mdoneil writes “Since graduation with my MLIS I cannot find a full time well paid position. Sure I can find some part time gigs and contract positions but well paid(at least by librarian standards) full time positions are hard to come by in Florida. I have also applied in other areas of the country but I seldom hear back other than we have hired someone else.
I have the education, an MLIS and a 2nd MS (and an MBA for that matter) and pretty good undergrad education. My resume only has 3 positions from 1985-2003, and my library experience is either part time or short term since then. I thought an internship/residency/fellowship would be a good thing to build both my skills and experience. The ARL internship webpage is really biased against white men. (http://db.arl.org/residencies/FMPro) I thought white, heterosexual, Republican, men were under-represented in the library profession.
If librarians are supposed to be color blind why would it matter to any instution if I were an Indian, or Asian, or Black, or any other ethinic group.
I have worked in professions that are mostly white males, and they did indeed have better remuneration, but I want to be a librarian. Why should I be penalized because I don’t want to be a Chemist or business executive?”
Maybe a slight change for your resume
Maybe you should leave the word “Falangist” off your resume. Some of us are still bitter about the Spanish Civil War.
Summer resume contest
There are always these stereotypes of librarians as leftists. As a fun summer activity why don’t we write “The Most Annoying Library Resume” I’ll start:
Education
The Dalton School (k-9)
Eton/Phillips Exeter
B.A. Yale — Member Skull and Bones
MBA Harvard — Business Administration — Full ride scholarship from Enron
Rhodes Scholar Oxford
Ph.D Stanford — summer internships: CIA/NSA/The Deutscher Bank– Geneva Switzerland –specializing in Iraqi finance
Ph.D Thesis: Why taxation of Republicans is wrong
Post-doc Hoover Institution
position or well-paid?
Is the hitch that you want a well paid position or just a position? What do you define as well-paid? Libraries aren’t known for that kind of thing (paying well).
If you want the money you’ve GOT to get into administration/management in libraries. I used to work for a basically incompetent director in Oregon (Hi Ronnie!) who made as much as the judges in the county. This woman couldn’t use a spreadsheet, but was seen as fit to run a $5 million dollar institution. The management “team” around her wasn’t really much better.
So, what I’m saying is, I don’t see that there’s much competition in the management ranks for someone with an MBA. The trick is leveraging it. Interview for directorships and then if you don’t get hired, find out why not.
Re:Maybe a slight change for your resume
For those of us who found this reference went over their head, a link. I found it difficult to find links to the organizations themselves as there appear to be more than one in the U.S. :
Christian Falangist Party of America
Re:Maybe a slight change for your resume π
I don’t include Falangist, people either don’t know what it is, or have to look it up. That is never good at interviews.
Re:Maybe a slight change for your resume
Uh, those people are nutcases. Try some nice Spanish Falangists http://www.la-falange.com/nacional/
Most of the Falangists (or Phalangists) in the US are whackos as far as I can tell.
Re:Maybe a slight change for your resume
Ok, please help me out here. If this is an elaborate put-on and I just didn’t catch on to it, I apologize. And I do not mean this comment as a flame in any way, shape or form. I had never heard of Falangists (Spanish or otherwise) before, so I did what is, admittedly, a very cursory web search.
Is this the philosophy you’re espousing?
http://www.encyclopedia4u.com/f/falange.html
Re:position or well-paid?
Well paid as a librarian in these parts, at least a librarian without several years experience is 35K.
I’m not sure any library would hire me as a library director as I have my MLIS only a short time compared to other applicants. I know I wouldn’t hire myself as a library director. I think a director should know how to do all of the positions he or she supervises, not simply be a good administrator.
And MBA’s are a lot easier to come by than one would think. It is from a regionally accredited school, but not Wharton or Harvard. I can tell you that I certainly learned more valuable informaiton in library school, than I did in business school. One class was about making PowerPoint presentations, it was some effective business communication nonsense, but it really was about making PP presentations.
I just want to be a librarian – at least for now- I’m not all that concerned about making 80K, I am concerned about learning how to be a good librarian and finding the particular niche – medical, academic, or public that I enjoy the most.
I am able to move, and I have applied for positions up and down the east coast,and in the midwest and all I have to show for it is a stack of thanks but no thanks letters.
It is frustrating because my local library hires people as librarians without an MLS, and when I went to the adjoining city to use a book on cataloging the reference desk had only a ‘reference aide’. I am willing to work for what those people get paid to gain experience that all of the ads for the ‘good jobs’ require but they aren’t hiring MLS grads.
Re:Maybe a slight change for your resume
Yes somewhat.
The part about :
Corporate state in which class struggle would be superseded by the Vertical Trade Union, joining workers and owners.
Roman Catholicism, with a touch of anti-clericalism.
Attention to the Castilian farmers
Pride in the history of the Spanish Empire
Anti-communism and anti-anarchism
I don’t delude myself to think that it would catch on with normal people in the States though.
Now, this could be part of your problem …
“I think a director should know how to do all of the positions he or she supervises, not simply be a good administrator.”
Don’t ever say that in an interview. Really. Especially if you’re being interviewed by the director.
Re:Now, this could be part of your problem …
I’ve never said that, but I have often thought it. I have had bosses that have no clue what I do and could not interview someone as they did not know the lingua franca of the position to intelligently discuss it with an applicant.
I don’t mean a library director has to have been a cataloger, a circulation clerk, work the reference desk, work in technical services, be a systems librarian and sweep the floor. But he should know the basics of all the positions, not be able to do them as well as a 20 year veteran.
Persistence Friend
I know it can be frustrating but hang in there. I’m a fellow WMR and landed my director’s position in an academic library 2 years ago at the ripe old age of 35. Now all the liberal faculty seek me out to “debate” and “Bush bash”. They need me ; )
Don’t give up!!!!
Re:Persistence Friend
You just like to think we “need” you! Oh, if only you knew the truth!
Re:Persistence Friend
When I was out of a regular job, the movie “Castaway” gave the advice “Keep going, you don’t know what the tide will bring in…”
That hit me pretty hard considering how trite and platitudinous it is. Timing is everything though.
For all the truth that librarianship is “women’s work” (ie they dominate the field), it seems to me a much higher percentage of dir’s are men. I have no data, but I’d be willing to guess that it’s 25% or more in a field where only about 10% are male. I don’t know or care if it’s nature/nurture, etc. Just an observation.
I’m struggling with how to become a lib director too down the road, so if anyone else has advice here I’m all ears as well…
what is a white female liberal to do?
Well, I’m also having a hard time finding a permanent position, and I’m a white female liberal. I think it has very little to do with gender and nothing at all to do with politics. It’s just a tough job market out there. Some people get lucky and get jobs right away, while some of us spend years looking for a good position. I’m trying to be very zen about it but it *is* frustrating to see others get jobs, and perhaps it’s easier to say, “oh, they’re liberals,” or “oh, they’re black” but that isn’t why people get hired, not really. Just keep trying!
Re:what is a white female liberal to do?
Thanks, that makes me feel better; misery loves company.
I guess I can wear my Bush 2004 shirts to interviews! π
(really I’m not quite that stupid)
I did get a letter from one college today that wants me to write: ” A statement in how the applicant has or intends to
intentionally integrate a Christian Theistic Worldview in the
teaching-learning process.”
As soon as I figure out that sentence I am going to ask my priest what to write. What the heck is the teaching-learing process and why is a Christian Theistic Worldview important to it.
When I was in school you paid attention, and prayed you didn’t flunk. I guess that’s it.
You’d think integrating a theistic world view into the teaching-learning process would be easy for right wingers like me.
I’m not sure I can work at a place more right wing than me.