Florence Hwang, a recent grad from the program, attended a federal libraries career networking event in Ottawa and reports back with these tips on her blog (reprinted with permission):
* Instead of listing relevant courses you have taken in your resume, provide examples of projects you did in school.
* Experience counts. Put down your volunteer experience if it is relevant.
* If you want to work in a particular city, use more than one employment agency to help you find jobs.
*
If you are applying for federal government jobs (or jobs in Ottawa),
remember to include your language skills – even if it is a basic level.
If you don't have French language skills, demonstrate you are working
towards learning the language through college or high school board
education courses.
* Attend conferences. They are like one big job interview.
* Make connections wherever you work or study. You never know when they can help you out in the future.
*
Be flexible to taking contract or short-term positions for the first
while, if you can. You can learn about different work environments and
types of libraries this way and build your experience, too.
* Have
a plan or at least an idea of what kind of library or work environment
you would like to work. It helps your job search become more focused.
* Get involved in professional associations. These are great forums to become connected to the library world.
* Keep current with the professional literature.
Got an e-mail from the department today (Sunday? Wow, they work hard over there!) saying that a spot had opened up in a class I initially didn't get into. So I'm going to drop one of my alternate classes and take this one and my final schedule will be this:
Monday PM – “Public Library in the Community”
Tuesday AM – “Shaping of News & Information Through Technology”
Wednesday AM – “Genealogical Services & Research”
Thursday Night – “Management of Special Libraries”
No Day (Distance) – “Advocacy and Library Issues”
The class lists are posted on the stalker pages so I get to see who I'm with in these classes a bit early. That's cool and I'm especially excited to be taking two joint classes – one with the journalism students, one with U of T students via WebCT.
At the end of my first semester, I posted “10 Tips For New Library School Students“. On Tuesday, I'll begin my third (and final) semester of library school. I honestly can't believe how fast the time has gone. In honour of that mini-milestone, here's another similar list:
TEN THINGS I'VE LEARNED IN LIBRARY SCHOOL (SO FAR)
1. Cataloguing can be fun and interesting (but not enough to make me take Advanced Cataloguing.)
2. Library students still end up with library fines on a regular basis (and even accidently let books get soaked in the rain. Oops!)
3. Everytime you have a question you can't answer, you feel shame as you think “I should be able to find the answer to that.”
4. Attending a library school in London and thinking you'll get to Toronto all the time is about as futile as living in Calgary and thinking you'll go to the mountains all the time.
5. Wearing your “Sex, Drugs & Classification” class t-shirt to orientation will get you strange looks, even from new library students.
6. Bus drivers in this town, for the most part, hate students and if you write to complain about this fact, you will receive no response (even though their web site says “we will respond to all comments within 48 hours.”)
7. You'll probably get your lowest marks from your best professors. This is why they are your best professors.
8. Related to that last point, marks are overrated. So is sleep. So is getting stressed out about either one of those two things.
9. If you take your laptop to class, you can get twice as much work done (it's called “multi-tasking”.)
10. Libraries are going to be replaced by Google and Wikipedia so any library student reading this should probably start thinking about that Master of Computer Science degree.
Got a chance to plug my blog after giving a brief (?) talk about the role of the Student Council's Academic Rep during the orientation session for the new students today so I thought I'd write a “Welcome” post in case there were a few new visitors stopping by to check it out.
For some reason, the category I have for “LibrarySchool” on this blog only shows the most recent 5-10 posts. But the keyword for “LibrarySchool” shows them all so that's a better way to go if you want to see some of my thoughts and experiences on library school over the past two semesters. The “List” keyword also tends to have a lot of library school-related stuff on it as well.
What else? Lindsay and Tina didn't tell me they were going to answer the “Introduce Yourself” orientation questions that all students have to (and I know most of you were probably bored out of your minds after sitting there all morning anyhow) but here are my answers:
Name: Jason Hammond
Hometown: Regina, SK (originally, Indian Head, Saskatchewan)
Education: BA – English from University of Regina
Library Experience: one week shelving books at U of Calgary library but I've spent nearly 10 years in the literary non-profit sector before coming to library school so have done lots of projects jointly with librarians over the years
Passions: The Beatles, Travel, Reading (obviously), Internet, Playing Guitar (very badly)
I meant what I said at orientation – if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. E-mail is my preferred method but my phone number is: 519-435-1948 and that works too. I'm around school quite a bit during the semester and if I'm not at NCB, you can also catch me at the Grad Club sometimes.
