2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
a list of keywords and job titles written by Mia Breitkopf called “61 nonlibrarian
jobs for LIS Grads.”
States/Cities Without Library Schools: I live and work in one of the
most exciting, interesting and large library job markets in the country,
Washington, DC. In addition to being one of the largest library job markets
we also have two fantastic library schools with many new grads each year as
well as many alumni who stay. For many of the jobs in DC we see hundreds
of applicants for just one position. So if someone were to ask me, should
they focus their job search in DC I would say to go for it but to also look at
secondary markets as well. One way to pick a good secondary market is to
look for ones that aren’t saturated with recent grads or alumni; so ones
without library schools. This strategy does not mean to imply that
states/cities that have library schools are bad places to look for jobs; just
that these markets are often saturated with applicants. Especially if you are
familiar with the area, have lived there, have contacts/networking associates
there- by all means go for it. But if location is not important, then this
strategy, focusing on locations without library schools, might be one way to
narrow your search that is productive.
Dates: Another strategy I have employed is to search the daily INALJ jobs
digest for all jobs expiring soon. I use the find function or search box in the
digest and search by date. I standardize all dates in the INALJ jobs digest so
that readers will not have to search in multiple ways. All dates are
month/day. All dates use as few numbers as possible, by this I mean I use
6/8 instead of 06/08. I do not write out the month (ie: June) I only use
numbers. If job hunters employ this strategy a few times a week the list of
potential jobs is narrowed from many hundreds, even a thousand or more, to
under fifty usually.
Community
My approach to writing this guide to forming a job hunting strategy for locationflexible
job hunters was not to come up with hard and fast rules or to overstate the
value of each of these strategies. These are merely suggestions. Instead I wanted
this to be a jumping off point. Some of these strategies will work for some job
hunters; some might work better for others. This is part of a larger conversation I
believe we need to have as a community. I have created a discussion on my
LinkedIn page to continue the conversation, get new and better ideas, and collect
them all in one virtual space. Please feel free to join the conversation and add you
two-cents. I have only one hard and fast rule; civility is enforced.