First: I am all confirmed (payment and all) for the Library Technology Conference in St. Paul, MN March 14th-15th. (I . . . → Read More: Day in the life of an IT librarian]]> [One of my goals for 2012 is to update here on average weekly. We'll see how that goes, but I think I've finally sorted out some of my practical issues to make it easier.]

First: I am all confirmed (payment and all) for the Library Technology Conference in St. Paul, MN March 14th-15th. (I am combining a week’s trip to see people in Minnesota with this conference – which is an awesome fit for my new job – plus a chance to see various Minnesota friends, and the chance to be at something I helped found the following weekend.)

Registration’s closed (they hit their cap: part of why I liked it when I went in 2009 was that I do much better in a conference of 500 people than one of thousands.) But if you’re going to be there, I’d love to meet both people I know and people I don’t know yet.

On to the meat of the post: I thought it might amuse people to have a day in the life. Or rather, two.

Yesterday (aka Thursday, the 12th) 

Wake up at 5:20 when the text on my phone says that we have a snow day. (Rural campus: they’re considered a fact of life. 6-12 inches of snow predicted, with some bonus freezing damp on both ends of the storm.) We got about 6″, but there was quite a lot more both north and south of us, apparently, because we were in a weird no-snow V in the middle of the storm when it stalled over the state.

Snow days continue to be awesome when you’re an adult. As long as you don’t have to go out in them. (And for the first year in 6, I don’t have to do my own snow shovelling, so I’m enjoying it even more.)

Which brings us to this:

I  did not get any of the things done at work on Thursday that I’d planned to. And classes start again on Tuesday. And since what I was working on this week was imaging and updating pretty much every public or general use computer in the library. (Lab of 20 upstairs, 13 downstairs, plus various other machines), there’s a certain amount of urgency: this stuff gets harder to do when there are people actively trying to use the computers.

The individual stations (the reference work station, the instructor station in the lab, the front access services computers, etc.) I do manually: they’re taking about an hour a piece right now. One of our project rooms took me about 4 hours, because I took the opportunity to run various utilities to see if I can convince it to boot faster (so far, results are promising, but it took forever to run.)

But the two large groups of machines (the upstairs classroom lab, and the public machines downstairs), I do by ghosting. For the non-techie, that means I update one of them, copy that set-up (‘image’) to a server, and then push it back to all the other computers in that space.

There are days I think manually updating them would be faster. (Except that there’s a lot more chance to introduce errors that way.) Tuesday went smoothly enough, once we got the laptop talking to the wired network again.

But Friday:

6am: I get up, and do the morning puttering.

7:15: I go out and clean ice off my car. (I am becoming a fervent believer in the remote starter. Maine gets a lot of ‘just about freezing’ weather, which means that if you park a warmish car and it snows or rains, it freezes in sheets all over the car. The remote starter lets me start the car before I’m ready to go scrape, so there’s a chance of getting the ice *off* again.)

7:30: Drive to work. Remind our Access Services folks know I’m going to be imaging. Boot the staff laptop (used for this process, because our versions of the software won’t run on Win7, which my work laptop runs.) Do the ordinary morning things like check email to make sure nothing is critically broken, etc.

8ish: go down and boot the computer I’m pulling the image from. Upload it. (This takes about an hour)

9ish: go down and boot all the other computers to receive the image. This part goes smoothly, though I have the same “Why am I using floppy disks?” moment I did in August. (The pub machines are our oldest ones, and have both floppy drives and a DVD drive: for various reasons, the version of the necessary software is on floppies.)

Start the image push.

9:45: glance at the laptop next to me (while I’m working on some other stuff on my own laptop) and go “Um. Why is that not more done?” In fact it’s giving me 24+ hour completion times. (The timing is often off to start, but usually improves eventually.)

Consult with my boss (who previously did this part of the job). Consult with my main contact in ITS. Get a “Yeah, it’s doing that for me: try bringing the laptop to the same area as the computers you’re imaging.”

Bring the laptop downstairs to one of our project zones, swipe that room’s wired connection, try again. Slightly better times (12ish, this time). But still, you know, not useful. Decide to let it run for a bit, in case some fluke speeds it up. (One of our staff needs that laptop for orientation on Monday, so I can’t just let it run, because it needs one setting changed to be useable for orientation.)

11ish to 2ish: do other useful stuff. (Namely, set up the basis of the website for the big project: much of which is fine, and one bit of which I need admin intervention on the site on, I think. It’s not awesome yet, but it has good bones and after it’s gelled a little more in my brain, I have more ideas for next week.)

