Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Students and Novices

Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Students and Novices by N. Elizabeth Schlatter takes a look at the wide variety of careers available in the museum sector. (As an aside, when you call something a sector, it is a subdivision within an industry. Sectors are kinda like small cities in that they need a wide range of careers--in the case of museums, marketers, educators, consultants, curators, and, yes, librarians, to power them). Museum Careers provides an history and overview of the museum sector, describing the types of museums and then the types of occupations found within museums.

There are careers in museums for librarians, though librarian as a specific career only gets about two pages in this book. But there are several other careers to explore--especially for someone with a PHd who wants to escape from academia but still live a mindly life--and this book does provide summaries of many of the most visible, along with signposts to where these jobs are usually advertised.

The good news: "There's no one direct route to a museum job" (p. 10), though the bad news is, so many people want to work in museums that the competition is stiff and this can keep wages low.

The book doesn't have much (anything) on sample resumes or possible interview questions, but it is so strong on providing a background on the museum sector that I am going to recommend this one to anyone looking for a job within a museum--or possibly an archive--as requisite background reading to prep for an interview or to do some career exploration.