I have really tried to dial it down on any posting related to librarianship, especially since this fiasco, when some nutbar decided she couldn’t deal with my idea of satire and tried to start a smear campaign on her blog. Plus, I am not working in the field right now, so Library Thots aren’t exactly tumbling out of me. But I have to tell you about something that happened recently.

So, many of my informationally-abled friends have been passing around the link to this article, which is about how hard it is to find the first post-MLIS job. It’s a good article–thoughtful, well-written, and the author isn’t whining in any way, which I have to admit is SUPER TEMPTING. I will be whining myself later.

The gist of the article is that a library job-seeker may never know how they landed the job they end up with, because the odds are pretty freakin stacked against us right now. “Waves of librarian retirement” that we were promised in grad school? Not happening. Budgets continue to be cut. That deluxe chunk of robot poop downtown that passes for a library is great and all, but the main library cut back their hours upon opening it, and instituted a hiring freeze shortly after we graduated last year.

But if you know someone In The System, then you may actually know why you got passed over for a certain job. A friend in the system ran into a woman who passed up my companion for a job at a branch a few weeks ago. “We liked him,” she said, “but he was too iSchool.” (She was referring to the University of Washington’s library and information science program, which is where we were trained.)

Here is the MLIS program’s “mission statement.” In a nutshell, they are user/patron-focused, are concerned with the “life” or behavior of information, and integrate a fair amount of technology education into the program. It is a diverse degree, and people go on to many different occupations in the realm of information and librarianship. Without going into it here, I will say it is a flawed program, but if you combine the theory and classroom work with student work in the field, you have a solid start and a degree that legally certifies you to call yourself a big-L Librarian.

So for this librarian to say to our friend that my companion is “too iSchool”…I was shocked. He is being punished now for paying thousands of dollars to be professionally trained as a librarian at a modern information school. Guess what, lady? They’re not offering us classes in due date stamping anymore, and try as I might I could not find one class on the care and feeding of card catalogues. This is how librarians are being trained now. She may clue into that at some point, months or years from now, but my companion will be working elsewhere by then. I had heard rumors about “traditional” librarians (whatever that means) being disinclined to hire people who are techie, and now I’m starting to believe it. Because you know how to program you can’t talk to patrons?

For the past few months, my companion has been a contractor at a large local software company. He is being underpaid and is doing much more than he was hired for, but his techie skills are keeping a roof over our heads. He is also designing websites in his spare time. This is a man who did not even have an email address until the amazing year 2002. He wants to be a librarian, at a public library, but his enthusiasm started flagging around the time he got his fifteenth rejection letter from the same library system in the mail. He has one of the highest ratings in the hiring pool, but he continues to be not quite right…or too iSchool, I guess.

They are missing out on someone who understands how both the back end (technology) as well as the front end (people) of a library works. Someone else is going to snap him up soon, I’m sure. If my companion wasn’t so “iSchool”…if all he could be was a librarian…I’d be standing in line downtown for food stamps right now. FUCK YOU.

In Other NEWS!

Every night for the past three nights I have been awakened, sometimes more than once, by my kid with her face all covered with blood. Frannie is prone to nosebleeds in the winter, but it’s been especially bad lately. This apartment gets bone dry in cool weather, so I’m going to have to do something. I think we are going to try buying a humidifier today, because I can’t be awakened by bloodbath-a-go-go again. YEEG.

Did you read this, Mom? All those nights I woke you up after carpeting myself head-to-toe in vomit…revenge is yours. I don’t know where it can go from here. Maybe Franny’s future child will pee out of her eye corners or something.

Poor Frannie! She has a lot of nose anxiety, whereas I used my nose to make other people anxious. I discovered at age eight that I could fit Crayola markers up my nose, which would make my babysitters cringe. When I was a few years older than Frannie I used to bump rails of unsweetened Kool-Aid so I could sneeze purple and green on other kids at the bus stop. I also used to spend a lot of time alone, wondering why I didn’t have any friends. I am starting to think these two things may be related.

UPDATE! 9/28

No nosebleeds last night, and the humidifier put her right to sleep. She said she felt better in the morning, too. It can get awfully dry here considering this is a “temperate rainforest.”