2pm: Still no luck. I shut everything down, we go to plan Q at this point (having run through B, C, D… earlier in the week), and plan to do them on Tuesday. (When if it has to run overnight, I can do that.)

I then go off and update one of the other computers manually, so at least I feel like I got something done. But really. It was one of those days of “Ok. What’s the next thing to try?”

4pm: Go home, glad to have a 3 day weekend, so I can catch up on a few other projects.

I took two days off work this week, partly because there were online things I wanted to be around for that I knew would run late into the . . . → Read More: Near and Far]]> I’ve spent a very cheerful weekend being very happy where I am. Which makes it a good time to talk about why I love it here.

I took two days off work this week, partly because there were online things I wanted to be around for that I knew would run late into the night. And because it gave me time to do some other things around home that I’d wanted. (Lots of thinking about what I want to do with music and writing projects this coming year, and some cooking, among other things.)

But it’s also been good for another reason. When I was thinking about taking this job, one of the things I thought about was the question of “Do I really want to live in rural Maine?” The answer, five months later, is a resounding “Yes!”

Now, mind, access to a reasonable ‘Net connection helps here. I’m not sure I’d have been quite as confident about it ten years ago, or even five. But right now? I spent a lot of the night of the 21st chatting with a dear friend currently doing research in Japan, and have been chatting on and off all weekend with other friends.

It’s not quite the same as hanging out in their living rooms, but it’s still pretty awesome. And next weekend, I’ll drive down to Boston, and see my mother and various friends. I don’t feel isolated at all, and in fact, my social life is a lot more to my taste in some ways than it was in Minneapolis. (I get lots of downtime during the week, with excursions when I want rather than feeling like there’s several things I’d really like to be at most nights, and then guilty that I’m not at any of them.)

I love the part where everything here is nearby, and easy. My commute to work is under 5 minutes, and if I walk, it’s 10. I ran two different errands over lunch on Wednesday, because things are just that close together. I can walk down to one of the grocery stores, and did on Saturday. And while I’m still figuring out how I want to pick up more local interests and activities, I’m really happy in a fundamentally contented sort of way.

It’s a very good fit for how I want to live my life. And I can’t begin to talk about the variety and range of locally produced foods, given the climate. (And when I want things that aren’t handy here – there’s a pleasant drive through stunningly gorgeous countryside to get to it. Or Amazon Prime, which is surprisingly handy for household needs that I can’t do easily locally.)

But a lot of people dismiss rural areas. Or flyover country, including Minnesota. Which always makes me blink. (Did you know that the Twin Cities has more theatre seats per capita than anywhere else in the US besides New York City? Yeah. Most people don’t.)

My mother and sister were talking on Facebook about a recent Atlantic article about Iowa City, a place they both have a very strong attachment to: my father taught at the University of Iowa for 10 years at the beginning of his career, and my brother and sister were born there. [Interesting responses here, here, and here, by the way, especially the last one.]

And reading it, I can see why they’re irked. Particularly the bits about homogeneity.

I’ve actually been impressed and amazed by the range of people I get to interact with here. No, there’s not as much ethnic diversity as other places I’ve lived – but there’s a huge range of stories and interests and backgrounds. My campus has a big commitment to being a resource for the larger community, not just the university, and every time I sit down to help someone for more than a minute or two, there’s another story, another chance to learn something. (And definitely a chance to make someone’s life better: I love that part.)

There’s no doubt that there are hard things about living in rural America, in all sorts of ways. But I also see, all around me (and on trips to Iowa, and to rural Minnesota, and all sorts of other places) that there’s a great deal of good and complexity and depth that gets overlooked all too often. This world isn’t simple – and that’s as true here as in a large city. And here, in some ways, it’s easier to see.

And that’s something that’s rather core to why I love my job: digging in below the surface, figuring out why things connect the ways they do, how to follow the thread of information and inspiration from one place to another.

I just hit that dip *after* you’re hectically busy where all you really want to do is do simple things (in my case: read a lot, knit . . . → Read More: What my work-life looks like]]> No, really, I’m going to work on blogging more regularly. (And if you have suggestions for things you’d like to see me talk about, leave a comment!)

I just hit that dip *after* you’re hectically busy where all you really want to do is do simple things (in my case: read a lot, knit a fair bit while watching non-demanding entertainment, read some more, mess around on the computer. Repeat. For, apparently, about a month.) But my creative brain came back with a vengeance in the last 10 days or so.

