I had a quite interesting lunch today.
Barbara M. Jones, University Librarian, Wesleyan University came to visit, and she took a small number of students out to lunch. The small number wasn’t her requirement; it was just three of us that made ourselves available.
It seems that several prestigious schools are having a hard time completing their job searches. She is traveling to several of the top library schools to talk to students interested in academic librarianship about what they, i.e., academic libraries, can do better to attract interested (and attract the interest of) candidates.
Now, I fully realize that there is another side to this story (actually, several). I do not want to get into them here/now. I am, also, not choosing sides. If I were to, though, it would have to be “our” side, that of the new graduate/job seeker. That is not my point, though.
I find it quite interesting and a bit heartening to know that someone wants to do something about the problem as they see it. Not to try and increase the number of students in LIS schools, not to ask Congress to waive loan money, …, but to approach real flesh-n-blood students and ask, “What is it we can do to attract you?, Are we writing our job ads so you feel comfortable applying?, How should we be wording them?, What are you looking for in an academic library career?, etc.”
I am not quite sure on exactly who’s behalf she is making this trek. Wesleyan, of course, came up. Yale came up. The Oberlin Group came up.
As for the small number of students who took her up on her offer I can only say it is near the end of the semester and we are all overloaded. Still, this was a golden opportunity. Many of us bitch and moan (generally, rightly so) about the state of the job market right now. But here was someone from a pretty prestigious institution wanting to talk directly to students, to us.
If you are at the next school she visits and are interested in an academic library job, do yourself (and the rest of us) a favor and have lunch with her. Tell her what is on your mind, and the mind of your fellow students if you so choose. I did my best to speak for my fellow students interested in this path, but in the end I could only truly speak for myself.
And I got a really nice free lunch for my time, too.
Again, this is a very complex issue, but I applaud Barbara Jones and Wesleyan for making this effort to talk directly to students.
Interesting. I’d sell my soul to work at Wesleyan (my alma mater), but the only opening I’ve seen in years has been for a collection development librarian, which required lots of experience. Barbara Jones wouldn’t have to do much to get me to apply for jobs at Wes!
Barbara was profiled in our alumni mag this month; she really sounds terrific. Yeah, seriously, I would sell my soul to work there.
I responded to Meredith off blog. But I wanted to post some of what I said to her here:
There seems to be some “interesting” things going on at the different levels of the job market. Some very bright people seem to have vastly different understandings of each other and of the same task. I don’t know if it’s a cultural difference between the sorts of schools in the Oberlin Group and public schools or what? But if a public school writes an ad and they HAVE to follow it to the letter and private schools are writing their ads saying required but meaning preferred and have the leeway…. Well, how is a poor job applicant supposed to know these things?
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For you job applicants out there, especially those who won’t apply for a job that they don’t seem to meet the requirements, might I suggest you rethink that policy when it come to private institutions. It seems they may have a lot more leeway interpreting the way in which an applicant meets the stated criteria.