/lit/ - Literature

that makes no sense my friend

great idea.

that dewy decimal system is complicated as fuck

>>1605452
why say you that?

Yeah, um...the climate for public employees isn't too great right now. I wouldn't be surprised if many library systems had wage/hiring freezes now or soon, as well as spending cuts.

to clarify, I'd betting a Master of Arts in Library and Information Science which doesn't explicitly mean "becoming a librarian"

>>1605462
>public
It's my understanding that people with these degrees don't just work in public libraries. Apparently they can get jobs in hospitals, gov't bldgs, etc

>>1605482
>Climate for public employees isn't great right now.

Oh, no problem I won't be in a public library, I'll just work in a gov't building.

Derp.

But yeah I realize what you're saying.

>>1605462

This is very true.

I've read into it a little and they tell me the opportunities are growing but common sense tells me otherwise

>>1605487
well I'm an idiot

I used to work for Shell in The Hague and they had an archivist, who was a library sciences guy, and I think he was making about 80k a year. I think that if you get an MA in infomation science or whatever, and you end up working in the local library, then you've pretty much fucked it up (or you weren't very ambitious to start off with). All big companies have libraries and archives (Again, Shell has about 10 different libraries across the world). University libraries and national archives are growing all the time. There's a lot more to it than stamping books and saying shush (although I think you spend the first year of the MA learning those two things)

>>1605511
Shell as in the energy/oil company? They have 10 libraries globally? 80k a year? These are all encouraging things.

>>1605523

>Shell as in the energy/oil company?

That one, yes. The place I worked had a massive archive, and also a pretty huge Geology library, as well as a "Diversity and Inclusion" library (I shit you not) that we were all encouraged to spend "at least some time in" in order to make us better people. First job I ever had where my boss ever ordered me to go and goof off and read a book and have a coffee for an hour.

>>1605534
this whole library thing is suddenly seeming like a realistic route

does where one gets a degree from matter as much as people say?

>>1605655
Probably. idk about library and information science, but in my field it absolutely does.

Don't trust a 300 dollar degree that will appear in six months.

>>1605677
...thanks

>>1605550

it isn't. there are no fucking jobs. good luck.

>>1605534
Wait, what exactly did the "Diversity and Inclusion" library contain? Was it just stuff like The Color Purple?

Didn't read this thread, but I just started reading Ball Four and it's incredible. So witty and human, really enjoyable. Tremendous.

"I know about lonely summers. In my last years with the Yankees I had a few of them. You stand in a hotel lobby talking with guys at dinnertime and they drift away, and some other guys come along and pretty soon they're gone and you're all alone and no one has asked you what you're doing about dinner. So you eat alone. It must happen to Ashford [an African-American umpire] a lot. And it's one of the reasons I can't bring myself to argue with him."

>>1605711
I thought it was great. It went on forever but I think it was worth it. I maintain that if you haven't read Ball Four, you don't know shit about sports.

>>1605691
>>1605691

I thought bored housewives became librarians

bumping for Euros I guess

Ball Four is a great read.

Here's another:
The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran by Dirk Hayhurst

>>1605550


It is. Getting an actual degree as a librarian is serious buisness.The librarians you see in huge city libriaries, univerities and supposedly Shell, all went to school for it.

can this be a Ball Four thread?

any new opinions?

the dean of my lib dept took me aside during orientation, called me a communist, and told me not to show up for 1st student's employment meeting.

true story, i shit you not.

>>1608180
And you were like, "Fuck you, comrade, you'll be the first to go when this library has revolution".

>>1608189
no, the girl who i was talking to, when the dean interrupted, laughed really hard and said out loud, "A COMMUNIST?!" She didn't know the dean meant serious business.

>>1608139
If you believe this career will make you happy then definitely do it. If you can think of something else that you will be more happy doing then do that.

Understand that Library Science will be competitive. But if it interests you then you will have no problems.

>>1608204
>Understand that Library Science will be competitive. But if it interests you then you will have problems.
good advice

>>1608180
I'm assuming this is at Uni.

When was the Uni Library transformed into a capitalistic institution?

If it was me I would go straight to the Student Paper, Student Radio Station, Department of Diversity, etc. and tell everyone my story and make the case that a greedy pig capitalist has no business holding ANY position in a Uni Library.

Get his ass kicked out.

>>1608211
Whoops, that is a funny typo though.

>>1608213
nah, bro, i fixed it for you

>>1608212
you don't know the academic world as well as you think. you think deans *don't* have tenure? i "do" what my senior faculty tell me.

>>1608238
There is a dean of the Library?
Perhaps I was confused and you meant the Library Sciences discipline.
It is not nice to confuse people like that.

>>1608265
no there's a library administration, that's in the library.
in the university, where you go to grad school, which is a department, and there is a dean and professors.

if you're hot and into it for the sex with men who hang out at libraries I say go for it

pic unrelated: Ball Four is a pretty good book

>>1608299
nice dubs

>>1608299
>>1608328
what's going on here?