But I want to start talking some more about various long-term projects and interests, and before I do that, it makes sense to talk about the shape of my day and my week.

A typical day:

6am: I get up, putter around and do morning things (read my email, check in the various online spaces I hang out in, etc.) Somewhere in there, I get dressed, make lunch, and get ready to go. If I’m walking to work (which I’m trying to do at least twice a week, assuming the weather’s reasonable), I leave just before 7:20, otherwise, I get in the car at 7:25.

7:30am: Use my key to let myself into the library, say hi to the nice people behind the main desk, and wander up to my office via the staff room fridge on the 2nd floor. I check email, my calendar, and my to-do list (currently, I’m exploring Nirvana, about which I have more to say eventually.)

11:30ish: Have lunch (a half-hour break)

4pm: Wander back home. Do stuff. Go to bed around 9ish and read before falling asleep. (This is the cat-approved portion of the evening and she will nag me if I try to stay up too late.)

Variations: Every other week, I’m now on evening night shift, which means I come in at noon-thirty (or earlier, if I’ve got a meeting, and take a longer break in the afternoon). I work in my normal space until 5:45, then spend from 6-9pm at the Access Services desk, helping with reference questions, generally helping out if it’s busy, and otherwise working on my own projects. I like the change of pace.

(I’ve done two shifts so far, so I now know mostly how to do the major things – check books in and out, get ILL items for people, find items on reserve, etc, but I’m still learning a lot.)

I’ve found that starting early means it’s easier to do certain kinds of tech support work (before people come in and want to start using all those computers), though there’s a certain amount of flexibility possible if I wanted to shift my hours a little bit. Mostly, though, I like being done at 4.

And what do I do? 

Some weeks, I have very few things on my calendar. Others, I do. (I have two sets of meetings that run every other week, in the same week, so I seem to be tending to have a week with a lot of meetings, and then a week without many, which is actually sort of useful.)

I’m currently not on the general reference schedule (I will be next semester), but I’ve been volunteering to take people’s reference shifts when they need a sub (due to vacation, a meeting elsewhere they have to be at, etc.)

In general, my days involve some combination of the following:

Making computers work: What it sounds like: if they break, I try to fix them. When I get stuck, I call our contact in ITS. Usually, something needs me to poke at it a couple of times a week. I use a  Google form as a tracking system so that (over time) I can see if there are any patterns.

I’ll do another round of reimaging and updating over our winter break, which is preventative “make this not break” work. This week, I’ve set up 2 new computers for colleagues, and have one more to go. (That part? Awesome.)

Helping with technology questions: I get between 1-2 tech questions most days from library users (and often another one or two from staff) most days. There will likely be more as we get closer to the end of semester. Common ones have involved Word and footnotes, saving an image file in a different format, or a computer not behaving as expected.

I also do a bit of instruction: I’m currently contemplating “more on how to use Excel” for our next staff training meeting.

Writing blog posts: I currently write a post on library resources (or a related topic) every Wednesday, and a book review every Friday for the library blog. (And may chime in on other topics: I am in rotation with two of my co-workers who focus on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday topics.)

Reading blogs: A formal part of my job is “keep up with nifty technology stuff, explain why we should care about it here, and make it happen.” Which means reading bunches of stuff. (And, when relevant, sharing it via the library blog.)

Updating our Appalachian Trail community hike: Our One Book-One Campus type project (we call it On Our Minds) book this year is Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. Along with displays and presentations and other such things, we’re doing a community hike: anyone in our community (students, staff, faculty, alums) can post how much they walk/run. (Participation counts towards entries to win a handcarved walking stick.)

I keep track of the total, and update on our Facebook page every day or two. We’re currently over 40% done, and in Virginia. If we communally get to Maine – which seems likely, because we have some *serious* walkers in our community – we’ll turn around and head south again.

Helping with whatever other questions come my way: We welcome people to poke their heads into our office if they have questions (rather than walk down to the 1st floor), so we sometimes get “Can you help me find this book/find books in general/etc.” questions.

Community user accounts: One of the things that’s fascinating (and largely pretty awesome) about this school is that the campus is committed to being a resource for the community, not just the students/staff/faculty. This is also a pretty pragmatic reality in a rural community where high-speed internet access is still largely available only near town centers (otherwise, it’s dial-up or satellite). That means community patrons can come here to use the Internet, and can also get a courtesy library card.

At the moment, you must have an individual login to use any of our computers. We have a series of guest passes for people who just need a computer that day (which includes things like tourists who are only in town briefly), but we will also create accounts for people who want an ongoing account. When I say “we”, I mean “I” – it’s a pretty simple process, but it’s a couple of steps. I’m doing 3-5 a week, on average.

