Hey Paul Krugman

Yes, there are some Paul Krugman fangirls in my office, swapping podcasts and his books, wanting to friend him on Facebook. So this just made my Friday.

TARP to Main

According to this story from NPR, TARP money is making its way to regular people, through banks, helping to make credit available to business people.

Nice to have some good news about TARP.

Now for some bad news: some banks are threatening to give their TARP money back. Keep in mind, they plan to; they haven't yet.



Maybe the major bad banks should learn from the smaller or regional banks that are distributing their TARP to Main, and hire some PR to get the word out.

Suggested capping exercise: Create a directory of jobs that don't need a college degree

One of my friends sent me this post from ZenHabits, Land Your Dream Job: Ditch School and Get a Library Card, and it made me think about one possible capping exercise topic for a library school student (too late for this year, I'm afraid), creating resources for people who don't have college degrees to find a good job.

There's lots of ways to run with this project:

• Create a pathfinder for library users to find out about careers that don't require college and indicate where the books are in the library that help people with this topic;
  
• Educate yourself about job boards: which ones are good for people with college degrees, where are the jobs posted for people who don't have college degrees, and prepare an educational program at the public library level that teaches people how to use job boards. This is a good one for online learning since chances are people are already on the Internet trying to figure out how to use a job board and could use the library as a reference point;
• Do a survey in your community to find out how people use the library to find jobs. Find out how, and if, they turn to the library for job searching needs or if they use other resources. 

I'm sure you can think of a few more.

This is an area (finding good jobs without a degree) since many of the people in this situation need a job now and don't have time to return to school for retraining, or need work to support their families while they are transitioning. It is also an area that needs to be explored because information will be so hard to come by. For example, if some of the forecasts are correct and job growth will occur in education, government and health services, many of those jobs require a college degree (teacher, nurse, administrator, doctor, all need 4 years, maybe more) so finding jobs in other sectors of low growth will require some strong research know-how. Public librarians and special librarians who work with job searches can certainly show the way in this area.

Pay gap between childless women and women-with-children

Statistics Canada released a study today about the earnings of women who have and don't have children (the release on the Daily, the full text of the study is available on Perspectives on Labour and Income).

From the summary of the study:


On average, the earnings of women with children were 12% less than those of women without children, and this gap increased with the number of children: with one child, the gap was 9%; with two children, it was 12%; and with three of more children, 20%.

The study also looked at the differences between single mothers, singletons without sprouts, and partnered women with children. And yes, it was worse to be a single mother:

A comparison between single mothers and childless single women showed that the average earnings gap was close to 20%. But for married/common-law mothers versus childless women in couples, the gaps was only about 10%.

Other interesting findings from the study included that the less time off with children (a gap) could positively influence earnings, as well as delaying a family.

Since so many librarians are women, I thought the study would be interesting; maybe we should just be interested in the results since so many of us know women.

We should also be interested in this study, especially in light of this post that I saw on Appetite for Equal Rights, Bad economy causing women to get naked.

Your request is granted

According to this post on Careers that Don't Suck, grantwriting is sexy again. This means a few things:

• If you're a good writer, you can look for grantwriting opportunities;
• There are probably volunteer opportunities if you are not sure if you are a good writer, or a good grant writer;
  
• Libraries are still looking for librarians who can write grant applications and requests, if not more so in the current economic climate. 

If you have no experience in this area, and are still in school, look for opportunities that will let you get some grantwriting experience. You will probably always need it in public service/non-profit.

There are also some links at the bottom to job boards and free classes on how to write grant applications.

Will any libraries be on the Progressive Employers of Canada list?

Since so many women work in libraries, it will be interesting to see if any libraries will make the list of Progressive Employers of Canada.

The criteria for inclusion is not all woman friendly, but woman as childcare-giver friendly, which leaves out quite a few women who could be helped with elder care, given more opportunities in the workplace, equal pay--heck, better paternal leave could be an asset, but the sponsors are mommy-motivated, so the slant makes sense.

