On Working at a Public Instution vs. a For-Profit Institution

I belong to the New Members Round Table (NMRT) listserv. There was an interesting discussion going on over the past few days that I thought I might share here. The person who got the conversation going asked what the potential disadvantages were to taking a library job at a for-profit school.

I can’t see any reason why an unemployed librarian would pass up a job opportunity anywhere.

My first post-degree library job was at a for-profit school and I liked it a lot. I worked as a cataloger at an art school. I met good people, acquired skills that I did not learn at library school (for example, my first day on the job was the first time I had used an ILS. Shocking, right?) And most importantly, once it was time for me to move on I was able to without any problems. Out of all of the interviews I went on, not one person asked me why I “went over to the dark side” or anything like that. In fact, not long after hiring me my boss at the school took a position at a public library.

Future employers may value an employee that has worked outside of the traditional educational system. You would be bringing a different point-of-view to the table. You may have had to do more committee work or submitted more reports than you would have in a public school. Some employers might view it as an asset.

If I were hiring someone and it came down to someone with for-profit experience and someone without any experience I would hire the former. For-profit education has had a dark shadow cast over it in the past year. But that does not mean that you should pass up a job opportunity.

Times are tough. You could end up waiting 5 years before you find your dream job. You might as well get into the field and start learning things, making connections, and earning some money to go towards that student debt. Your student loans aren’t going to wait for you to find that dream job.

Hitler concerned about savelibraries campaign.

Woody Allen

Woody knew that it was cool to hang out in the library.

The Newberry

I interned at the Newberry for one year in the Special Collections Department. I cataloged between 1,000 and 2,000 maps. Rand McNally had donated their entire road map collection (approximately 11,000 items) to the Newberry and I was part of a team that helped catalog it. After about 6 months I began cataloging atlases from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. I had a great experience and I got to go in this great building all the time.

Gestapo Methods

I found this while doing an obituary search for a patron. I don’t know the context for the raid that the editorial refers to and I’m going to try and find out because I’m sure there was more to this story than the author is referring to. The writing isn’t fantastic but it is interesting. This came from the hand of an angry American at the height of the cold war.

Gestapo Methods

Trouble in the Congo with repurcussions [sic] in the United Nations has pretty well occupied public attention for the past 10 days or two weeks.

And the sounds of strife and arbitrary police action in trouble spots abroad drowned out echoes of gestapo or ogpu tactics in our own country.

Recent news dispatches told of midnight police raids in a New Jersey town. Sixteen persons were taken from their beds and hauled off to jail. Bail was placed so high that the prisoners had to remain locked up over night.

They were not guilty of murder; not guilty of treason, kidnapping, robbery, arson or any other crime of violence. In fact they were dragged out of their homes at midnight with the same brutal disregard of their rights as any victim of any police state.

The only thing these people had done to incur such treatment was failure to return library books they had borrowed. The dispatches say the police action was very effective, that scores of persons who had overdue books were streaming into New Jersey libraries.

Shooting a couple of book borrowers probably would have served as an example too and quite likely would have had the approval of the library board, which apparently has adopted one of the tenets of Communism–that the end justifies the means.

It seems somewhat extreme to us–staging midnight raids and the filing of criminal charges in order to speed the return of library books.

It has always been our understanding that a library customer was subject to a fine of a penny or so a day for everday [sic] a book was overdue and if he lost a book or for some other reason failed to return it, he or his sponsor, co-signer or whatever, was liable for the value of the book.

Jailing people for debt is no longer permissable in this country except under exceptional cases in which the person causing the arrest is also responsible for boarding such prisoner.

We fail to see how a book borrower could be charged with larceny anymore than could a borrower of money who failed to satisfy the loan. It would seem to us that the recourse of the library board would be to sue the borrower and his security–if any–and recover the amount the book cost plus costs of the suit etc.

We think the tactics adopted by the New Jersey library people are taken out of the pages of the gestapo guide book. We are surprised that the police employed would have any part of it. We understand that one or more of the persons so handled have gone to court about it. We wish them success and hope that they recover substantial damages from members of the library board as well as the arresting officers or their bondsmen.

It disturbs us to know that someplace in our country are people who not only think along the line of police state leaders but actually follow their methods.

The midnight invasion of a home by an armed squad, the hauling off of occupants to jail on flimsy charges are police state methods and calculated to bring terror to all citizens. If such methods are left to go unchecked it wouldn’t be difficult for the big government crowd to proceed along the other lines that lead to dictatorship.

Let us hope it doesn’t happen here. It could, you know, if we aren’t constantly on our guard.

Published on Thursday, February 23, 1961. Send me a message if you would like the source.

Idea Bank Series

Helper dogs that kids read to to boost confidence.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_33310ff6-9e13-5bf1-b6ae-10899d458dde.html ———— http://www.librarydogs.com/

Pop up libraries.
http://www.bryanloar.com/2009/12/pop-up-libraries.html (video and blog post on the topic)
also – mobile libraries, horse drawn library carts, etc. librarians on bikes (that guy in the Chi).

Cool cataloging idea. Is there a catalog that could show what’s sitting next to the item you’re searching for on the shelf? via – that girl in one of my classes at Dominican.

A Day in the Life – 7/31/2010

On Fridays I work as a part-time reference librarian. I typically work 16 – 21 hours a week there. This was my first job working in a public library. I am one of three reference librarians among a staff of approximately 30. The community is small and people generally shake my hand after I help them.

I woke up this morning at 7:10 a.m. exhausted. I had an 11 hour workday yesterday split between two other library jobs. After a 1 hour commute I found out that I needed to be in a meeting at 9:30. I gathered my notes, drank a bottle of water and went into the meeting.

I’m nearly finished with the website redesign and we’re bringing someone in to clean up my code and help us transition from the old site to the new site. The web guy reassured us that the new site didn’t need much work at all and that it could be ready to go live soon. I was happy that a web design professional said that my site looked good.

After the meeting I went straight to a busy reference desk until lunch. The most common questions have to do with our catalog, museum passes, and computer help. After lunch I went back to the reference desk for a mixture of reference, web tweeking, book display setup, and experimenting with a trial package from Bookletters (which I’ll talk about soon).

Before I knew it I had to make my first closing announcement and start to close up shop for the day. This mostly involves shutting down computers, copiers, and talking to people that were wearing headphones during my announcements. As the reference librarian I am responsible for closing the building on Fridays. There are a lot of people that think the library should be open later than 5 p.m. on Fridays. I’m not one of them.

I stopped at Jewel to pick up some things and then sat in traffic for 2 hours. I didn’t get home til 7:15, which meant that I sat in traffic for 3 hours today. I left work today feeling … behind.

Broken Kindle

A friend told me she broke her Kindle the other day. She’s not sure what happened to it or if she would be able to replace her books after she shells out for a new Kindle. I spilled some soup on a book the other day which I was able to dry off after a few minutes. I wasn’t worried about losing my entire library or spending $139 to get a replacement.

Flickr Group

Check out my Flickr Group, World Libraries.

Dave Eggers

I met him last year when he came to give a talk at Chicago Public Library. During his presentation he said to ask him about anything at the meet and greet, even relationship advice. My then girlfriend (now wife) asked him how she could get me to marry her.