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I have a BA in History and Political Science with a minor in Classics. I've always been interested in being a librarian and I have a couple of options for the librarian side of my educational needs. Obviously before I commit I'm going to talk to the Careers people at uni, but I'd like to get some info on what the job is like first. I'm in NZ if it matters. A few things I'd like to know: - What are the general educational requirements? Should I be looking at doing my Masters first? - How transferrable is the skill set? I'd love to live overseas. - My jobs so far have been in retail/customer service. Is that likely to help? I don't have experience working in an academic environment. - My grades were a bit all over the place, for E/N reasons I won't go into, and I failed a few papers at first. Will this hinder me? Obviously I intend to get solid grades in the library studies degree.
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Feb 3, 2015 13:17
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| # ? May 5, 2024 18:11 |
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You will be in an extremely competitive job market. You have close to zero chance of landing a livable job unless you have personal connections or are a savant of some sort. I don't know about many places, but in the USA there is a huge glut of unemployed would-be librarians. You almost certainly need an advanced degree to have a prayer of landing a job. I have a friend who has a BA in history and graduated with a 4.0 masters in library science in 2012. She has not been able to find a single job utilizing her degree since then. You should look into something else unless you have connections. You won't have any problem getting into a program; they'll be more than happy to take your money. The question is whether you'll be able to pay it back by leveraging your newly gained skills. I'll save you some time and money on this one: you won't.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:07
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I got a job in an academic library in 2013, and I'm in a hazy position between a paraprofessional and someone who actually uses my MLIS. Not a Children is right, though. It's a fiercely competitive job market, and I only lucked out and got a job a month after graduating with my MLIS from a combination of extensive internship experience and being undergraduate alumni at the university I've been hired at. quote:What are the general educational requirements? Should I be looking at doing my Masters first? In an ideal world, I'd say that a MLIS isn't necessary unless your job title actually has "librarian" in it. In this job market... it really depends on what HR is looking for, but almost everyone you'll be competing against will have their masters. When I was working on my masters, almost all of my classmates were full-time librarians with years in their present job going back to school to get their degree. quote:How transferrable is the skill set? I'd love to live overseas. The skill set? Forget everything having to do with classification systems, among other things. Easier if you have customer service background and experience, more difficult if you're a subject expert/technical specialist. quote:My jobs so far have been in retail/customer service. Is that likely to help? I don't have experience working in an academic environment. Not an issue at the academic library I work at, at least. You're not in a position to apply for a genuine librarian position (you wouldn't be asking if you were), and more important for paraprofessionals are computer skills, customer service, and technical know-how. The library I work at outright calls the department that lives behind the circulation desk and handles that and similar services the Customer Services department. quote:My grades were a bit all over the place, for E/N reasons I won't go into, and I failed a few papers at first. Will this hinder me? Obviously I intend to get solid grades in the library studies degree. Depends entirely on the library in question and the people hiring. In my experience, far more important than my grades were computer skills, flexibility, and being able to quickly pick up new systems and procedures. There aren't two libraries in the world that use exactly the same systems in exactly the same way. I'm hesitant to say this, but I can't recommend attempting to pursue a career in librarianship, especially if you're in the Midwest. It's a fiercely competitive job market in recent times.
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Feb 3, 2015 18:08
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I got an MLIS intending to become an academic librarian and AHAHAHAHAH Like, thousands of people applying for every $50k/yr job listing that comes up. I can't speak to NZ, but if it's anything like in the US, you're well and hosed. Try to learn more IT and get a job at an academic library managing the database servers or network or anything involving computers. Half of the library jobs have disappeared and been replaced by library tech positions. If you don't like working with computers, you shouldn't be a librarian anyway.
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Feb 3, 2015 19:14
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Welp, that was depressing as poo poo. I appreciate the honesty though. I'll look in to the situation here in NZ before I go any further.
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Feb 4, 2015 00:21
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Thanks for posting this thread, though. Your background and professional goals match mine pretty closely, and I've been trying to figure out what to do about it. I think I'm going to try to be some type of librarian/information scientist hybrid, but I have no idea what skills - besides some IT skills, as mentioned above - will help me get there.
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Feb 4, 2015 06:22
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To give you another perspective, my wife graduated with her MS in Library Information Science a couple years ago and has a job as a medical librarian. She actually got a job within a couple months of graduation as a librarian, and has transitioned through a few other librarian jobs in the time since. One of those jobs was as an academic librarian at a pretty good school. We live in California if it makes any difference. Now, I have heard exactly what people have said above me, its not the best career to get into if you have other options. She worked in libraries pretty much since high school and loved it, so she wanted to continue with it as a career. I will also say that it does seem to be all about who you know and network with. Feel free to ask me any questions.
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Feb 4, 2015 07:22
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To make yourself stand out, it helps to have multiple language proficiencies and some manner of technical background or experience (especially with the advent of digital librarianship; it seeps into every discipline, it seems). Many universities in the US are moving away from tenuring librarians as faculty and moving towards a staff model. I haven't gotten the impression in American librarianship that the job market is bad, per se, but rather that most people entering librarianship have virtually identical qualifications and backgrounds. Setting oneself apart is important for successfully navigating the job market. Edit: prior to grad school, I never had experience working in a library. Consider finding a part time library position and attending school simultaneously, I guess? (I've also met grads that had no work experience until after finishing their library degree; blows my mind how anyone could think that's a good idea.) Bitchkrieg fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Feb 4, 2015 |
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Feb 4, 2015 17:50
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I'm biased, but have you considered recordkeeping? I'm a qualified archivist in the UK, and while the job market is grim for us, it is substantially less grim than that for librarians. Partly, that's because there's a crapton fewer of us (about 3,000, I think), but partly because various organisations have screamed their heads off to retain the security of professionalisation. For instance, there's a new process/standard to accredit archives to (the first tranche of accredited archives were announced a few months ago). This is a pretty big deal PR/rep-wise, especially for local governments, and one of the standards is you have to have a professional recordkeeper around. An announcement today set out the reasons a service could lose accreditation, one of which is an accredited archive in the public sector losing all professional archive staff -- in plain English, if a government body decides to cut corners by firing all the archivists and having paraprofessionals run the place, you lose the shiny badge. That's very handy. The other bright side is that recordkeeping doesn't encompass just archives (ie records kept indefinitely for historic/evidentiary purposes), it also encompasses modern records management, in which there are lots more jobs doing things like information audits, data protection compliance, digital [X], etc. They're very much more corporate-skewed, less public-facing, and less... fun, but they pay better. If you're in the US, and you aren't in the Federal system already, and you don't live in like NYC/DC/LA (maybe), uhm... yeah, this doesn't apply. There are records manager jobs, from what I've heard, but not archival ones. Admittedly, I was asking specifically about the Midwest, so... Oh, OP, I know for a fact that Te Papa was hiring a while back, because it got advertised in the UK. If you're not wedded to books, it might be worth looking into as well. I'm happy to answer questions.
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Feb 6, 2015 23:40
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I'm echoing the people who said you need tech skills. I was hired at my position before I finished my MLIS, over tons of other qualified applicants, because I had the know-how to be the webmaster and handle databasing issues. My boss said about 100 people applied for my job in a very small town.
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Feb 9, 2015 01:58
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