If you work for a "progressive employer" you may want to nominate them.

I'd rather be stung by a jellyfish

Some workers are turning into entrepreneurs to keep the wolf from the door, or engaging in "forced entrepreneurship", according to this article from the New York Times. (Originally spotted on All Things Digital).

There's a summary of how to become an information entrepreneur on the companion website to the book, Rethinking Information Careers, as well as plenty of other resources, depending on the type of product or service that you will decide to sell.

So what are you going to do with that?

Well, if you're already a librarian--and know that you still want to be one--you will do library-stuff. But for masters and PhD students who are thinking about leaving an academic career--or one of the many librarians who left ABD for library school, and I know a few of you personally--you should spend an evening with this book.

So what are you going to do with that?: Finding careers outside of academia, revised in 2007, is the project of Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius. You may have read Susan Basalla's columns in the Chronicle, or seen the authors posting on WRK4US. So what are you going to do with that? helps students and academics with what I think personally is one of their greatest problems: a lack of knowledge of careers outside of academia.

Let me give you an example. If you don't want to do what your parents do, who do you see next as a professional or worker? You guessed it: a teacher. Now, some of us also visited the school library, or spent time with the school nurse (maybe a truant officer) but most of us saw teaching as a noble--and powerful--profession, since they held the chalk.

Then you went to college and ta-dum, you met the professor who controlled the PowerPoint and drank beer in the off-hours like a normal person. At the same time, you either a) worked crap jobs that you didn't want to do for the rest of your life; b) gave into your parents and got a degree in something that was supposed to lead to a job; or c) asked around or read a book about some other options. Many of us did not do complete part c before going to graduate school, so now we know very little about jobs, occupations and professions. So what are you going to do with that? is part of option c, which all of us in college should do--yes, read a book about careers. Now is the time!

Anyway, back to the book. Basalla and Debelius provide profiles (including Todd Gilman, a librarian who has also written for Chronicle about library and librarian stuff) of what former academics have done since departing from academia. They provide advice on how to research careers, including one of the best recipes for information interviewing, and even some sample resumes. Quotes from former academics and their advice on how to leave academia are spread throughout the book, providing evidence for how career management can work for people with advanced degrees.

One of my favorites, which I'll quote here, is from Jennifer Stone Gonzalez, who explains why grad students don't like to network:

In the business world, the most important information flows through people, not texts. Most of what you learn in business comes from informal dialogue, whether in person, on the phone, or via e-mail. This is one reason why people in the business world work so hard to establish interpersonal alliances. People in the business world read so they can cull information for us in conversations that fuel this exchange of learning and solve practical problems (p.79).

The emphasis is not on solitary analysis but on information sharing--which librarians learn to do and begin to like to do. See, you can network.

So what are you going to do with that? provides basic career management advice and resources, both print and online, that you can use to begin to acquire more occupational knowledge. If you're a graduate student about to leave the papered nest, you should read this book.

Jobs created, jobs lost

Repackaging the job creation/saved interactive map on Recovery.gov, HR Guru has put together an interactive map of job losses/creation by state, and created a slideshow by industry.

Now, librarians can be found in any industry, especially if they work in special libraries, but if you take the "traditional" classification--if you're in public libraries, you're usually lumped in with recreation, if you are in school or academic, you usually get counted in education--those two sectors will see the lowest losses, and some gain in the education sector.

Where, oh where, is Superman?

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm - watch more funny videos

Don't waste your do-over.

Rubrics

If you're working on your cover letter, resume or interview skills, and aren't quite sure how to judge your work, NACE JobWeb has a series of rubrics (for resumes, cover letters, interviews) that you can use to evaluate your stuff.

If you're working on a presentation for your library, you may want to compare some of your materials to theirs, or direct your attendees to also take a look at the material on JobWeb.

I'm baaack

I was on holidays, and I don't do work on holidays, because, well, it's a holiday and blogging is work. (Anyone who thinks that blogging isn't work, doesn't blog.)

Glad to be home.