It probably sounded cheesy but I meant the other thing I said at orientation too – librarianship is one of those professions, like nursing or teaching, that is fundamental to the operation of a healthy society so hopefully you already feel this way as you enter library school or you'll see what I mean as you learn more about the history of the profession.
Actually, I had a classmate write a paper in 501 arguing that the debate about whether librarianship is a “profession” or not is moot and we should start thinking of it as a “calling” instead. That sums up my feelings pretty well.
That's about it for now. I try to post on a daily basis so check back often. Starting next week, many of my posts will again be about my experiences in library school.
Back from our trip to the States. Great time but as we traveled, I was continually reminded of a quote which I believe is from Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip:
“One on one, Americans are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. But as a group, they scare the hell out of me.”
And then there's that whole issue of even calling them “Americans” which technically should be a term that applies to everyone who lives in the Americas, right? One (slightly self-loathing) US exchange student I knew in England suggested “US'ers” (ie. “users”) as an appropriate term for his countrymen.
So with those various thoughts in mind (and acknowledging that making fun of Americans is Canada's true national sport!) I present the following photo blog of our trip. (If you want the more conventional version, feel free to visit Shea's Flickr account.)
This is literally the first thing we saw when we crossed the border into Detroit
Another quote from my time in England that's stuck with me during this trip was from a guy at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park:
“If money is your God then America is your Heaven.”
Again with England memories. Seeing one of these on the horizon in England freaked me out and seeing it again outside Toledo was no better. (And this isn't just a jab at those countries as I know Canada has a few reactors as well.)
At least freedom of speech is alive and well in middle America
This was posted at the side door. In our family-orientated hotel. In Sandusky Ohio. Population: 27, 844.
A couple pirate flags…
A few other thoughts…
– This is a gross generalization (pun intended!) and I'm one to talk as I'm not exactly floating through life on a cushion of air these days but man, are the majority of Americans fat (at least the ones who frequent amusement parks in middle America.) I love how Cedar Point gingerly describes them as “guests of exceptional size” yet their family-orientated hotel has Krispy Kreme doughnuts as the main offering in their Continental breakfast, there's not a healthy meal to be found in the park (although that's pretty typical for any amusement park anywhere) and they offer motor-scooters for rent inside the front gate for anyone who can't handle walking the 364 acre site.
– A big highlight was meeting Shea's family friends. They're a group of hunters who have been coming to Creelman, Saskatchewan from Ohio for the past twenty-five years. It was really interesting to hear their take on American politics and American life from a very middle American perspective and as residents of the state that decided the last US election. Ironically, both are named Jim. Big Jim is a very pro-gun Republican, Tall Jim is a Democrat who was a former union steward at the General Mills factory where they both worked until their retirement. Yet, contrary to what you'd expect from the red v. blue extremism that's presented in the media (the US is actually purple based on the last election results), they're great friends who can josh each other but see each other's points and get along really well considering their differences of opinion.
– one slightly strange incident was our pizza delivery guy not being allowed to deliver directly to our room when we were staying at the Cedar Point hotel. We were told this was for security reasons and my initial reaction was “this terrorism paranoia has gone too far!” But then I realised that maybe this was more of a concern about children's safety if they let non-guests have access in a family-orientated hotel. This makes a bit more sense than worrying about uranium-enriched pepperoni but still was something I'd never seen before.
I don't want to do a full hour-by-hour write-up of the trip and trying to pick out highlights like I'm doing above isn't feeling right either. So let me end with a good old-fashioned list:
Five Highlights of Our Trip
1. Cedar Point was a blast. Even though it was wet and rainy both days, that was actually for the best as most of the rides still ran and we could walk directly onto them or have a short wait at best. This isn't Regina's Buffalo Days – there are numerous 40 story roller coasters that go 60 mph, a giant swing that lifts you 12 stories in the air and many many more crazy rides.