Maintaining the library website (both for the main library, and for our education library, in a different building across the street.) Currently, this is in Dreamweaver, but we’re hoping for an eventual move to WordPress. There was a flurry of updates in August, and now it’s mostly little things.

Related to this, I’ve got a couple of LibGuides (one on RefWorks, one on OneSource/Summon, in progress in various ways.)

Longer term projects: currently, I’ve got several…

- working on setting up a staff wiki with a bunch of our documentation and information. Currently, I’m working on restructuring the theme (so navigation options work the way we’d like) and dropping more info in there. (We’re using Wikispaces, which makes their Plus version free to schools and universities.)

- reviewing everything in our shared library staff server space. The end plan is to move whatever we can to the wiki (for ease of access), and have much better organization for everything else. There are a lot of files, so I’m going 5-10 folders at a time, proposing solutions in an email to all of the library staff, and then getting comments.

- I’ve got a meeting later this week for a new technology instruction initiative, so I’ve spent time collecting information for that, and thinking a lot about it, and what questions we should talk about at the meeting. I expect that *after* the meeting, I will be spending lots of time working on that, since we would like to have something to launch by spring semester.

- general research on various other things, including adding mobile access to various things we offer, and whether we want to do it now (given the lack of mobile devices accessing our library site, and the hopes for a back end shift, we’re waiting for the moment, but I like knowing what my options are.)

- working on getting more familiar with the Adobe CS 5.5 apps, so I can offer better support/training on them.

Bits and pieces: We have an education-in-retirement program, and various library staff usually offer something. I’m going to do a class on smart phones (starting from the basics, like “why might you care” in February. Last week, I went to their signup event and answered questions (and asked what people were particularly interested in learning). I’m waiting until February to prep the actual class, though, because we all know how much is going to change between now and then.

In other news, I had a lovely short hike in some nearby trails this morning. Maine . . . → Read More: Links of interest: August 20th, 2011]]> Welcome to the promised “links of doom” post – there’s 39 links in here. I am doing this before I acquire more. (I am also working on a set of job hunting resource links, and some other stuff.)

In other news, I had a lovely short hike in some nearby trails this morning. Maine remains gorgeous.

(here, have a photo I took on my walk: this is a maintained set of trails about a mile from my home.)

Why information literacy matters:

• Joyce Valenza has a really compelling piece about why being able to find and evaluate information really is a crucial skill – and why restrictions on access can be prohibitive.
• How ready access to information affects our memories – some interesting research.
• Jessamyn West’s commencement speech at Goddard College which is powerfully about taking control of our own lives. (I’m really looking forward to hearing her speak in person next month in Augusta at a tri-region meeting about ebooks and technology. Awesome way to spend my birthday.)

Instructional resources:

• Some interesting resources on teaching elders about online tools (especially around safety, financial scams, etc.) from a question on Ask.Metafilter.
• Joyce Valenza highlights SnagLearning, which provides open access to a range of documentaries for middle school students on up.
• A really nice outline for teaching about digital footprint issues from Alex Ragone.
• A DIY guide to making infographics
• A really interesting look at a university class discussion about plagiarism, using three online reading sources.
• A guide to keeping up with search tools from Joyce Valenza.
• Rosalind Wiseman has an interesting guide to facing educators who abuse their power – she gives some models for conversation to change what’s going on.

Academic libraries:

• A post from Andy at Information Tyrannosaur about how college libraries are making it easier for students to schedule an appointment with a librarian – and how that’s deepening conversations about research.
• Barbara Fister talks sensibly about searching, why it’s critical, and how libraries are handling aspects of it (quite badly).
• Patricia Aufderheide has a nice summary of myths about fair use (aimed at educational uses).

Access and assistance:

• Some fascinating thoughts from the Boston Python Workshop, an outreach event for women (and what being accessible and doing meaningful outreach might mean you should think about.)

Google+
First: I am currently really frustrated with Google’s approach to the pseudonym issue (which affects me and a number of people I know, for reasons elaborated in links in this section), and that’s making me not want to use the site, even with my legal name (which I use for work-related things). But I also wanted to highlight a couple of tools for people who do want to use it, or at least try it out.

