[Sca-librarians] Plea for off-topic advice

[Jackie Wyatt]

I thought I'd reply to the list in case anyone else is interested- if anyone remembers from the
Pennsic gathering, I'm the weirdo who's not employed in a library. :)

I'm from Canada, so what I know may be a bit different than for the US.  From what I've found,
special collections/archival/etc. jobs tend to be harder to find and much harder to get- I almost
ended up in an archives, but it's very hard to move around once you've gone into it.  Having
computer experience is a benefit, so I'd definately suggest it.

Academic Libraries aren't too bad, especially since you say you have a Comp. Sci. background- the
arts tend to be heavily competed for, but from what I've heard, working in an academic library
isn't too bad. :)

Your last one mainly depends on whether the library has enough funding to do such a project, and
in Canada, it usually doesn't have all that much.  You'd probably end up doing a lot of IT stuff
as well in order to fill in time.

The job I'm in is called prospect research- basically I help fundraisers examine potential donors
to find out if they'd be even inclined to donate, how much they might be willing to donate, and
provide background information on them (all of this is legal, so don't worry- some even expect
it).  Since I'm in a small institution, I've also done other research, such as archival and
historical.

What I did was to take a bit of each, as I was not entirely sure where I wanted to end up- by
making sure (with the help of my advisor), we planned out a well balanced class plan and I was
able to apply to jobs in many different types of libraries. :)

Medb
(I work at the Royal Conservatory of Music)

--- Avice of Greylyng <Avice at plaiddragon.net> wrote:

> I can't think of a more qualified group of people to ask this question.
> 
> I'm in my first Term at Drexel University getting my MS in Library and 
> Information Science but since I have to pay for this all myself I don't 
> have the resources to take every single class I would like to and learn 
> everything possible.
> I have three main ideas of what I want to do with this degree and I'm 
> betting there's people in all three fields represented in this list. The 
> fields are
> 
> -Academic Libraries helping researchers and students
> -Special historical Collections for researchers and students
> -Internet accessibility for collections (specifically making historical 
> documents available on-line)
> 
> Now I have a really wide background having gotten my undergraduate degree 
> in Liberal Studies with a minor in Comp Sci and a lot of classes in history 
> and lit. I really enjoy special collections and would love to work with 
> historical collections (even of artifacts instead of books) but I'm afraid 
> that I won't be as employable as if I had more technical knowledge which I 
> seem to have a bit of a talent for.
> 
> So what do I concentrate on? Is there a demand for people trained in 
> academic special collections? If I take a bunch of technical classes will 
> they still let me near the medieval document collections?
> 
> I love people, history and computers but I don't know how to combine them!
> 
> Any kind of advice or observations would be welcome.
> 
> Avice
> mka
> Robin
> 



	
		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail