Reference Desk: LIS Employment Resources

Nice list here.

LibrarianShipwreck

Pirates. I’ve been back to work for a few weeks now. Which, fuck capitalism, but I got a kitty to feed.

Anyway, over the course of my five months unemployed and job hunting, I amassed quite a list of job ad aggregation websites. And some of you might benefit from my acquired knowledge. Look, it’s either that or overthrow the system. Take your pick.

*ahem* Right, back on subject. Most of these are US-centric & NYC-centric, for which I’m only a little sorry, since that’s where I live. They cover a range of LIS jobs, including archives & museums, and a few other related odds & ends.

• ALA Joblist Several jobs posted a day, for all levels of experience, across the US & occasionally elsewhere. Of course, every other librarian is seeing those ads, too. Follow it on Twitter: @ALA_JobLIST
• SAA Online Career Center Like with many other things, SAA…

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5 Million Public Domain Ebooks in HathiTrust: What Does This Mean?

Reaching out to politicians about LIS issues

HLS

I’m sure many of you saw the distressing news last week: the budget resolution for 2016 released by the U.S. House Budget Committee and then passed by the House of Representatives proposes (among many things) to eliminate federal funding for the Institute of Museum & Library Services (IMLS). While this budget is by no means set in stone (the Senate passed a similar budget and the two groups will have to work together to pass a collaborative combination), it is still quite upsetting.

ALA President Courtney Young released a statement on March 25th, expressing her shock and dismay at the U.S. House Budget Committee’s actions. After reading her statement, I honestly felt extremely distressed. For the federal government to express their lack of financial support for our cultural heritage, information, and learning institutions in this way is very upsetting. I consider myself a moderately politically active person – I vote regularly and…

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5 tips for conducting an interview with someone you care about, using StoryCorps’ new app

Becoming Your Own Personal Advocate

HLS

From creator Ned Potter: “This is my hectoring library advocacy poster! The point is that if someone asks you about libraries and you don’t give a good account of yourself and your profession, you aren’t just abstaining, you’re actually doing damage.” Acquired from Flickr with permission to use wherever and whenever with attribution.

How many of you have had family members, friends, acquaintances, strangers, etc. ask you why you are in library school or give you a quizzical look and say something along the lines of “Don’t you know that librarianship is a dying profession?” or “But didn’t Google replace the need for librarians?” Of course, we all know that this isn’t true, but if there is anything I’ve learned over the past 2.5 years in library school, it’s that we must be advocates for our profession and, perhaps more importantly, ourselves. The reality is that we will probably never…

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All the Tweets!

Such a fun day!

THATCamp Community Archives

View all the tweets from THATCamp Community Archives 2015 over at Storify:

https://storify.com/StewartVarner/thatcamp-community-archives-2015

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ALA: The Membership Cost is Too Damn High?

Thanks for writing what many of us are thinking. Those dropping membership numbers are telling.

Instruction Instruction Part 1: Why Library Teaching Training Matters

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Author’s note: This is part one of a two-part series on the state of library instruction training in LIS programs. In part one, we will discuss why such training matters. Part two will discuss how library students can create or supplement opportunities to become better library instructors.

What was it that made you decide you wanted to be a librarian? Do you get so jazzed by historical artifacts that you want to shout it from the rooftops? Do you want to spend the rest of your life instilling a love of reading in children? Were you inspired by a particularly helpful librarian angel who taught you to do research in college? Whatever your reason, it probably relates in some way to helping others learn. Whether we’re acting as teachers or just making it easier for others to teach themselves, librarians have pretty strong connecting ties to education. But as those of us in…

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How to spend 30 effective minutes on social media

A librarian abroad

I came across a great blog post by Kevan Lee on Buffer that outlines all the kinds of activities you could be doing on social media, and provides different types of plan for how to use 30 minutes, on social media. (There’s quite a bit of good advice over on Buffer, if you’ve got time to read around.)

This particular post helped me to reflect on my social media mini-strategy that I wrote about in May last year, along with the work I’m now doing for Piirus, managing their blog. I recognised that what I do personally with social media, is rather different to what I do for Piirus. The kinds of activities that I focus on for myself, from the list in the Buffer blog post are: Curating, Crafting and Experimenting. I keep wishing that I was more social but I can’t do everything! I focus on my online profile…

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Building a 21st Century Library