>>1608358
idk, lindsay lohan is a new /lit/ meme?

i googled lindsay lohan and library. no relevant results.

wat? I think I gots doobs.
Nice ones, too.

>>1608358
this made me laugh for some reason

you like me you really...

oh fuck it whose has the pipe?

sobriety is nature's way of telling you to read a book

I too am thinking about going to grad school for my MLS. I just recently started thinking that that was what I wanted to do after graduation, so I've missed the deadline to apply for the Fall semester, so I'm planning to work in the local public library for 6-8 months while I wait for the Spring semester to roll around. It's been interesting so far, even though I'm only a shelver and "technology docent". I'm not sure whether it's a good idea, to be honest, but it seems like a professional skill that I could be happy practicing (unlike, say, being a cubical monkey, which is what I'm pretty sure will happen to me if I just try to go out and get a job with my BA). People like >>1608204 saying that it's a competitive field kinda worry me though, because while I can see myself being ambitious within the discipline (working for a big archive or an important public or university library would be boss, but working at Shell would probably bore me to tears, even for 80K a year) I'm not very good at true cutthroat competitive practices. Plus, I don't really see my coworkers acting that way about their jobs; am I biasing my sample by only looking at people who work in public libraries? Are those people "low-status" (and thus presumably low on ambition as well) within the library-science community?

>>1608473
Believe me, there are some competitive elements to it. But, hey, a professor could just as easily line you up with a really good gig as well. A bit of luck of the draw. Honestly, it's a grad degree, like most of them, they open up all kinds of "career" opportunities outside of the library profession. A lot of grads work outside of their discipline.

>>1608491
but my bachelors is in fucking Linguistics

use to be a pretty good union job

but if you haven't been living in a cave on Mars for the last couple years you know that they will try to get you cheap, work you harder and make you listen to some stupid shit about America's cult of hard work from a bunch of guys who inherited their Daddy's fortunes

g'nite /lit/ sleep tight

>>1608512
nite, watch this before you drift off
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfq3c4Cf1Fs&feature=related

>>1608495

Linguistics > Literature studies. Hi five.

>>1608534
jobless, futureless, hopeless bro fist

>>1608512
>>1608529
I have no idea what's going on here either

I'm in grad school for my MLS right now. Expensive as shit and you jump through a lot of hoops. The institutions are also pumping out more grads than there are available jobs, so add a terrible employment climate and expect to work for that entry level position.

But IMO it's worth it. I'm going into the archival track, and will be interning at a state park this summer.

You need to make yourself stand out for the degree to be worth it, but that's the same pretty much everywhere right now. And there are a ton of things you can do with an MLIS. There's a woman who does nothing but research for the editor of WIRED. She's a personal librarian. There are people who do nothing but catalog rare books. They're job is like the CSI of nerds. I personally want to work with small archives on a contractual basis, going through material that may not have seen the light of day in decades, or centuries.

Plus, with a secondary education in languages or area studies, or independent study in rare books or antiquities, you can move up into the private sector with rare book dealership or auctions like Bonhams. If you have a clear idea of what's out there, and how to get it, an MLIS can get you one step closer to that goal.

>>1608903
The first paragraph makes me want to dismiss the whole idea until I read the rest of the post. Is choosing a career path supposed to be so difficult?

>>1608903
Can I ask you a question? I really think I want to work in a public library. I like the idea of managing a large collection of general-interest material, and of having what I would consider a good balance of collegial and customer contacts in a day (most of the time you're talking to random people off the street about the books they want to find, but at the same time you have your fellow library staff-members to shoot the breeze with and help out with tasks as well). How do you "stand out" if you want to do that? Come up with a ground-breaking community-engagement program?

>>1609206
Community outreach can be a large part of that. Volunteering is big. The good news is that most library programs are biased towards the public librarian skill set because that's where most of the jobs are. The bad news is that the majority of students are also interested in that part of the field.

You can stand out in the way other grad students stand out, publishing helps. Creating programs helps. If you want to obtain a management position you want to focus on things like acquisition policies and outreach and things like that. So if you can do things like volunteer for library programs (we have a big tech service thing that is run in large part by library student volunteers), write about current issues (how much do you know about ebooks and library contracts on econtent etc). One of the big benefits to brick and mortar schools is that networking is more easy. Participate in your local ALA chapter, because the people you meet there are the ones who will be looking at your resume later. I volunteered at my local conference and met a ton of very cool librarians, all of whom I have kept in contact with. They'll be the ones who can say you're something more than all the other students out there.

>>1608971

IMO you sort of fall into the groove that is most comfortable. Lib Sci is a much more varied field than you might think, and you get a taste of a lot of it when you're at school. Some bits you dismiss after you've been exposed to it and others get more attractive the deeper you go. I didn't know a thing about Archives until I found myself in one for a completely unrelated project, and that's when I knew what I wanted to be. And the nice part is that if what you pick at first doesn't work, you can translate your skills to another environment relatively easily.

