We all know that distance education is the future because people in the business of distance education tell us so. I just wish that had been an option when I was younger, because I would have loved to get an entire degree interacting with nothing other than my computer and my cat. Not everyone thinks so highly of them, though. In my post on Alaskan hijinks, I quoted one of the people working in the library: You have to do it by correspondence — people don’t look well on correspondence degrees — or you have to leave the state. That’s the kind of comment that people with correspondence degrees definitely won’t like. For example, this person: Someone needs to tell those bozos that these days it’s called “distance education”. I got my MLIS from the University of Illinois via their LEEP program (aka “distance education”). Given the UIUC is has been the top library school in the country for a number of years now, I can assure you that my “correspondence ...
Read More >>

If you want to be on the cutting edge of librarianship circa 2008, then the ALA has some good things in store for you! A Kind Reader forwarded me last week’s American Libraries Direct, which has helpful links to three online workshops the ALA is offering. Pretty trendy stuff, too. One is on LinkedIn, and is arguably the least dated one. One of my business friends told me LinkedIn is like Facebook for business people, but do librarians ever get hired through LinkedIn contacts? I’d be curious to know about that. I’ve always worked in academic libraries, where the hiring process is based on looking through a pile of CVs and then waiting until each new moon to have the next search committee meeting, with the hope that in a few months someone will be hired before all the candidates drop out. LinkedIn has never played a role, but I guess having a good profile there is like a cup of tea during a hurricane. It might not help, but it can’t hurt. For $55  and 90 minutes of my time I ...
Read More >>

Maybe I’m just growing complacent in my old age, but this seems to be my week for not understanding what all the fuss is about. Is there something annoying going on in a library? I’ll let you decide for yourself. Let me give you the general picture before filling in the details. A Kind Reader sent a link to an invitation to participate in a “cataloging party” at a library. At the cataloging party, librarians and library school students are invited to come to the library, enjoy coffee and pizza and help with a large amount of cataloging that has to be done for a migration project. Kind Reader considers it a “cataloging sweatshop,” and comments, “I think I found another reason why libraries no longer hire librarians or don't replace them once they have retired.” To compound the offense, the same librarian in charge of the cataloging party recently bragged at a conference about doing part of this migration project through volunteer labor, saving $3,000 on consultants ...
Read More >>

The Annoyed Librarian is in something of a pickle. Usually when Kind Readers send me tidbits about libraryland that annoy people, I can see immediately why they’re annoyed. The persistent low level annoyance so many librarians feel drives this blog. A Kind Reader sent me an exchange from the ALA Council listserv on Friday. The first thing I read was a response to an email with this subject heading: “RE: A question and a suggestion about the global warming issue.” Oh, no, I thought, what’s happening now? Is the ALA Council going to pass a resolution that the globe should stop warming? If so, the globe would be even less likely to listen than all the other groups who ignore the ALA. Here’s the opening: Dear Council: At the risk of setting off yet another firestorm, I have to ask, What On Earth does this issue have to do with the business of this library association? With the mission of the ALA organization and this Council? Don’t get me wrong; I believe that global ...
Read More >>

Some website that seems to exist only to make lists of jobs has once again made a list of the “top 200 jobs” in the U.S. Librarian somehow made the list yet again, at #88. Here’s the profile:  88. Librarian Selects and organizes materials to make information available to the public. Overall Score: 571.00 Income: $55,158.00 Work Environment: 49.000 Stress: 10.000 Hiring Outlook: 3.58 It’s not that I’m ever surprised that Librarian makes lists like this. I’m always more surprised by how low Librarian ranks, and what ranks above it. For example, Sewage Plant Operator is the 87th job on the list, with a supposedly higher scoring work environment, but about $30,000 less in income. The only thing that makes sense is that the “hiring outlook” is a lot better, but how could that possibly make it a better job? Paralegal assistant is at #41. Could being a paralegal assistant be twice as good as being a librarian? That’s crazy! Hair Stylist makes the list at 83. ...
Read More >>

I can’t figure out precisely what crazy shenanigans are going on in Soldotna, AK, but one thing’s for sure: some people there sure love their librarian. Rather, they love their former librarian and are protesting at her being fired. It's kind of touching to see so many people stand up for a librarian. The basic facts are that without giving a reason the city manager fired the public library director who had worked for the library for 28 years, and lots of people showed up at a city council meeting to protest. There are a lot of protests in the comments to the news article as well, with such deliciously small town comments like “First dumb move was to hire a new york lawyer to run Soldotna.” Those New York lawyers can’t catch a break, although another story on the firing indicated he'd been a lawyer in upstate New York, which is hardly the image conjured up by "New York lawyer." Not everyone is protesting the dismissal. One person described how the librarian in question was ...
Read More >>