Career-savvy information professional

Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science is offering an online course for Career-savvy information professionals. This is a new course according to the website, and if you feel that you have a gap in your career management knowledge, you might want to consider taking this course from them. At least they will put career management into the context of the library profession.

I have taken one other course from them and really liked them. I can't recommend this specific course, but I was happy with their online course delivery.

Alliance Virtual Library Online Career Fair

Library Career Fair and Library Fair will be held in SL on May 8th and 9th 2009. There is a registration procedure, but this seems to be for exhibitors, not for attendees, though that registration may come later.

I haven't attended many online career fairs, but it is a way to get out to the fair and cut down on carbon. Add some comments about quality if you do go: I'm curious.


SL: Celerity Yeuxdoux

Patron resources for job searching

New Improved Internet Job Searching Now with Social Networking is a basic resource list of job searching tools for patrons. I like that the writer has included resources who Spanish speakers, but I would advise anyone to act with caution when suggesting the recession proof job list to patrons.

Here's what happens: you have a patron who has either been laid off or is in fear for their job and you suggest that they check out the list of recession proof jobs. Many of the jobs on that list require four years (or more) of specialized education--teacher, doctor, accountant, can't become one in time for the next pay check. That's fine if you are already a nurse and your community is starving for nurses--and you will still see people who want to switch jobs in in-demand careers because they want to escape from their employer or sector, but aren't sure which button is eject--but if you have a client who was just discharged from the army and had specialized training in HR and recruitment, telling them that they have to sign on for another for years of service is not a comfort.

You need to fill out this list with community specific resources, find vertical search engines that will let you search Craiglist local or map their job searches with Google Maps, so this list is just a starting point for services to your clients.

There is also some evidence that employers are starting to tweet local job postings, so you may want to find the posters in your community, and show patrons how to follow them. Resume Bear explains how.

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.

There isn't money in anything, so do what you love

Because I work in a career centre on a university campus, I spend time talking with students, and wonder what they are thinking about the economy and well, just what is going to happen to them in general.

I'm not the only one (and I didn't think I was):

• I don't know any libraries that come on to campus to recruit new grads (they expect us to come to them, usually at ALA if they are gathered en masse) but you may be interested in last year's story about the slowing of corporate recruitment on campus.
• Minnesota Public Radio did a forum asking college students and their advisors about the job market and how confident they felt. The title of the post comes from one of the speakers at the forum in response to Ben Stein's advice (which isn't all bad, unless you can't stand bodily fluids. [And if you were counting on no vomit in libraries, one of the internship position questions I got asked at a public library was, what would you do if a child vomited in the library? Answer: clean it up].) 
• 247 Townhall, a project of One Economy (which also has some great resources on the Beehive), has some interviews with college students about their views on the economy, what their expectations are and how to fix it. They are also looking for more content.
  

What messages can people come away with from these forums and articles? Know what you can do with your degree and where the jobs are in your area. Look at the labor market and do some research (librarians are the only ones who have to cower when someone says, you better know how to research, cuz you better). There are still jobs out there, but you have to be realistic about pay, and you need to start looking now (December 2008 was the time you should have started, but if you haven't, crying won't put the milk back in the carton). And more school is not the solution.

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.