Library

BCLA ALPS – Getting Hired in Higher Education

Today was the Getting Hired in Higher Education event at SLAIS, organized by Tara Stephens and Danielle Winn, executives of ALPS (Academic Librarians in Public Service) section and myself, the ALPS representative (from the SLAIS BCLA/CLA student chapter), and sponsored by BCLA (British Columbia Library Association).

Getting Hired in Higher Education is an annual event organized for SLAIS students to hear, get advice, and ask questions about looking for, finding, and securing a job as an academic librarian. This year’s event was well attended (we had a full room!) and it seemed very appreciated.

This year, we had a larger panel with five academic librarians:

Aleha McCauley (University of British Columbia)
Annie Jensen (Langara College)
Emma Lawson (Langara College)
Danielle Winn (University of British Columbia)
Baharak Yousefi (Capilano College)

Panelists introduced themselves talking about their educational background, a little about the positions they currently hold, and primarily about their path towards their current job. I will not summarize everything, but will instead, concentrate on the advice they gave and the Q&A session.

While in School

Classes

More specifically, while at SLAIS, students were advised learn more about:

project management,
communications, and
assessment & program evaluation, especially the impact of a program/service.

and take classes that are skill or project based. Some specific classes that were mentioned:

Subject-Based Information Services (LIBR 530)
Collections Management (LIBR 580)
Instructional Role of the Librarian (LIBR 535) – particularly needed in academic
Library Automation and Systems (LIBR 551)
Open Access (LIBR 559K – 1-credit)
Management of Libraries and Archives: Community-Led Libraries (LIBR 579B – 1-credit)

Experience and Involvement

Panelists emphasized getting as much experience as possible paid or unpaid:

Co-op position
GAA (Graduate Academic Assistant)/Student Librarian job
Professional experience
Practicum – particularly to see what you like or don’t like
Volunteer

As to general areas, instructional and reference experience are key for academic libraries.

Getting involved while at school and afterwards is also very important, especially to network with others.

Participate in one or more professional association
Attend events – just like this one!
Attend workshops – e.g. CTLT’s Graduate Student Instructional Skills Workshop
Attend and/or volunteer at conferences
Get published e.g. student journals, blogs, reviews
Get involved in publishing e.g. as editor, reviewer
Building a professional online presence – employers will search for you

The Job Process

Searching & Applying for Jobs

Other than experience and involvement, employers look for:

good communication skills,
problem solving – i.e. how you work through problems, how you express yourself around change, and
interest in technology, especially web technology and social media.

To search for jobs, it is recommended to get RSS feeds to save time on searching.

Resumes & Cover Letters

Students have probably heard all the usual advice on format, keeping to the job description and such, but some other interesting points came up during today’s discussion:

Personality: to include or not? – Mixed advice was given to the librarians on how much to include. One mentioned that she began to get more interviews and job offers after including more of her personality, while another was told to tone down the personality as that will be seen in their web presence
Get it proofread by other people
Read more job descriptions to get a feel for the vocabulary used and what is expected
See what others are doing with cover letters that work, see Open Cover Letters
Get a mentor – someone who you can learn from, ask advice, and who will give you feedback on your resume and cover letter.

Interviews

Get as much experience as possible with real interviews
Expect 1-2 days for the last stage of interviews
You will be expected to a presentation or a mock workshop
The panel will generally consist of 5-6 people
“Don’t try to guess what they want to hear, tell them what you think.” i.e. be honest
Evaluate the panel to see whether you want to work there and with that supervisor

Expectations

The librarians also provided words of advice on being realistic about the job market:

Be flexible about geographic location
If you can’t be, know that it’s a very competitive market – you will have to start in auxiliary, part-time, and contract positions
Start early during your last term of school – many noted that they were spending as much time on job searching and applications as they were on school work
Consider non-academic areas e.g. public libraries, vendors – i.e. it’s not true you can’t go from public to academic (or vice versa)

Once Offered a Job

It’s not often talked about since students generally concentrate on getting a job, but once offered a full-time, permanent position job, some things to consider:

Salary is negotiable – call the faculty association to ask if salary is representative if necessary
Get moving costs covered, if applicable
You might get an accommodation trip – trip to look for living space, if applicable
Look into start-up grants
Ask about professional development funds, though this is pretty standard
Know the major points of the collective agreement

In relation, the handbook for new faculty, Negotiating Starting Salaries published by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, was recommended.

