I’m still a little unsure since I do not have confirmation from the Board of Trustees—which is the official notice of employment—but based on my acceptance of the draft offer letter last Friday and receipt of the formal offer letter Tuesday I have a professional position. For a while anyway.

As of Monday, 6 October, I am a Visiting Serials Cataloger and Visiting Assistant Professor of Library Administration at UIUC.  This is a grant-funded position which runs through 15 August 2009 for now. Being a Visiting position it could be extended to a total of 3 years, if further funding was approved. Certainly the work will be here for that long, at least.

I am doing the same thing that I have been doing for the last several months, but now have a professional position, real pay and benefits, non-tenure faculty status, which includes professional development funds and research time.

I am encouraged and expected to continue looking for permanent employment but in the meantime this is a real load off of my mind, especially as the student loans are now going into repayment. I have also worked the last couple of months with no real health benefits, except for the VA Hospital about 45 minutes away.

The grant is to get Local Holdings Records (LHRs) into WorldCat for 140,000 serials titles with bibliographic and holdings records (some in our Voyager catalog) which are in various states of … well, various states. This is primarily to assist with Interlibrary Loan within the state (as funded) but will help outside of the state also.

These serials are also being moved to our remote storage facility to free up some space in the stacks for assorted New Service Model realignments, library consolidations, etc.

So the work involves a combination of original, copy and maintenance cataloging of (primarily) serials, sharing my work with OCLC when allowed, updating our holdings, and, in particular, ensuring that we have accurate Local Holdings Records in WorldCat. At the moment I am doing these by hand but we will shortly be batch loading many of these.

None of this is really cutting edge but it is important work. Many 1000s of linear feet of shelf space have been taken up over the years by things inadequately cataloged, things that never made the transition from the card catalog to the electronic age, and things simply not cataloged.

Well, that is the gist of it. No doubt, more will follow at some point. But for now, I am embarking on the adventure of my first professional position.

Thanks to my boss(es) and coworkers of the last 2 years who believe in me enough to give me this opportunity.