fellow volunteer editors about job hunting, too.)

Libraries are linked with the economy

Which leads me to another point. The economy definitely affects libraries and budgets.  No doubt sequestration is affecting libraries. It’s affecting even the Library of Congress. Ideally, when the economy goes south, we should investmore in libraries to help people who are hit hard to try to find resources and jobs to keep them alive and housed. Unfortunately, budgets and politics don’t always work that way.

So, as tax revenue falls, libraries have to make tough decisions about staffing and services. If people leave, positions might become attritioned instead of being posted. Similarly, libraries may try to expand services while maintaining the same number of employees, instead of creating new positions. This is the reality that faces libraries and a whole host of other companies, departments, and institutions. This is the reality us “millennials” face, as Jim Williams, the CBS reporter who interviewed me, said.

Maybe once upon a time the myth of “thousands of retiring librarians” was true, but in reality, and especially with the downturn, the jobs never became available. This is why I’m reminding myself that “these things take time,” and working on finding opportunities that might help expand my skills.

Changing identities

One thing we didn’t get a chance to get into in the interview is the whole changing identities premise. I was a student for years, and then suddenly, when I reached my goal of a MLIS, I wasn’t a student anymore. It was so strange, and it’s that feeling that precipitated my “quarter life crisis.” No more deadlines. I can spend my time after work reading…for FUN. Weekends can now be spent running and riding bikes…and not with my butt parked in my chair while I work on papers.

And the other thing about graduating is that all the other goals that you’ve put off until the fuzzy future–paying off student loans, buying a house, starting a family, –suddenly come rushing back to the front burner, and it feels like you HAVE to accomplish all of these at once. You don’t have to. You have time.

Student loans

Student loans are probably one of the biggest worries. I have some debt, all in the form of federal student loans, because of complex family issues. Paying them back seems daunting, especially if you calculate repayments straight up. There’s actually a lot of options open to us federal-loan borrowers, including

• the 10-year public service loan forgiveness (including nonprofit, private institutions)
• 20 year loan forgiveness
• income-based repayment (IBR)
• graduated repayment
• pay as you earn

Take a deep breath, and read about options, and pick one that’s might be your best bet. For me, I’m hoping for IBR and the 10 year public service loan forgiveness. My husband has fewer loans, and so he can probably pay his off sooner than the 20-year point, at which the remainder of your loans are written off.

Private student loans….erm…

Let me explain. My husband and I were eating ice cream cones during one of his meal breaks at his job at a department store. When we decided I should get a rain coat while there was a sale going on, he proceeded directly to the front door of his store. I protested: “But we’re eating ice cream!” My librarian brain was already imagining an ice-cream spill on the books…er, merchandise.
“Oh, it’s okay to bring food in the store,” my husband said.
“Even ice cream?”
“Of course! I see people do it all the time!” He saw the incredulous look on my face. “We’re not in the business of turning away potential buyers.”

The concept was so foreign to me. Food near merchandise or books? The horror! Maybe in a Walmart, but not in a department store. Or a library.

Every library where I’ve worked or visited has had a statement about food and drinks. Drinks were typically allowed, as long as it had a lid.

Food is far more restrictive. Any library that did allow food allowed it only in designated areas, like a cafe or in a space outside of the actual library. The problem with these sorts of policies is that it turns away people from our “merchandise,” the books we lend. Understandably, we’re protective of our materials, but that includes being protected from all the people who don’t come to the library.

Another problem with this is the lack of cafe space. Cafes invite lingerers, precisely because they can eat–but there is only so much cafe space to go around. In fact, I’ve noticed this problem in a library cafe on campus–people camp out while noshing, and there are no other tables to go around. No wonder there’s been trouble with people sneaking food out of the cafe into the reading room or stacks areas. And no wonder there’s been trouble with people sneaking in food into the library from outside without taking it to the cafe.

It could be an enforcement problem–we’d have to step up our patrols and discard food when we find people flaunting the rules. But what kind of image will that give people? That the library is a military state, if I may be hyperbolic?

