Poster child

The First Librarian blog was a project that I started when I was invited to speak at a class about job search skills for librarians. The blog has held on to that focus, and I still write posts about librarians looking for work, but, just like the larger economic picture always affects the individual, the economy and the labor market has crept into this blog.

I also find myself writing sometimes about business and career books, which isn't a surprise because that is the type of library that I work in. I also find it difficult to some times find review sources for career books--and this means that there is a lot of crap on the ground. Or telling the same tired story over and over again to clients: oh, the best career book is What Color is your Parachute? Have you ever read, What Color is Your Parachute? And that is not to say that What Color is Your Parachute? is a bad book, just that it has become a cliche for people who don't know about other resources to always suggest that book. It's like picking a mystery novel for someone and saying, after Agatha Christie don't bother. You might even believe that, but it just reveals an ignorance of individual reading tastes. When it comes to career books, there are individual needs that are greater than a standard sized career book.

And then there is absolutely useless tripe like Don't Use a Resume, Send a Qualifications Brief which we keep in the library for comparison purposes and actually have a sticker on that says, don't follow the advice in this book, come to the desk and see a grown up for guidance. We can't leave it without the sticker because we don't want people who need to pay the rent to remain unemployed--but we also like to use it as a tool to show what not to do.

There are also career books that have an overtly Christian viewpoint, such as Suddenly Unemployed, which even gives guidance about workplace behavior or behavior when your laid off that includes scriptural references. That book really won't cut it for your clients who don't share that view of heaven. But there aren't that many books out there that deal with unemployment--yet, though there are more coming out all the time.

What this post is indicating is not that the blog will vanish, but just that I want to take a wider view of the world of careers and libraries. So I will still post about library career information and work search tools, but I am also going to post about the economy, especially when it affects the labor market, and include some career book reviews.

New widgets

I've added some widgets on the right hand side of this blog.

• The first is the badge for the Yahoo! Pipes that I built to find Canadian library jobs. It's not perfect, but it might display a post that you have overlooked.
• Below that is the Career Jet widget. Career Jet is a vertical search engine with multi-lingual and multi-national versions. A colleague of mine also played with it and you can do something completely cool: you can look for jobs in your native language (we tried Chinese) while searching results from another country (we searched for jobs in Canada). An awesome way to improve your search if you want to use your first language while looking for jobs in another country.

So remember to look right when you visit this blog.

Guest conference blogger

I would love to go to the CLA conference this year, but I have a scheduling conflict and I can't make it. Is someone interested in guest blogging at the conference? I would put your posts here and make links to your own blog, boosting our google juice.

What you would need:

• Ability to send an email, from one of the labs or from your blackberry to me with your posts
• I would prefer a mad picture taker, so someone with a cell phone camera and the trigger finger of a fan girl at a con would be most appreciated.
• You're looking for a job at the conference. The job seeker's perspective at a conference is different from a conference attendee.
  

Send me an email if you are interested. I will try to think up a worthy honorarium.

Play nicely in the Field of the Blog

Please post comments. I'm not scared and I think the Internet is about conversing and not dictating. I'm also just not that smart everyday and I also thinking talking to myself is a sign...sign of the cat maybe, but a sign nonetheless.

If you want to write a blog post, you have to send me the post; just email it to bookish37@gmail.com. Comments get lost or they can't be labeled properly so they can be found again. And why bother to write if you don't want to be found?

But play nicely in the Field of the Blog: I don't let you post anonymously. You have to have a handle, at least, even if you don't want to use your full name. And it may only take a little old-school Nancy Drew, with a dash of Veronica Mars, to figure out who you are. (And it is only going to get easier with a little Data Portability).

Schedule

I was sick yesterday, so no posting for me. I thought I would take this opportunity to talk a bit about scheduling posts: I'm going to try to put up a post every week day, unless I'm sick or on conference. I'm going to take a posting break on weekends so I can write posts that aren't time sensitive so I'll look brilliant and consistent during the week. Scheduled posting means I don't wear this expression, my /Alfred, fetch me an Advil face:

Since this is also an I'm not a mind reader face, it would also be really helpful if people could suggest some topics for me, or if they could tell me something they're interested in and just write about it: advice, rant, strategy, whatever. You can email it to me and I will post it to the blog with your name, or handle if you prefer, attached to the post. I know that many of you have experience looking for work--have done it before, will do it again--so you can be a page sage for the blog.