2. Seeing the illuminated Niagara Falls at night was cool as was our ride the next day on the Maid of the Mist which takes you right up to the falls.
3. All of the Beatles and John Lennon memorabilia at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was worth the price of admission by itself.
4. The massive fish fry at Big Jim's house which backs onto Lake Erie then a ride in his fishing boat the next day.
5. Successfully crossing the border back into Canada (awww…)
Oh, and I should mention that neither Shea nor I have any pictures from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland since, in what seems like a very un-rock & roll move, they don't allow any photography. So instead, I'll link to the Sex Pistols' response to being nominated.
Unless I can find an internet connection at the top of the Skyhawk, there likely won't be many posts for the next week as Shea and I are off on a trip around Lake Erie. Our itinerary includes to Toledo to see some family friends of hers, Cedar Point in Sandusky for the world's largest amusement park, Cleveland for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Niagara Falls for outlet malls (just kidding – I think!) then home to London for a day before heading on to St. Jacob's and Stratford to see “Henry IV Part I” next Thursday and then down to Port Dover to see some other friends next weekend. Whew! That's our rough itinerary and we'd love suggestions for other things to see and do along that route if you have them – either by e-mail or as a comment to this post.
I didn't buy the Sam Baker CD at the Fred Picnic (having already blown more than I should have on other CD's and DVD's) but as I thought more about Baker's performance (and based on Beer Doug, a huge music fan in his own right, saying that it was the best CD he'd heard in years), I went to iTunes and bought it from there.
I'd only bought one song from iTunes before, more just to test the site out for myself, just like that single book order I made from Amazon.com way back in 1997. But this was the first time I bought an entire album.
I didn't think too much about any DRM (digital rights management) problems assuming that, at the least, I'd be able to play the song on my Sony MP3 player even if I couldn't burn it to CD or whatever. I also figured that I'd be able to hack the DRM if I couldn't copy it straight across.
But it turns out that Apple's DRM makes it extremely difficult to play the songs (that you've just paid for!) on a non-Apple device. Of course, you can get around this by a) paying extra for a third-party piece of software to convert tracks from M4P (Apple's proprietary format) to MP3
or
b) with a bit of tech-know-how and extra time, burn the tracks to CD as iTunes allows you to do then converting back to MP3.
Neither solution was ideal so I put “Sam Baker Mercy” on my Soulseek wishlist and within a couple days, the songs were found for free download as MP3's, ready to be easily copied to my MP3 player and able to be played by WinAmp (my trusty favourite over the newer iTunes).
After reading an article on Michael Geist's site (he's doing a “30 Days of DRM” series that's worth checking out) about eMusic's advantages over iTunes, I went to that site and found that they had the album as well. eMusic is similar to iTunes except they sell songs and albums with no restrictions of any kind in MP3 format. Because of this, they have very few major label artist but specialize in independents, jazz and other non-mainstream fare, a strategy that has made them the second largest online music store in the world.
As with Amazon and iTunes, I'd also tried out eMusic before (when I first got my laptop, I hadn't copied over my music collection so their non-conditional offer of 25 free downloads for new subscribers – which still exists – was much appreciated) but didn't think of them when I wanted to buy the Sam Baker album. I won't make that mistake before – I'm going to check eMusic first for all my future digital music purchases and would encourage you to do the same. Or why not sign-up and get the 25 free downloads anyhow – even without major labels, they've got some pretty big name artists – from the Arcade Fire to Steve Earle to early stuff from big names like Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison and Johnny Cash.)
They have a
subscription model instead of per-unit pricing but at the basic level
of 40 downloads for $9.99/month, I could've signed up, bought the Baker
album plus downloaded 30 other songs and then unsubscribed, still
getting much better value then dealing with iTunes.
Hot Library Smut isn’t what it sounds like and is worth a look. (Safe For Work – unless you’re not allowed to surf the Internet at work at all of course)
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