• Brian at Swiss Army Librarian talks about Google+ as a learning tool.
• Social Media Examiner has a good getting-started guide.
• Doug Johnson has some thoughts about Google+ and schools.
• Sarah (Librarian in Black)’s outline of a Google+ class she taught at her library.
• A guide to Google+ privacy controls, from LifeHacker

Anyway, the approach to naming issues has been really problematic (the short version is that Google has been suspending people who use a pseudonym, what looks like a pseudonym, or nicknames that they use widely, but are not their legal name. After starting with a policy of “use the name other people call you.”)

Denise, co-founder of Dreamwidth, has a great post about name policies in general. She highlights something I really appreciate: why do some places insist on just one name and format of name?

Socially, it’s long been common that we might have a formal name, a family nickname, the thing our friends from high school call us but no one else does, the name we use at work, and much more. Why can’t we pick the one we want to use as long as we’re not using it to defraud?

Likewise, having volunteered under her management on the LiveJournal Terms of Service team for about 18 months, I agree with her notes about abuse from legal names vs. chosen names, and that in that setting, that some of the creepiest and most difficult cases were people using what were clearly their legal names on the site.

And she links to My Name Is Me, a project of people who use self-chosen names for a variety of reasons, about why they do that. (I agree with her that I like the term autonymity for that…)

danah boyd also has a great post on “real names” policies are an abuse of power.

GeekFeminism has been closely tracking the issues with Google’s ban of pseudonyms (and other names they don’t think are ‘real’).  Some of the most awesome posts include:

• Who is harmed by a real name policy? (Which looks at the many reasons someone might wish to use something other than their legal name in online – and offline – settings.) There’s a editable wiki with a long list of reasons for pseudonym use, too.
• “real”/legal name communities behave better asks for research and evidence that that’s actually true.
• And their two most recent link roundups are here and here, with some more really awesome conversations.

And finally, Skud (one of the co-founders of the GeekFeminism blog and widely known as a presenter by that name) had her Google+ account suspended and has been documenting the process. (As she notes, she was a Google employee until shortly before this happened before leaving for other reasons, so she had some contacts within the company.)

• I’ve been suspended from Google+
• More comments on Google+ and names
• Preliminary results of my survey of suspended Google+ accounts
• Google is gagging user advocates
• An update on my Google Plus suspension

Ebooks:

• David Lee King summarises the difference ebook vendors at ALA.
• Sarah at Librarian in Black has a great introduction to the Open Library project, which is working on making free ebooks available to libraries.

Living online:

• Somewhere along the line, I got linked to an interesting argument made much earlier this year by Paul Ford, in which he argues that the Web is a customer service medium, and takes on the question of how we answer “Why wasn’t I consulted?”
• There’s an interesting Canadian site, Digital Tattoo, aimed at older teens (and college students) about online privacy and digital footprint issues.

And other tidbits:

• Ways to socially reward library patrons.
• How to create the online community you want from Anil Dash (Note for strong language)
• Draft horses bringing fiber optic cable to rural Vermont towns.

Thanks for stopping by!

If you’d like to hang out, here’s some of my . . . → Read More: Hi, nice people!]]> Thanks to a couple of lovely people retweeting the index post for my job hunting retrospective, I have one of those awesome lines going skyward in my blog stats. (The actual numbers aren’t huge, but it’s still fun to see.)

Thanks for stopping by!

If you’d like to hang out, here’s some of my plans for the near future around here:

1) No later than this weekend, I will do the massive links of doom post that I’ve been saving links for since the beginning of July. And then do much better at posting them at least twice a month.

2) Resuming more regular blogging, by which I mean ‘at least once a week’ and ideally mean ‘more like twice a week’. We’ve just sorted out where I’m fitting into the blogging lineup at work, so I now have an idea of how different topics might split out.

3) I intend to continue blogging about technology (and especially how we can use it to make our lives richer, fuller, and more joyful), libraries, books, reading, and all sorts of other related topics. But if you’ve got things you think you’d like to see me discuss, I’m certainly glad to consider it.

Things I have learned recently:

• My new job is in a library that has *seven* staircases, most of which don’t go to all floors, in an arrangement that my boss refers to as “Hogwartsian”. I’ve more or less figured them out now. Maybe. Anyway, I’ve decided I like the yellow one best.
• Dreamweaver, as a program, has not changed as much from way back when I used to use it as I thought it might have. (Which is good: I got to make a bunch of edits on the library webpage today, and didn’t break anything.)
• Imaging and ghosting computers is slightly less tedious when one has an iPhone and Kindle app handy. (There is a lot of rebooting involved in the process, which means you get these 2-3 minute gaps periodically in which you can’t actually do much.)
• Documenting things while they’re still new in my head remains the most sensible way to do things.

