I have thought about making a list of employers I will keep my eyes open for jobs. Since my goal is to work for a library that focuses on history (of some sort) and allows me to archive and/or work for a special collection, I have to make sure that whatever job that I take will allow me to develop any skills in this specialized area of librarianship. Otherwise I will be wasting more time.

I figured it would be a good idea to gather a collection of job announcements in order to get a good idea of the skill set I need for the type of position I want (hopefully a type of local history librarian). That way I can do some extra curricular studying. I also should retrieve some frequently asked interview questions so that I can practice my interviewing skills.

Volunteer work should do me some good, although the difficulty is that I am a full-time worker (in a library thank goodness) and my work hours are generally the same as the hours in special libraries that I would like to volunteer in. I would be limited to possibly one day a week every other month.

A couple of my friends have been giving me a lot of encouragement the last couple of days and I feel like I really need to get out there and push myself to where I want to be. I have been kind of down about the library I work in right now. When I started working in a public library I did not realize that I would spend much of my energy dealing with customer behavior rather than doing interesting research. I remember one day trying to assist a customer who had a problem with their library card and found out she was no longer in the system. In our library, in order to keep your library card active you must check out items. Using the computers, even though you had to enter your library card number, does not count towards the card’s activity. I had to explain this to a customer and her reply was rather snotty “I don’t come to the library to read BOOKS!” The statement took me aback. In fact I could not believe that someone who practically depended on a library would actually say that in a library and to a librarian.

Another thing that brings me down is that I realized I am librarian of a different species from my co-workers. We are going through a major process of weeding. Because knowledge of any kind is my life blood it is hard for me to let go of a book. I am the type of librarian that belongs in a repository. I will care for the sick, the old, outdated and the practically unknown and preserve it until its pages have withered into dust. In public libraries, the trimming and pruning of a collection is necessary. You cannot keep anything with outdated information, which is very understandable and I also agree outdated books cannot meet the needs of the public. It is a different issue for me with fiction. Classics are never outdated, but most novels that don’t become popular do and become weeded because of that fact. I believe that even some nonfiction has timeless knowledge. Many times I’m afraid that some books will be gone before I have a chance to soak in the knowledge they have to offer.

I wonder now if there will be librarians shaking their heads at me for my opinions or will think I am naive. All I know is I don’t fit in with the breed of librarians I work with so far and I hope to find my herd soon.