Leaving the Library Part 2: From the Inside
By David Hook david.hook@mdacorporation.com
So, you tried the first approach (see Part 1) and you didn’t end up finding exactly what you were looking for. Do you then bite the bullet, grab your copy of AACR2 and doom yourself to a life of traditional library work? Or is there something else you can do?
There is, of course. And it is (as the title suggests) to start off in a traditional corporate library job and then move to a different job from within the organization. It can be difficult to do, and there is no guarantee of this happening when you take on a traditional library job, but it is still another potential career path.
It helps if you are able to find a job working in a fairly large company where there are plenty of opportunities to move around. On the other hand, smaller organizations can offer opportunities to move as well, as often job roles and departments aren’t so clearly defined.
Moving within an organization is much easier to do in fields where there is no professional designation required in order to practice it (such as business or IT) rather than one where there is (such as law, engineering or medicine) unless you either have that professional designation or are willing to get it.
One tip for when you are interviewing for a job: feel free to ask about potential career paths and opportunities to move out of the library, but be sure to do it in a way that doesn’t make it sound as if you only see the job as a stepping stone to get you somewhere else. You definitely want to show that you have ambition and you want to find out about opportunities to move around, but you don’t want to give the interviewer the impression that you might not be interested in doing the job under discussion.
Once you are working at your traditional library job and are looking for avenues to branch into something slightly different, the most important thing to remember is this: be good. Be very good. In other words, you need to master your job in the library first in order to be considered for another role. If you are only doing an average job in the library, you are not likely going to be considered as someone who can handle additional responsibilities.
You may be fortunate enough to find an opening in your organization that suits your career aspirations, but it is more likely there may not be a clearly defined role for you to assume. This is where you will need to invent a potential role for yourself that doesn’t currently exist. This route will obviously be a lot harder and will require some creativity on your part.
Have a good look at your own strengths and think about where you might be able to add value to the organization. Suggest to management where you might be able to fill in those gaps with your skill set. Get involved with various areas of the organization. There is a growing trend towards embedded librarianship these days; ask to be included on teams and in department meetings. You may start out providing the research needs for the group, but as you get more and more involved with the team you can start taking on bigger roles.
Going this route will require a great deal of patience, but as long as you can demonstrate that you can offer more value to the organization when given larger responsibilities someone should recognize that you are more valuable managing information-based projects, say, than doing traditional library work. And if they don’t, be sure to point it out to them.
Best wishes for all those new grads looking for non-traditional library work.