That grew.

In the links below, I focus on aspects of job hunting that are specific to libraries. . . . → Read More: Job hunting retrospective : index]]> One of the things I knew I wanted to do once I was hired for the awesome new job was to write up my thoughts and (general) experiences about the current state of library job hunting.

That grew.

In the links below, I focus on aspects of job hunting that are specific to libraries. I should note clearly that I was looking at college/university libraries, independent school libraries, and public libraries, but not public schools (I don’t hold a teaching license) or special libraries (corporate, medical, etc.)

• Retrospective :: an overview of my background going into this hunt, and of things I think especially helped me in my search.
• My process, part 1 :: how I handled the actual process of applying, up to writing the cover letter.
• My process, part 2 :: cover letters to interviews.
• Library job hunt quirks: Networking
• Library job hunt quirks: Applying
• Library job hunt quirks: Clothing
• Library job hunt quirks: Interviews
• Library job hunt quirks: Bits and pieces (timelines, interview trips, asking questions.)

Disclaimer/note:

This is mostly about my experience, based on a lot of reading (both within the field and outside it), my experiences, and my conversations with various colleagues, lists, and other resources.

In fact, this isn’t so much ‘advice’ as ‘here’s some stuff to be aware of, so you can make better informed decisions about what you want to do.’ Doing this stuff doesn’t guarantee you’ll find a job (it’s a really tough market). I do hope, however, it’ll help you figure out some things that might make your own search easier, give you more questions to research, or otherwise get you further along your way.

One thing that can be really frustrating is talking . . . → Read More: Library job quirks: bits and pieces]]> This final section of my library job hunting quirks posts wraps up a few shorter bits and pieces, namely:

• Timelines (and why library searches often take forever.)
• Interview trips and who pays.
• Asking questions.
• (And you can always go back to the index)

Timelines:

One thing that can be really frustrating is talking to people who don’t understand how library job timelines work. After all, a lot of fields, you send in your application, and you might be hired – or at least have gotten a phone interview – within 2-3 weeks.

This is not common in libraries.

Sometimes there’s a mandated posting period.
This could be relatively brief (2-3 weeks), or it could be quite a bit longer (I saw several postings with a 2-3 month delay between the posting and when they would begin to review applications.)

These are handy for people balancing their workload in a given week/month, but otherwise a little frustrating, since by the time anyone moves on the process, you’ve probably forgotten all of the details. This is why saving the job ad and the materials you sent is so important.

Some postings do make it clear they’re reviewing immediately. In that case, get something in as soon as you can.

Sometimes you’re working with the school hiring cycle:
For example, a lot of school-year contract jobs don’t start getting posted until December (possible, but unlikely) to February. Many places try to make a decision by spring break (sometime in March), but often things carry over into April or even May. So, again, it can be months between your application and any movement toward a final interview. (During which time, you probably need to continue to apply other places, and for other kinds of positions.)

During the February-April time, you may also need to balance your life so that you can respond to interview requests quickly, apply for recently posted jobs, or prioritise visits or time to work on presentations or other materials for each job.

Sometimes funding gets iffy:
I saw several cases where people posted a job, and then had to follow up (usually within a month) saying “We thought we had funding, and now we’re not sure…. we’ll let you know if it reopens.” While it’s good to figure that out before you actually hire someone, it’s also sort of frustrating if you’ve spent time and energy on the application.

(This is why I worked on a basic principle of only applying to places where I learn something from the application itself. It helped me avoid frustration when this happened.)

And sometimes – often – things just move slowly:
This is especially true in universities and in larger public library systems: just getting everyone on a search committee (usually 5-6 people) together at the same time can be incredibly complicated, once you factor in vacations and professional travel and other candidates. I’ve seen these kinds of positions hire quickly, but it’s a lot more common for them to take 4-5 months from posting to hiring decision.

I’ve heard enough stories to know that 6-9 months isn’t all that uncommon, either. (I had one of those in my previous round of job hunting in 2007, too: applied at a public library, heard back about 8 months later to ask if I was still interested. And no, they hadn’t hired someone who hadn’t worked out in the middle.)

An exception:
The one place I saw a really consistent exception was for the for-profit colleges. These tend to post very narrowly (often, postings were not made even to local library job lists: you had to know they were there), and the positions were filled very quickly.

There were sometimes a number of steps in the process: they just went fast. The one I made it to an in-person interview for had…

• a phone screening interview (mostly about whether I was legally eligible to work)
• a series of four “What would you do” questions and answers (essays, basically) for me to submit.
• an hour long interview with their director of libraries
• an additional conversation with the HR manager
• a 3 hour in person interview on site.