Rather, the problem could lie with the policies itself. Maybe we don’t need to so much improve our enforcement as we should consider alternatives. Changes. I’ve heard people talk about how food attitudes have changed; people tend to eat more food in places that they might not have otherwise eaten. Grazing, eating small meals during the day–all are new habits among people. Also, People eat while reading books at home–why don’t we allow it in the libraries?

That’s not to say that we should have a free-for-all with food–we still have to make sure that libraries are a welcoming space for all. But if the pre-existing cafe space is insufficient, maybe we need to create more food-friendly spaces in the library. Maybe the entire first floor? Or maybe designated spaces on each floor? If there is no space in the library where people can read and eat, we should create one.

This brings up the question of food policies. If we request people have drinks with lids to prevent spills, what kind of requests can we make of food? My brainstorm suggestion is: “Food must be contained and not present a spill risk,” but I feel like that’s not quite good enough. (Send it to the committee! A policy isn’t a policy until it’s been debated on for a couple of months!)

On the plus side, asking that foods be contained does preclude teetering ice cream cones, and help keep my nightmare of ice cream landing on books from coming true.

Fortunately, I didn’t spill ice cream on anything yesterday, though I did eat it quickly just to destroy any evidence. And I did find a good rain coat.

Anthony Aycock’s The Accidental Law Librarian book proved me wrong. Sort of.

I still feel unqualified, but at least if I, erm, accidentally become a law librarian, I won’t be entirely lost.

To be honest, I approached this book with a skeptical attitude. I should have been more open minded, but I had a feeling that it would either be too dumbed-down and condescending, or it would be too obfuscated with legalese and out of my league.

It was neither.

Aycock strikes that tricky balance between keeping it simple and not making me feel stupid. He provides explanations for legal terms (now I understand what Shepardization is!), essential background information for trends in the legal world (like the rise inpro se representation), basic rundowns of the pros and cons of various legal databases, and lots of links to resources that expands on subjects addressed in the book.

And slowly, as I read the book during my commute over several days, my stubborn skepticism about the book wore down. It actually is useful. At least for a few years. That’s one of the drawbacks of such a book like this–information changes so quickly. No doubt updates will be needed before long as databases add more search features, websites change, and newly graduated lawyers have different expectations about information. That’s why I’m relieved he has a website with resources, so hopefully the links will stay accurate.

The skills he shares here about searching, though, are timeless. He shares many of these tips through anecdotes–like the importance of listening carefully to patrons, and gathering the keywords from reference questions to find clues about how to approach database searches.

The other thing I appreciated about his book is that he didn’t focus solely on legal research. He talked frankly about the basics of running a legal library: figuring out budgets, making the case for funding, and just how much TIME it takes to file those darned loose-leaf resources. (I remember all too well how tedious it was to file updates in the CCH as a student worker–I can barely imagine what it would be like to doonly that as a part time job.) He also talked about law firm politics, at a very basic level. (Tip: Make friends with the secretaries. They know how to work with the lawyers.)

I finished the book actually feeling like I’m capable of doing legal research. Maybe not a law firm library, but at the very least, I got some extremely useful searching tips to help people answer the basic legal questions. I certainly do recommend this book not just for law librarians, but also for public or academic librarians who have to answer a wide range of questions, including legal questions.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely yes.

Especially for those of us who are recent MLIS graduates who want to keep on learning without paying for more classes.

Disclaimer: I got a free  and advance e-book copy of this book from Information Today, Inc. I was not required to provide a good review, and I’m getting no other remuneration for this review. Except for my newfound confidence about legal research which might help me land a professional job down the road, in which case it’s a delayed, indirect remuneration.

But when I moved to Chicago in 2010 and ended up in academic libraries, I lost that pulse on the book world, and have struggled to keep up since. I even investigated the cost of subscribing to Booklist or other publications that provide brief blurbs about new books.

Fortunately, Chicago Public Library has Booklist, Novelist, and (Non)Fiction Connection subscriptions (scroll down), so I can just mooch off of their subscriptions as a Chicago resident.

I played around with them to get a feel for how they work. I think I like them. They are definitely handy for helping others find books by read-alike authors, on similar topics, etc.

