What's it like to be a college librarian?

College librarians spend so much time sitting on their butt.

And they don't even shoosh the noisy, nose-picking customers any more!

I work in a college library and there are some of the craziest middle-aged (and older) women that ever existed. It's one of the few female dominated workplaces so they like to throw their (considerable) weight around. Oh and most of them are ugly as sin.

R2 is proof that sexism is so absolutely rooted in DL gay males that they can literally turn everything sexist, including a thread about librarians. And, it only took two posts.

OP, if you are talking about actual academic librarians, they have to be ridiculously over-educated for their positions. They have to have a subject matter masters degree in whatever area they work in and a masters in library science as well. Librarians are so busy keeping people out of the profession by maintaining ridiculously high degree requirements while simultaneously having the lowest quality degree programs that they are killing the profession.

If you are just talking about working in a college library, without being a librarian, then it's mostly a monotonous office type job. It's almost all customer service unless you are the tech person. At least dealing with students is slightly better than the general public.

[quote] At least dealing with students is slightly better than the general public.

WINIAML

It's actually really hard to get a job as a college librarian these days, even if you have an advanced degree in library science from a good school.

why r5?

I'm not R5 but it's because library schools are no better than expensive diploma mills that are graduating 7000 students annually for every couple hundred jobs. Compound that annually for the last 20 years and you have thousands upon thousands of people competing for almost no jobs. Even the profession itself is asking why the hell they require a Master's degree for non-professional positions? There is no Bachelor's in Library Science because it's not a real area of study. It's a scam and the librarians are perpetuating it by pretending it's an actual professional degree instead of just an expensive piece of paper that acts as a ticket into a disappearing club.

My soft butch lezzie friend is a librarian. She looks the other way when I hook up in the 3rd-floor periodical. I gave her sperm for IVF, so I get VIP privilege.

I was a librarian at a university in New Zealand. The pay was terrible, but most of my colleagues were fun and interesting. Dealing with whiny undergrad students was tedious, but post graduates were great because they weren't just there because Mummy and Daddy expected a degree from them and had interesting topics of study. The worst though were a lot of the lecturers who stamped their feet and demanded special treatment. It was one of my most enjoyable jobs but I just couldn't stay there because the pay was such a pittance.

Forgot to add that the poster who complained that academic librarians are expected to have specialist subject degrees AND post graduate degrees in library studies is correct. There is no recognition for this in your pay packet and the Masters degree in Library Sciences is INCREDIBLY boring, but you force yourself to get through it just so you can avoid being paid a library assistant's wage (despite having a minimum of an undergrad degree just to get that). Competition is high because once you have gone through the awful post grad degree, no-one wants to quit and just throw it all away. Those who don't leave to get into a better paid industry stay in their academic librarian jobs until they die.

Don't forget the budget cuts with the expectation of doing more with less staff!

Isn't there conflict now about whether the academic librarians or the professors should be driving collection development? It seems the field has been changing a lot in the past few years.

WTF is a “relaxing” job?

So the women you work with are fat and ugly, R2? How awful for you! Please post your photo so we can admire your superior masculine beauty. I've no doubt that you’re an Adonis yourself, chiseled from stone, a gift from the gods sent to mesmerize we mere mortals with your dazzling male beauty.

Also, the return cart is getting full, could you get on that, please? You’re supposed to empty it twice every shift. Get moving.

You see this very day, OP.

They know which bathrooms are good for cruising/hookups.

R12 : Being related to whoever owns the company you work for.

What is an MLS program like? I have a humanities PhD, was a library cataloguer for a number of years, and have often thought about getting an MLS (since it would be free to me), but dont want to do a bunch of group projects and busywork.

I work in a college library in NYC, and am currently a MLS student (also getting it for free R17). So far I haven't had any group projects, thankfully. I go part-time (2 classes per semester - a mix of online, hybrid, and in-person classes). I have over 10 years of academic library experience but I am still nervous about my professional librarian prospects. That said, I have much more real-world experience than 95% of my classmates. I'm looking at job ads now (I graduate next May) to see what skills I still need to acquire. Every library wants an experienced metadata/cataloging librarian.

Salaries? Ballpark figures?

Thanks, r18!

Public librarian salaries start very low in public libraries. According to the NYPL, [quote] Our librarians start at $48,519 per year and are eligible in 6 months for an increased salary of $54,745

In my experience, in NYC, the private academic libraries (NYU, Columbia, New School, etc.) pay less than CUNY & SUNY. I am a paraprofessional, and when I started 3 yrs ago my salary was 68K. Adjuncts make nothing - 7k per semester. Full-time faculty make more...I've found that the best way to get an idea of public academic librarians' salaries is by identifying individuals at specific schools and then looking up their salary by name through SeeThroughNY.

Mid-6 figures, R19, not including stocks and bonuses. In some areas, a librarian's starting salary is over $600k a year.

Thanks, R22.

Those are low, certainly for NYC.

[quote]And they don't even shoosh the noisy, nose-picking customers any more!

Do you remember the student at a college library complaining about how much noise the Asian students make in her video/VLOG?

She was just kidding around - impersonating them etc.

Of course it caught up with her and she was expelled from her college. Called a racist etc...

It's a bit like this

They are a godsend! From inter-library loans to ordering works in my field, the librarians I've dealt with as a graduate student and then as a professor have helped and continue to help me in my research and providing resources for my students.

I thought Netscape made librarians obsolete.

R28, incorrect. We just became Jeeves.

[quote]What is an MLS program like? I have a humanities PhD, was a library cataloguer for a number of years, and have often thought about getting an MLS (since it would be free to me), but dont want to do a bunch of group projects and busywork.

