Moving On

After a summer of interviews, interviews, and more interviews, I have accepted a position at a public library in Virginia.

I'm having mixed feelings about this. I don't feel nearly as good about this move as I did when we moved to Montana. But we all know how that worked out, so maybe this is good thing. When I flew down to Virginia a week and a half ago, the staff were all very excited and kept telling me how much they wanted me to come and work for them. And I really want to go work with them, but I'm not sure how well I'm going to fit in. They may be expecting a programing, social media guru, and I'm not that. Yes, I've done my fair share of programing and I know how to use social media, but those aren't my best areas of librarianship, and I'm not sure how much of lit and RA skills I'll be able to use there.

So, expectations.

Yes, I believe I'm having some expectation anxiety here. I didn't have much of those for the Glasgow job because, 1) I hadn't met the staff beforehand; and 2) I was going to be the head honcho. I could use all of my skills in whatever way I saw fit.

After word reached the Glasgow library staff that I was moving, one of the assistants told me that the Board was considering asking me back. I don't know if that happened at the last public board meeting or in a private meeting, but it's come as a shock. A part of me wants to stay here. A part of me really wants to run this library. I know I could do good here.

I also know I couldn't work with the current board. About two weeks ago, one of them appeared at story time with her grand-kids. She hung out afterwards and tried to talk to me. This is the first time any of the board members have attempted this, outside of board meetings and the polite "Hellos" they've given me in the grocery store. I'm afraid I didn't let her say much. You know how scary quiet people can get when they finally loose it and explode? Yep, that was me. Its possible she wanted to talk to me about coming back, but if it was, she choose the worst way to start a conversation with me. Maybe if she hadn't started off by asking about my job hunt, I wouldn't have become an angry Fluttershy.

But, the board hasn't tried to contact me since, so if were reconsidering me, they haven't been very vocal about it. Its not like they don't have my phone number and email. There are other ways to reach me besides hanging out at story time.

So the mixed feelings probably aren't going to go away until the uhaul is packed, the car is loaded and we pull out of this little, middle of nowhere town.

Pigeonholed

In my last job I was an Adult Services Librarian in a large library systems. I worked in the central library where cross-training and mixing of departments was not done. The people at the circulation desk never watched the reference desk, the children's librarians never ventured off of their floor, and the only time the adult reference librarians visited another department, it was probably to borrow their color printer. And that's just between the public service departments. Interaction between them and technical services was even more problematic, unless you were a II or a department head. I believe there were over 100 people working at the central when I was there, and although I could recognize a great many of them, I couldn't name them all. Many I only knew through email and never saw face to face too.

I worked in one of the smaller branches for a few months as well, and it was nothing like central. Everyone knew each other, by face and name, and helping out in each others departments was a lot easier because there was only one or two people in each group. Having the adult reference librarian "in charge" happened more often as well because they were next in line in the hierarchy. So when the manager had to leave, it was usually the adult reference librarian who ran the library until the manager came back.

So all I did was Adult Reference. I did programs, worked on committees, created staff genre training classes, and had a few other non-public related duties; but, the majority of my time was assisting adults on the reference desk, or over the telephone, or by email. Now that I am looking for another job, it seems like that experience isn't enough. A lot of jobs I'm seeing want supervisory experience. Have I been in charge of other people? Yes. Many times. Was it in an official capacity? No, because that's what the volunteer services department was for, or the reference manager, or whoever had the "I'm in charge" phone that day. The same goes with working with vendors and budgets. Another department handled that. I was just a librarian.

Working

Mark has got a job!

Yeah! *clap hands, jump for joy, do a little happy dance*

He's teaching English online to Korean students. He's teaching high school and elementary school kids. These are like extra credit, after school program, classes, so the classes are smaller. The high school students are one on one and the elementary schools kids are three at a time. And the lessons are short, too, only 15 to 20 minutes a day. He started training Monday morning and taught his first group of students Friday.

The only drawback is that after school hours in Korea is the middle of the night here. So that Monday morning was technically Sunday night. Yep, he's working midnight to 8:00 am. Its very much like when we were dating, with my rushing home to be with him for a few hours before he has to go to work and I go to bed. Only instead of him being in another country, he's in the living room. And I'm learning how to sleep with the lights on.