The downside is that I wish it was easier to create a printable list of book titles to give to patrons. See, that’s one nice thing about of the free Goodreads account, because as you browse books, you can easily add specific ones to a list, AND you can print that list easily. This works for people who are willing to create an account, but for RA at the reference desk, it’s kind of lacking.

Another difference between these subscription resources and Goodreads is that with Goodreads, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole, following a thread of similar books. It makes it so much more suitable for patrons to browse books digitally. I would love to browse books this way to keep up with my RA skills, because it makes it more like when I worked in public libraries–but Goodreads is more personalized. I’m not quite sure how to begin making a new personalized list just for RA research.

The subscription databases aren’t as conducive to browsing, since it’s geared for the much different purpose of librarian-ing. The best bet for browsing is the Booklist reviews, but I’m still missing the part where I can observe check-out patterns from patrons, and talk with people about what similar books they liked.  I guess that’s where Goodreads comes in handy, but a few librarian friends is not the same as just random library users.

The other resources’ drawbacks for keeping up with current book trends is that they are are search-reliant. You kind of need to know a certain preference in order to search for similar preferences.

I’m always on the lookout for more RA tools–especially cheap (preferably free) ones for us recent MLIS graduates who may not be working in public libraries. So if you have any other tips, tricks, or suggestions, please comment! I would really appreciate it.

One nice thing about references is that the questions are pretty much exactly the same no matter which company the person applied to.

1. What was your association with the candidate? (colleague, supervisor, etc.)
2. How long have you known the candidate?
3. Describe the candidate’s role and responsibilities within your organization:
4. Name some of the candidate’s achievements. How did they accomplish these results?
5. What are this candidate’s strongest professional traits? Weaknesses?
6. What is the candidate’s work style? (Ex. team player, independent, leader, high-pressure)
7. In what environment would this candidate be most successful?
8. If this candidate were eligible for rehire, would you rehire the candidate in the same or different role? Why?
9. Do you have any additional feedback?

Pretty straightforward…except for the “weaknesses” question.

Gah. Weaknesses? I always trip over my own tongue when I’m asked that question in my own interviews, finally pushing out an awkward answer that I feel obliged to explain on end in a sentence structure that kinda sorta looks like English but it’s not. “Er, um…I work too hard?” I know I have plenty of weaknesses. Sometimes I operate on autopilot. Or I get mixed up and tell someone that a room reservation is missing when it is most definitely reserved (did that a few weeks ago during a weird migraine) and made someone nearly have a heart attack.

At least if I mess up at my own interview, it affects just me. Writing about others’ faults has a whole lot more responsibility.

So, how to write aboutothers’ faults? And without accidentally screwing up their job chances?

What did this librarian do to solve this thorny issue? I googled it.

The consensus seems to come down to these two DON’Ts and one DOs

• Do not talk about character flaws. “Sometimes he’s kind of an asshole.” Character flaws are unforgivable sins in the hiring world. Unless, I suppose, you don’t like the person in the first place, in which case you should probably not have agreed to be a reference.
• Do not use good qualities that can be interpreted as a bad one but are secretly good. “She’s a perfectionist.” Well, that can be a bad quality, but it’s actually a good one. And employers can see right through the act. It makes it look like you’re trying to hide the truly bad qualities about the person.
• DO use real shortcomings through concrete examples, and show how the person is overcoming that shortcoming. “When we first hired him, he struggled with learning how to use an admittedly difficult but essential program, even after training. To overcome this difficulty, he asked me for the instruction manual, and read it every night at home, and during the slow times at work, he would practice using the program. His perseverance paid off, and has a knack for explaining it to others who have difficulty grasping the concepts of the program. He helped us revise and improve the training program.”

At least, that’s my understanding of what I found online. It shows an actual problem, instead of a falsely inflated one. It shows how the person overcame it, or is overcoming it. If I heard that from new hire’s reference, I’d definitely would see the example in the DO above as a positive thing. I’d love to have a person who perseveres in the workplace.

What do you think? Am I on the right track, or did I miss something? Please do add your comments!