Many years ago at a conference talk I gave (I forget which one), I suggested a similar library museum idea, but done  Disney-style with visitors sitting in little electric cars which wended their way around a library whilst a voice gave a running commentary along the lines of "and here is the cataloguing department - look at the cataloguers filling out those paper sheets".....

Charles


Professor Charles Oppenheim
Head
Department of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU

Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509 223053
e mail [log in to unmask] 
-----Original Message-----
From: Library and Information Professionals [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tony McSean
Sent: 11 September 2008 09:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Career choices and burning bridges?

At the risk of stating the obvious, the five important criteria are do you think you will enjoy doing the work and the working environment; do you think it's something you will be good at; will your skills develop in the crucial first couple of years; can you have a decent life on the wages; when you are looking to move on in a couple of years, will you find something that will look impressive on your cv?

When Charles Oppenheim and I were looking for our first jobs, "no way back"
was the received wisdom about people who jumped out of the grooved career paths in public and academic libraries.  In those days the career paths were much more grooved and orderly than now, and perhaps there was some truth in it.  However, like Charles I didn't think I suffered too much from silo thinking as I moved around.  I'm sure my work benefitted from transferable skills and experience of alternative ways of looking at things.  There may still be barriers between public and research libraries, perhaps, but when Oxford appoints a US pharmaceutical librarian to be head of reader services and increasing numbers of top jobs are described as Chief Information Officers you have to conclude that the hedged fields have given way to prairies.  

On a wider note, if you are looking at a 40-year working life, one thing you can be sure of is that when you retire there will be precious few working examples around of what we now think of as libraries and librarians.  I'm looking forward to an extended retirement job sitting in the corner of some Library Museum heritage attraction - demonstrating how we used to spend our time adding meaningless ten-digit filing tags to catalogue records, producing microfiche catalogues to scare away the readers, and explaining to bored children the intricacies of the Alzheimer filing system - or whatever it was that Boston Spa used to use.

Good luck, and in the true spirit of this list  don't take no sh*t.

Tony

Tony McSean
+20 7502 1067
+44  7946 291780

-----Original Message-----
From: Library and Information Professionals [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Hopwood
Sent: 10 September 2008 22:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Career choices and burning bridges?

I am a library and information management postgrad, shortly to finish...

I have just had an offer of an interesting position in a financial information vendor! This is quite a leap from my original goal of academic or public sector librarian; although of course the word "information" is still in there.

Can anybody tell me what my chances of coming back to the more "mainstream" library world are like if I make this exploratory foray into the world of commerce?

I think it will be an interesting post, with lots of new data formats and standards etc. to learn, contact with the City, and the potential to get some IT and database experience to build on my science / maths background (at last).

But I am concerned that I may be burning my bridges with regards to working in academia or the public sector, to both of which I also feel a strong pull.

My pre-graduation experience has been in public sector and pharmaceutical information; quite mixed already, and given the importance of sector-related

experience, am I heading off the beaten librarian track here? Or can I come back again if the financial world doesn't suit?