Question & Answers

Here’s what came up during the Q&A session:

Q: How would you answer “Why are you interested in this division/organization?” A: draw on the posting, research the institution, but be yourself and answer honestly. Aside: You might consider using university colours in the presentation.
Q: What was the most difficulty question you have ever been asked? A: Specific research questions, but mostly, they want to know how you would deal with it.
Q: What are the best continuing education options, especially when lack time or money? A: Instructional opportunities, webinars (a library webinars blog was mentioned), grants (to go to conferences, etc.). Most positions come with professional development funds. Something you might ask about at the interview or when negotiating salary.
Q: Can you do a co-op and GAA at the same time? A: Yes. You can schedule it so that you do both at the same time, or consider leaving your GAA position.
Q: Is it possible to leave a contract for a permanent position? A: Yes. Talk to your supervisor, and they will generally be very understanding that you must leave mid-contract if you are accepting a full-time, permanent position.

Summary – The Top 5

In case you found that a lot to digest or just too much to read at once, here are the top 5 pieces of (general) advice:

Get as much work experience as possible.
Get experience or take a course in teaching and instruction.
Get involved as much as possible, and network.
Take project or skill based courses while in school.
Be flexible.

EDIT: Summary version was posted in the Nov 2011 v.3 no.4 issue of the BCLA Browser in the ALPS Yodeler section.

New UBC Law Library Tour

We went to visit the new UBC Law Library as part of our planning and design class, and the librarian involved with the building project was also kind enough to give us a talk on the process.

Gone with the Old, In with the New

It was great to see the new law building, especially having visited the old one. The old building was called a “Concrete Bunker” because it really did look like one. The building was in such poor state. The roof was leaky, the water would run on the inside walls, and the building was famous for having buckets lining the halls! So, a new law building has been a long time coming, and it’s definitely a big improvement.

Collection Development

Moving is always a good opportunity to weed. Other than weeding, the staff also took on the big project to reclassify a lot of the material that was not already in LC classification.

Shelving

Some might consider shelving boring, but the details that goes into making such a simple choice is quite interesting. For one, a careful choice was made on the type of compact shelving to use. The chosen one is very easy to use, manual, and seems to be magnetic (and having used electronic ones, I prefer manual). Careful measurements were also made since they were smaller than regular shelving (33″ as opposed to 36″) in order to accommodate all the books with fill space.

The open stacks shelving was the standard 36″ in a nice wood with lighting that went across (perpendicular) instead of in between (parallel) the shelves. The shelves were also filled with approximately a 50% fill, but of course it differed depending on the section from 20-70%. You can see how neat it looks right now because of the careful calculations done by the librarian.

The reference area also has shelves with a built-in mini-table at the end of each end for convenience.

Reading, Study, & Computer Spaces

There are various areas for reading and studying. There is the big reading room and each floor also has a couple of smaller areas with lower reading love-seats. The top floor primarily has study carrels, but the open type instead of the closed ones (divider on three sides). On the second floor, there is a computer lab area with a print room, next to the teaching room. The reference room also has long tables with chairs where you can study.

Making a Space Pleasant

A lot of what I liked about the library was the pleasantness of it. The lighting was nice (it points towards the ceiling so it’s not direct), the high ceilings with the stained glass, the stairs (are kind of a shiny granite) and the artwork. There are no paintings or sculptures, but there are the stone backgrounds to the signs for example. My favourite piece was the donor “wall” just in front of the entrance which was actually made of glass balls with names written on them.

Overall, it was just a very pleasant space with some nice views whether looking back in the building or to the outside.

AACR2 and MARC: Rules that Give You Individuality

The last couple of weeks in cataloguing have been on descriptive cataloguing using AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules) rules and MARC (MAchine Readable Code) coding. If ever we think that librarians cannot be decisive, then one area where they can be is cataloguing. Our instructors did not lie about this, and yet, being decisive and being consistent is not entirely the same thing.

Considering the number of rules in AACR2, I was initially under the impression that it would be like APA citation. Essentially, that there is a rule for everything and no matter who does it, it will look the same. Obviously, the areas left for local use (such as most of the MARC fields with a 9) will differ between libraries, as well as specific code classification, but I thought the descriptive part would be uniform. Then I discovered that I was quite wrong.

Title Information or Not?

Despite the numerous rules, there are many areas that leave room for interpretation. One of the items I had for our assignment was a directory for an auto exhibition. The main title was fairly clear, but then I wondered whether the location (the exhibition hall) which was on the title page should be listed as other title information considering it was written underneath the title almost as if it was a subtitle.

Another issue which to consider the primary language (which would be listed first) in a bilingual book. [insert pictures] Would you do it based on the primary language of your library or would you use any other clues you could find? (I used both since the centrefold picture was in the same direction as the primary language of the assignment.)

How much Publisher Information to include?

As publisher information can be from a variety of sources, how much would you include? In the case that there is no (clear) publisher, which is more important? Distributor? Printer? Copyright holder?