If I’d made it past that stage, there would have been two more steps, with upper-level administrators. All of those would have taken place in under a month, and the steps I did complete took place in just over 2 weeks from submitting the application.

The for-profit schools are a very different thing from other academic institutions: if you’re interested in working at one, do what you can to network with someone working at one (who can guide you into what they’re looking for, and how the interview process goes.) And do some diligent research on the realities of the for-profit model, so you understand where their focus is, what the implications for library services are, and so on. (For example, there’s increasing legislation in process that particularly affects funding for for-profits.)

End result?
Apply a bunch of places, ideally starting sometime before you actually really need a job.  (If you’re finishing your degree, start when you begin your last semester, or a bit before if you’re looking for academic year jobs.)

If possible, vary the types of places you’re applying to (especially if you need something soon!) And then send more stuff out again. Repeat until hired.

Interview trips (and who pays)

Colleges and universities (and many independent schools) generally expect to pay your way if you make it to the on-site interview. Public libraries (and public school districts), it’s less likely, unless you’re applying for a very high-level position.

In general, I made the offer to pay my own way anywhere that was only posting the job ad on local or regional lists . If they posted nationally, I generally figured they were up for a national search and the related costs.

(And I put it pretty much like that: in my final wrap-up paragraph, I’d say something like “I’d love the chance to return to New England, where I have family and friends. I know that library budgets are tight these days, so I’m glad to pay for my own interview travel expenses as long as I’m a strong candidate for the position.”)

The places I interviewed paid for more of my trips than I did, but I don’t regret the money spent: in a couple of cases, it got me time to see friends and family in the Boston area (never bad).

And I did two interviews for different positions in western and central Maine. The first was for a job I wasn’t selected for (they had an internal candidate, and it’s hard to beat that), but that weekend made me absolutely certain I liked the basic area. That, in turn, made it easy to be truly enthusiastic about the area (and to ask some useful questions) at the interview for my new job.

One of the big things people are trying to figure out, if you’re coming from a distance, is whether you’ll like the area, or whether you’ll flee from it as soon as you can. My own take was to try it out, and see what I thought.

For example, I had an interview at a school in Tucson, which is a totally different climate from what I’m used to. I wasn’t sure what I’d think, but when I got there, really did like it a lot. (Though, on the whole, I’d rather deal with moose as a wildlife hazard than rattlesnakes. So, while I think it’d have been an awesome job, I’m okay that they went with their local candidate.)

Asking questions:

First, if you’re returning a call, go ahead and call.

But I think email is almost always better, if you’re not sure. It’s less disruptive to the person you’re speaking to, and allows them to focus on other parts of their job beyond hiring. Calls are of course fine if it’s an urgent need (clarifying details for an interview the next day, for example).

There’s a lot of job search advice that encourages people to call and follow up, or even push for an interview. Don’t do this, as a general rule. It doesn’t look good.

I think it’s particularly problematic for library jobs, though, because it means that you’re directly distracting that librarian from doing her or his job. Libraries get a lot of calls from numbers they might not recognise, so even with caller ID it’s often hard to tell without answering if it’s a vendor returning an important call, a patron, or what.

Alison Green at Ask a Manager has had a range of posts on this: my favorite summary is over here.

When I was doing hiring, I was particularly attentive (and well inclined) to job seekers (and library vendors) who thought through the timing of their calls, and realised that calling a school as the school day was starting was probably not the best time (I was generally juggling 5 different things, including needing to handle my own homeroom and related commitments.) Over lunch is also complicated, since people need to stagger staffing so everyone in the library area gets a chance to eat.

If you’re going to call, try to pick a more relaxed time of the day:  I suggest avoiding the first 90 minutes and last hour the library is open (or of the school day, if it’s a school), and between 11am and 1pm. At other times, they might be busy, but it’s less likely to be as chaotic as the beginning of the day. Or call at some point when they’re really unlikely to be in the office and leave a message.

Following up:
My general rule of thumb was that if I got a specific time they expected to next make contact, to give it a week beyond that, and then touch base. (I have a feeling that this did not work everywhere, but it seemed like a reasonable compromise, given complicated schedules and lack of other information to work with.)

• Index of posts is over here.

That really ought to say “And libraries are complicated, too.” In every single job but one that I actually interviewed on site for, a suit would have been far too formal, in ways that would almost certainly have indicated that I . . . → Read More: Library job quirks: clothing]]> Clothing

Standard job hunting advice says “Wear a suit. Unless you’re a programmer/coder.”