>>1609379
so being an impersonal shut-in probably won't help
well I guess you can say that about any occupation

>>1609385
Yeeaaaaah. Unfortunately the library profession is not the introvert's playground anymore, if it ever was, but 80% of librarians are still introverts, so at least everyone is awkward together.

However, if you want to deal with as few people as possible, there's always cataloging.

>>1609379

Can you provide examples of the different career paths?

>>1609413
http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/w/page/16941198/FrontPage
This might be interesting to you.

Major fields in librarianship include, Public, School, Special, Academic, Corporate, Archives and Law. You can run the gamut from high paying jobs with immense budgets to tiny positions in which you are the only employee in your dept and you have to scrimp and save and beg for grants. You can go into private work as an information consultant, work in competitive discovery in the corporate field, work for yourself as a rare book dealer, work for international governments and organizations as management for outreach literacy programs, drive book mobiles, and serve any segment of the population from the poorest to the richest.

You can become a preservation specialist and help institutions preserve their materials, or you can be an information architect and develop programs for metadata processing. You can sit in the back of an office all day and process and select materials, or you can go to exotic locales and help isolated populations record their own history. The options are pretty much endless.

You can work in a community college and develop innovative policies to increase usage and circulation. You can work in academic libraries and manage e-contracts. You can work in acquisitions and crunch budget numbers all day. You can work in reference and answer the most absurd questions people can think of. You can work in archival and develop unique finding solutions for unique materials, and so on and so forth. I hope you get the idea.

I've looked into pursuing and MLIS in the States; there are not a lot of jobs available in my area, and lots of posters and bloggers say you will be more likely to get a job if you are able to move. So I'm still thinking it over. One note for people who are interested; make sure you apply to a Uni program which is ALA-accredited, or you may not be able to get a good job. There are only about 60 ALA-accredited MLIS programs in the US right now. Some of them are online, which I am considering because there are not any acredited programs in my city, and I don't want to move.

>>1605447
If you're a hipster go for it!

>>1609385
>>1609397
is there ANY occupation where an introvert can keep up nowadays?

>mfw a board on 4chan was being helpful near me

>>1610554
Literally No

Seriously, though, this is the message I consistently get all the time: that the only thing that really matters in securing your future is networking and connections and your ability to be outgoing and likable and get people on your side. In other words, to be an extrovert... more or less, it has made me absolutely hopeless - because if this is the key of success then that door is barred to me. To hell with the world. What did introverts formerly do?

>>1605447
Idiot...

>>1610982
they were hermits (in the religious sense or otherwise), starving artists, beggars and scavengers

versus other graduate degrees you won't make very much...

I think average mid-career salary is around $50k, though there are exceptions.

It sounds like a pretty sweet gig, though, and depending on your financial situation it could be a wise choice.

versus other graduate degrees you won't make very much...

I think average mid-career salary is around $50k, though there are exceptions.

It sounds like a pretty sweet gig, though. if you don't have much debt from undergrad, it could be a wise choice.

>>1605447
you are now aware Jim Bouton invented Big League Chew

curt flood best baseball player ever.

>>1611833
because of all the work he did for players and free agency and whatever?

>>1610982
There was a guy in our MLS program who didn't last the first semester because all he wanted to do was fucking catalog and no one would shut up about ebooks and the library as community center and outreach and so on.

Introverts have it bad right now. Even once you've got the job you're expected to play advocate for your department, but I'm not to sure that it was ever any different. It's just that this sort of thing has become completely embraced lately.

>>1612271
meh, in my grad class of 60, there are only 1-2 real extroverts. and 1/2 the class will rarely if ever speak in class for the entire 2 years. so no matter what, a hell of a lot of very introverted people will be getting positions, by default.

>>1612834
why the sage, friend?

>>1612839
it's just not my experience, but maybe other programs have very outgoing students, it's very possible. i step outside my grad dept and have a lot of conversation on politics, music, whatever - just not in my lib studies dept.

Honestly, the whole introvert/extrovert is just a label, which can be applied subjectively to suit your needs. doesn't impress me at all. sorry, I'm just an evidence man myself. but again, I'm pretty extroverted and get frustrated by ppl who can't discuss things openly.

>>1612883
If I had to take an educated guess on how many people were very social and how many kept their heads down and went through the program quietly, I'd say it was a pretty even distribution. Thething is that even if you are an introvert you're going to have to get over whatever anxiety you may have about networking and putting yourself out there if you want a good chance at the jobs you're aiming for.

My main point when talking about introverts in the field is that you shouldn't expect to be able to find a job where you can just sit back and work with books and no people. They exist but are not the norm. Library positions tend to be social positions, regardless of whether or not the people sitting in those positions are social.