It's group projects and busywork. I've worked with a ton of librarians, both graduates and those still in their programs, and everything is group work and they grade each other. They all do group presentations, either in person or virtual. They write two page book reports. I've even heard tell of crayons. (I was hoping that was for a children's programming class.) No one fails, ever. It's ridiculous. There are also no admission requirements. If you are willing to pay, you get in. But, make sure it's an ALA accredited program because that scam must also be perpetuated.

The entire profession is making itself into a joke at this point but they will defend all of it to their dying breath. They should be trying to become more relevant but they have basically become entertainment directors for people who can't find the local park district. It's the least professional "professional" degree you can get. Skip it.

[quote]I thought Netscape made librarians obsolete.

Netscape? Really?

Not quite true, R7. A friend of mine has an undergraduate library "science" degree. You're right, it's a worthless degree, since they can't be librarians unless they have an MLS/MSLIS. I wanted to be a librarian until I realized it's not a quiet environment with respectful patrons.

I work as an academic law librarian. Been in the profession for over 14 years. Have both the MLS and the JD. I really love my job. I get to work with faculty on reserch projects and teach a class every year on intellectual property research. The only big problem with working in libraries is that they frequently promote people to management based solely on their seniority rather than any real qualifications. You have lots of really terrible library directors out there.

I agree about the MLS program being a joke. They need to vastly reform it. It should be similar to a graduate program in computer science and/or communications rather than what it is. It's also a degree that is trying to be too much for too many people. The skill set I have is starkly different from a children's librarian but we're required to have the same degree.

What exactly does a librarian do? Pick out books? The rest can be outsourced to accounting and payroll in India.

R34, well, I typically spend my day doing research work for faculty; teach law students how to research (locate case law, relevant statutes, utilize secondary sources); prepare for the two classes I teach every year; do bibliometric work for faculty committees looking at professors seeking tenure; manage our digital archive and institutional repository; work on committee work; keep up to date with professional literature; liaison with student journals working on cite-checking assignments; prepare for conferences and professional organizations; work on data analysis projects (I'm currently doing sentiment analysis of legal scholarship using R/Python); etc., etc.

The people ordering, or shelving, books are paraprofessionals. Librarians typically don't do that work in academic libraries.

Also, because I'm union and in California I make around $85K a year with excellent benefits. I'm not complaining.

Also, the number of open law librarians position have DOUBLED in the last year because so many older librarians are finally retiring.

Why aren't libraries quiet anymore? I miss those days.

Miss R35 doesn't mention the hour she spends on liaison work at the library glory hole every day, draining loads from those insatiable, virile young men.

R37 I think it’s because people think they are in a Barnes and Noble and don’t teach their kids the difference because they were never taught the difference.

R35 gets paid a lot to do busy work.

I got a job shelving and checking out books at the university library as a student.

By the end of it was being paid $24/hour.

What year and what university, R41?

At a typical library, who makes the actual book-purchase recommendations, and who signs off on them?

Let's take the "computer programming" section. Do they just get a budget to spend ${x} on books by a respected publisher (O'Reilly, Apress, Sams, Manning, Springer, Packt (ick!) that have a particular keyword in their subject (Java, C#, Python, etc)? Subscribe to some supposedly respected list of "recommended books, sorted by importance" that gets published every few months & just go down as their budget allows? Have a quarterly meeting with someone from the computer science dep't. to come up with a purchase list?

Faculty and book sellers make recommendations R43.

r42, mid 2000s in Australia (and obviously, Australian dollars).

R44, not really. That's why subject specialists exist in academic libraries. Many of those librarians doing collection development in a large academic library also have a PhD in the field they work in.

Do you need a JD to be a law librarian?

I looked up a friend who works at a public library in NYC. He's high up and makes $190,000.

R47, only if you work as an academic law librarian (because they also teach). Law firm librarians need only the MLS.

A little OT but I thought this the best place to ask.

Over the weekend I’m applying for an assistant job at my local library (provincial, small, not attached to a school, nothing special) and so I need some tips to get me into a interview and hopefully into the role. The pay isn’t great of course, but it’s better than the exploitative job I’m in currently (that is actually losing me money) and in a less stressful field too. I’ve applied for this job twice over the last three years and both times I was rejected before interview, which is weird as I’m the only person in this one-horse town under 40 with a decent BA and a proven track record of involvement in literary arts. I’m informed that I interview well and have excellent rapport with the public in my current role (sales) and previous ones, plus I’m presentable and easy to work with. I must be missing a trick or approaching it wrong, or otherwise just not old enough or serious enough about t. Perhaps I don’t have a good enough reference? (it’s out of date and tangential, and my current bosses are making me redundant and refusing to write me one).

Can anyone here who has worked or is working in public librarianship give pointers? Appreciate any & all insight, thanks.

It’s your poor punctuation, grammar, and spelling.

R50 You have a BA, which is not needed for the position. Nobody wants to work with somebody who acts or seems superior to them. Plus, they probably think that they cannot afford you.

I hate to say it but if you are in that one horse town they probably don't want to hire a gay man.

Library is the territory of some of the worst, lowest fraus you will ever encounter. Run.

"Quiet, quiet, quiet, Nestle's Crunch is co crunchy"

Mildred in cataloging steals at the witching books and keeps them in her office. Don't cross Mildred.

I work in a library, an academic one, previously I worked in public libraries. Sometimes I get the impression from new colleagues that the reason they became librarians is to escape "real" work or the the "real world." They imagine working in oak panelled rooms, shelving a few books, all done in blissfull silence. None of this is true.