That really ought to say “And libraries are complicated, too.” In every single job but one that I actually interviewed on site for, a suit would have been far too formal, in ways that would almost certainly have indicated that I wasn’t picking up on important cultural cues.

It is different if you’re looking at upper library management of a large library, a school that has a dress code, or something like that – but most of the time, suits are too much. (The one exception was a for-profit college, and they were explicit about students dressing for classes as they would in a formal business environment setting.)

(as always with this series, you can also get to the index.)

There’s also the challenge of academic library (and independent school) interviews, where there’s often a dinner the night before (which requires one outfit), the day of the interview (another), and maybe appropriate clothing for the plane and rides to/from the airport.

General advice:

Find clothing that’s appropriate, tidy, but makes you feel like your most awesome self. If something doesn’t fit well, or you’re worried about it catching on something, or whether you show too much skin if you lean over, you will not be relaxed and engaged with the interview and conversation.

Be aware of temperature issues – you may be spending time inside, outside, or more likely both, especially for a day-long interview. For women, a shawl, jacket, appropriate cardigan sweater, etc. can help if you don’t adjust temperature well.

Comfortable shoes (and well-broken-in ones) are a must. I wear a pedometer daily, and my interview days have consistently been over 10000 steps/5 miles of walking for the day. (Not including getting to the interview site or getting home.)

I usually wanted my interview clothing to say “I’m a confident person, comfortable in a variety of settings, and not afraid to crawl on the floor to fix a computer if I have to.” That’s a hard message to get across in a suit – it’s a lot easier in something a step or two less formal.

A sample:
My interview closet involves the following (note that most of my interviews turned out to be in warmer weather, which made short sleeves particularly relevant.) Mostly I wore the first dress, using the others for dinner the night before, plane trips, or other times I was interacting with the search committee.

• A short-sleeve dress from Jones New York in a flattering (and very comfortable!) cut and a black and white print. (With it, I wear interesting jewelry with vibrant colors from a professional jewelry-making friend so it’s not all stark neutrals.)
• A gray high-quality knit dress with longer sleeves (also Jones New York) which can be dressed up with a silk shawl or down (but still appropriate) with a knit draping cardigan.
• A teal tank dress with a short-sleeve tunic length cardigan over it – great for wearing on the airplane, or to dinner out the night before in warm weather.
• Black flats that are exceedingly comfy (I have a pair of Aerosole flats, and a pair of Keens).

Several of my interviewers were very clear that I should not dress too formally (and a couple made it clear that pantyhose were really not appropriate). Much appreciated! And in every case, they were not dressed formally, either – men might be wearing a blazer and button down shirt, but in only one case (the for-profit college) was anyone more formal.

Men have this somewhat easier – a blazer/sport coat, button down shirt, and clean pressed slacks (and maybe a tie) go a long way to finding that “I’m taking this seriously, but I’m not being overly formal” space. (And the jacket might actually be too much in a number of places, but could be taken off easily if it were.)

Think about travel:
If you’re flying, find something to wear that will look good when you walk off the plane. Stopping in the restroom to make sure you’re tidy helps a lot.

And of course, if you’re flying, wear clothing that will work with airport scanners. My normal skirt lengths tend to run mid-calf to knee, and I get stopped for additional scanning or patdowns about half the time these days. Think about what jewelry you’re wearing (one of my necklaces, which involves a fair amount of silver wire, sets off scanners.) Shoes that slip off easily are better than fancy things involving laces – and of course, you want something that’s comfortable in flight.

There’s also the question of luggage: I travelled with my laptop bag and a over-the-shoulder soft luggage bag (both from Tom Bihn), as I find rolling suitcases more frustrating on the plane (and the soft bag can go under the seat in front of me if space is tight.) Don’t trust checking a bag on the flight out in case something goes wrong. However, that meant I needed to pack relatively lightly when I could, so that I could be relaxed and easy while handling my luggage.

The question of Skype:
These days, Skype interviews are getting somewhat more common. When everything works smoothly, I like them a lot, especially for a larger committee, because it means less awkwardness about whose turn to speak it is. (That can be a big if, though.)

In terms of clothing, I usually went a half-level down from my usual interview formality, choosing colors that stood out well on a computer screen. Definitely test your location, lighting, and other aspects by chatting with a friend before you do your first Skype interview: it really makes a difference.

• Next part is about interviews, preparing for them, and presentations.
• Index of posts is over here.