In the end, I somewhat made up the statement of responsibility and came up with this:

Taipei : Printed by Wuchou Color Phtoengraving for Taiwan External Trade Development Council [organizer], 2008

Notes

Finally, there’s notes. The extend to which it’s filled out and exactly how is up to the cataloguer, which of course means that it will differ. Interestingly, they may not be as different as one might think as there are a far amount of rules surrounding the order, how one might format it, and MARC coding will even separate numerous notes into specific fields. It may be more or less complete, but having looked at various catalogue entries for the same item, they are fairly consistent.

Right or Wrong?

What I begin to wonder is who’s to say which way is right or wrong? Who might be able to say which way is better? I’m starting to think there must be a listserv of some sort for this sort of thing that maybe us students just don’t know about yet…

Canadian Police College (RCMP) Library Tour

This week’s tour was to the Canadian Police College Library at the RCMP compound and college campus.

Collections

As you would expect, the collections are focused on law enforcement, particularly the investigative component with only a minor amount of materials on criminology. Other than books and journals, they also have microfiche (most has been weeded though), audio/visual materials, theses, studies, and reports.

Services

Standard services of reference, ILL, specialized bibliographies, training are available. It’s not a very big library, but is specialized in supporting all police agencies and organizations across Canada (and some international) as well as the students attending the college. It’s a nice, quiet space with a reading and working area open 24/7! Reference and A/V are only available during regular hours naturally.

Sorry, no pictures this time. Camera ran out of batteries and out of spares! The website has a Virtual Library Tour though.

Stables Tour

As part of our tour of the library and campus, we got to go on the stables tour. Having seen the musical ride, it was interesting to learn about how things work behind the scenes. Sadly, they only tour Saskatchewan and east of it. The most interesting part was learning that they have 8 months to train (that includes learning how to ride if they have no experience!) and then get to stay for (usually) 2 years. No touching the horses unfortunately, but for anyone who has any interest in horses and/or the ride, I would encourage them to go. It’s a public and free tour.

War Museum Research Centre Tour

This week’s tour was to the War Museum‘s Research centre. The research centre is an amalgamation of the library, archives, and photo archives. All of their collections are searchable online and you can get in-house access to them. Borrowing of library materials is also available through interlibrary loans.

The library provides all the usual services including reference and ILL. There is always a staff member on the reference desk whether it be a staff who works on the library side of things or the archives.

The library collects materials relating to military, history, biographies, cartoons, technical manuals (e.g. carrier pigeons, bugle songs), newspapers, etc. with a focus on Canadian materials (many of which are self published), but also materials from/on countries that had a lot of interaction with Canada. Much of their collection (library and archives) is acquired through donations.

The space is nicely furnished with a reading room (which is for the viewing archives and rare books), Canadian war art, mix of regular and compact shelving, and a study area with a wonderful view of the river. Just outside the windows is a landscape model of a battlefield where a family of groundhogs live.

The Archives

The archives area is divided essentially into two areas. One is the work room and the other consist of three vaults (books, maps, photo). The work room is used for basic conservation tasks while anything extensive or complex is contracted out. The vault itself was the usual temperature controlled area with shelving for storing materials. The 3D maps shelving was interesting in that it included rubber pieces (each piece is kept in a bag in case the temperature control breaks and it starts to melt), and very large pieces (the shelf has extra large stoppers so that the pieces do not hit the wall since they are wider than the shelving).

The archives collects a lot of different old and current/contemporary materials including rare books (pre-1900 or significant/interesting one offs), letters, maps (smallest of which is approximately 4″x6″, largest of which is the NORAD map approximately 8’x10′), blueprints, records, scrapbooks, photos, and video/film. Generally, official records are collected by the national archives while the war museum collects more personal ones. As mentioned, most of the acquisitions are done through donations (some of which is from people cleaning out their attic), while a few are purchased.

Some interesting pieces that were shown to us (see pictures in slideshow) including silk WWI postcards, letter of mourning (with the king’s real signature), WWII war time logs, WWII terrain model (made of cotton on cardboard), colour uniform book, treatise on artillery (the oldest book from 1628), book on uniforms’ lace patterns, photos from the Afghanistan war, military man’s scrapbook including his medals of award.

Short Reflection

The tour was great since we got to see both the library and archives, particularly how they work together. The staff’s enthusiasm really showed and made it seem like a great place to work (which I am certain it is) beyond working with interesting material. The materials were also carefully chosen by staff (and volunteers), so it gave it a more “personal” touch. Finally, the tour was nicely timed on a Thursday afternoon so that we could enjoy the museum for free afterwards. This was definitely one tour not to be missed!