I think these guys could use some librarians

According to an article in the November 15 edition of Bloomberg's Business Week, banks are losing paperwork, which can lead to a foreclosure even while the person is in a program to stop that very action. Jessica Yellin from CNN suggests, based on feedback from participants in the Making Home Affordable program, believe that banks are deliberately losing paperwork. With all of the problems associated with robosigning, it may be time to hire some trained document managers to get things organized.

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.

Careers in Fundraising

What librarian doesn't have experience looking for more money, whether eking it out of our own budgets, looking for more funds through grant applications, or networking with prospective donors. If you don't have these experiences, you might want to think about getting them.

How would you get these jobs?

You do not need to have an undergraduate degree in business, though that could help. The Certified Public Library Administrator program does offer a course on Fundraising/Granstmanship that might offer a good introduction to the topic. There are also a few books from the ALA on the topic, such as Fundraising and Friend-raising on the Web (I hope they are planning a new edition), or Becoming a Fundraiser. The CFRE also provides a list of fundraising compentencies; see how many you currently have.

If you're currently a librarian, you should be looking for opportunities to do research in fund raising and networking with prospects who could give money to the library. There might be some training opportunities with your local Chamber of Commerce, (you can use the World Chambers of Commerce directory to find your local), as well as networking events that will put you in touch with local business people. Obviously, working with your community and its patrons in general can also be an asset.

If you current job will not allow you to get experience in any of those areas, consider some of the opportunities available to volunteers locally, or use Idealist to find ones that you may be able to volunteer for remotely. You don't necessarily have to agree to go out canvassing for your local charity, since someone has already done the research in those cases.

If you're a student:

Obviously, the management principles course would be helpful. Write a paper on fundraising. You can probably get some experience in the field, as a student, if your development office has student positions available during the school year. You can, of course, volunteer to do fundraising, and taking on some of the entry-level positions, such as calling alumni for donations, is a good introduction to see if you can hack it in this field.

When you look for jobs online use fundraising, fund development, gifts, donor, development, as some of your keywords until you hit on the ones used most frequently for the types of jobs that appeal to you.

Sample Job Postings:

• Manager, Prospect Research, University of Alberta (they want a librarian, how cool is that?)
• Associate Director, Princeton University
• Development Associate, Individual Giving
  

WRK4US discussions: Technical Writer

WRK4US has just kicked off a new discussion, one for careers in technical writing. If you are interested in that career path, you may want to subscribe to the list so you can follow the discussion.

If you don't know about WRK4US, it is a listserv that discusses careers outside of academia for graduate students (and the current academic workforce) about careers outside of academia. Discussions in the past have included careers in publishing, librarianship, and freelance writing, just to name a few. It is worthwhile to sign up if you are a graduate student in the humanities, if only to find out about new discussions. Traffic is light on the list, nowhere near YALSA-bk, but very worthwhile.

Embedded technologists

I'm here at Canada Moodle Moot and one of the jobs that keeps coming up is an embedded technologist: someone who helps educators understand technology and how technology can be used in education. Now, many of the people here who are introducing themselves as embedded technologists are former teachers, or current instructional designers, but there is a place for librarians at the table.

There are embedded librarians who are bringing reference into the distance learning classroom, as part of their work as reference librarians. It appears that there could be additional job options available for a librarian who can also work as an instructional designer, showing how to use technology to enhance pedagogy.

What are they doing? Embedded technologists are showing teachers/professors and students how to use the features of the elearning application that their school is using (or help support a feral LMS). For example, they would help a teacher cut and paste embed text into the HTML block in Moodle  to get a Twitter stream into a Moodle course. They would also explain why the instructor might want to use Twitter to teach.

This is another option for technology oriented librarians who have background as educators (though you might not need a background as an educator if you have the technology chops) to become an embedded technologist.

I am not a fan of the idea that you can go back to school to wait out a bad economy, but I do have an additional degree in instructional design, so I have also provided a link so you can do more research on schools (US) that offer graduate degrees in instructional design.

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.

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.

Online Community Manager

This post from WebWorkerDaily talks about online community managers (yep, it's real) and this could be a great job for techie librarians who want to use their skills to work with people online. A quick scan of the posts also reveal that the applicant should have a background in marketing, or an effective networker with experience building an online community via social media.

American Libraries Digital Supplement

American Libraries released a digital supplement that talks about the library profession. The article the Bun Heads are Dead, originally put me off because I am tired about reading about how librarians buck the stereotypes (it makes me guilty to wear glasses feel guilty to wear glasses), but I overcame my prejudices and read the article which has some good suggestions for non-traditional library careers. There is a good PD supplement and an article on "service learning", also known as experiential learning, which is a good way to evaluate a program before applying to graduate school. Practicums and internships, on-the-job learning, are a good way to get your foot in the door or to learn what type of librarianship will suit you.

Take a quick scan of this one, no matter where you are in your career, since it has good general career management advice.

This is Agent Scully, and I'm Agent Mulder

Update: According to this post on Careers that Don't Suck, the overwhelming response to the FBI hiring initiative temporarily shut down their servers. If you were interested in this opportunity, try again later on in the week.

According to this article in Reuters, the FBI plans to fill almost 3,000 positions in a wide variety of professional fields, as well as special agents. I couldn't get into the job postings (said the servers were down) to check for other positions beyond the special agents, but the FBI Careers site is up and slightly active--you can apply for positions, but you can't see all of the occupational profiles--though that may change in coming weeks.

If the front-lines of law enforcement doesn't appeal, librarians have many of the necessary skills to work in intelligence and data management careers, possibly in some of the computer careers. This employer may not be for everyone, but, in general, the government may be a good choice for the graduating class of 2009, since NACE has indicated that government hires will increase by almost 20%.

It's not as cool as when Jennifer Garner helped recruit new CIA members, but a job with a badge has its own cachet for some, as well as the public service and all that.

Idealist.org

If you're looking for work in a non-profit--any kind of work--you should be visiting Idealist.org. Idealist.org is a clearinghouse of information on non-profit work, local and global, with career advice (including two downloadable career guides) and information on volunteering, both in-person and virtual. They have also made really good use of YouTube for advertising their job posting board to employers, creating a commercial for their career guides and advertising their career fairs.

Citizen journalism

I don't think this is her dream career, but Shelby Monroe has left her library jobs to become an embedded journalist in Iraq. From the article it appears that she has done this very much on her own nickel, an example of a citizen journalist. Her blogs are Spirits Up, Heads Down (2008) and 101 Days With The 101st Airborne Division: The Sequel.

There are plenty of other, less dangerous ways, to become involved in citizen journalism, if you have a call to write and report on the news in your neighbourhood. The Independent Media Centre, though strongly political, is one of the early examples of the movement in North America; citizen journalism is also extremely popular in Asia, with OhMyNews (English site, Korean is here) or JasmineNews. Citizen journalism may take off in other areas, with services such as Backfence or the EveryBlock service, the outgrowth of Chicagocrime.org.

Of course, any of these efforts could just devolve into a Twitterous-tumult of JuicyCampus postings, more hurtful gossip than news, but alternative community newspapers could also piggy-back on the success of Craigslist and it would be wonderful if the library, or librarians, were the hub of the movement.

You can follow Shelby Monroe and become an active correspondent or you could offer services, such as how to write programs or editorial services to citizen journalists, whether at the library you work at or as a freelance editor since we all want to look good in print.