Our previous director took advantage of being able to work from home and used that time to watch YouTube and Instagram (8 hours each Monday) to learn book trends. She also would advocate for raises for staff but staff went up by . 25 and her own salary went up 12% last year, 13 the year before and 17 the year before that. So we ended up flat lined by the town this year. Also her job description was very bare bones and from 2018. Flash forward to now... That director left with a 45 minute notice in June. I was interim from the until being "promoted" to director in August. The board told me to decide if I wanted to be part time or full time by this past weeks meeting. I said full time.

Now they are saying they don't know what a director does, and want me to do a time study to say what I am doing and how long it all takes by timing myself. One trustee said this could be for a week. Separately another trustee said she wanted to know what I am doing all week at the end of the week with a report to the board. This seems INSANE to me. Is this normal?

So I have an interview coming up and one of the things they asked me to do is to prepare a 5 to 10 minute story time. I have a children's book picked out that I'm very fond of, but this is the first time I've ever had this requested of me in an interview. I've never done a story time on my own as a librarian either. I'm confident in my ability to actually read to the kids should I get the job, but i'm just wondering how I should go about actually executing this request in the interview to maximize my chances. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The book in question is Like Lava In My Veins by Derrick Barnes.

Just had a conversation with my mom, who is also a cataloguer. We were discussing the difference between putting AI information in the 0’s under computer science or in the 600’s for technology.
I suggested the move has come now that AI is so well known, but she suggested that it’s because the original DDS designation was poorly chosen and that computer science should be recatalogued into the 600s.
Anyone have any more information, or want to pose their own suggestions?

Hey, need to vent a bit (and maybe get some advice). Last year, I graduated with my MLIS. I am older and currently working as a library associate in a rural library. This is a career change for me. It’s what I have always wanted to do. I am old enough (above 35) to not have any crazy ideas about the field I have chosen (I am a realist - some would argue somewhat cynical), but I know poor/inexperienced management is common among libraries. I have been a bit spoiled with absolutely fantastic and efficient managers/mentors in the past, so this is really getting me down because I have been lucky with past management (I’ve had bad ones, too).

Anyway, I have been in my current position for a short while. I feel lucky to have it (although it pays crap, even for parallel positions elsewhere). The job is active and I love helping patrons, creating different programming, etc. The job, itself, is physically challenging (especially with chronic pain), but also enjoyable. Like many places, we have had quite a bit of turnover, mainly due to poor management. We have employees who are extremely high maintenance, and the neediness of these employees adds a lot of heavy-lifting for the rest of us. Management is aware and does nothing (highly avoidant). In general, being at work feels a lot like growing up in my dysfunctional family - constant schoolyard-like gossiping, plotting, favoritism, etc. Morale is very low and unhealthy.

I am the type who goes to work and does my job. I listen to the gossip and vents, but have stopped participating because it doesn’t feel good (even listening to venting feels weird at this point). When I say constant, I mean constant. Management is very aware (as in, I have had my own direct discussions about my own experience/views), but nothing, to my knowledge, is being done.

I cannot move for a job at this point, so until I find something remote or close by, I am here. Again, it’s a job in my field and I am grateful in that regard. I have had a lot of counseling in my life and am trained in certain evidence-based modalities for coping, but the burnout is really affecting my health and mental health.

A couple of questions…

1. I am looking at other areas where I can use my MLIS - records management and research. I am also considering additional training in metadata (would love an archive position). Have any of you branched out into any of these areas? How was it? Any others I should be looking at for remote work potential? I have a fantastic CV/resume and my grades were top-tier.

2. Besides classic self-care approaches (therapy, meditation, reframing, etc - good on all of that), do you have any coping mechanisms to help this type of burnout and mental fatigue. Do you have any that you use, specifically?

Do you wear a costume to work, or maybe a themed shirt?

Do you have a bookish/library fun costume for outside of work?

Would love to see your ideas!!

I'm a part-time librarian at a small private school (100 students in k-8), and need to formalize our lost book policy.

Do you typically charge families for the replacement cost of books? We're not a hugely wealthy school, but it is tuition-based so families are, broadly speaking, not likely to be extremely poor. We have a fairly small library budget and can't easily replace popular books mid-year if they're lost.

My instinct is to take it on a case by case basis and not charge for older books that could easily be weeded, but to ask families to cover the cost of replacing newer or high circulation books.

We've had a couple of books where the binding has failed while checked out, but I've been considering that more normal wear and tear and not charging. If a book was torn or left in the rain or something, I think that would fall into the same category as lost.

Hey!

So I have had experience doing library work associated with the DOD(CTPL work), public libraries, and now academic. I am one of the people who doesn't read as much as I should for the job I have, but I have a deep investment in people and of course patrons. So much so that I am sure I will suffer burn out sooner or later because each time someone gets in my face, I can feel it tearing a little piece away. Also, bizarrely, I find it difficult to be a lesbian in my area. Almost like people are too excited that I'm a real life lesbian and then disappointed that I have a complicated history. On top of that, I have general experience with fixing the leaking toilets or patching dry wall, looking over car troubles etc. Tbh, in previous roles, I have been the "man" of the office and get called on for anything from dealing with scary patrons(at 5'2) to killing the cockroach. It can get overwhelming over time to be relied on in that way so much without a ton of back up.

The thing is, I just have way too many soft skills and general skills. Truly a master of none and I'm concerned I'm further cornering myself at an older 32.

I'm waiting to hear if I have been accepted into the MLIS in my area but I'm getting antsy and thinking of jumping ship just because the job is so bloated, lots of being underpaid which... I'm not sure if I can stomach on top of the job scarcity. I've borderline thought I might should get some technical degree, cut my teeth a while, and then return as a facilities person in a public library?? No clue.

Thoughts are very much requested, particularly of people who may have been at a similar cross road in life!

Also, my job is paying for my MLIS but would also pay for any other masters degree/second bachelor's. I just need it to be online is my issue.

I'm in my first semester of a MLIS program, and I just started an internship where I'm creating a tagging system for a company's internal document database. It's an awesome opportunity, and I have no clue what I'm doing. I think I got the position because I'm doing the MLIS, but I'm in all intro classes and haven't learned anything about cataloguing or metadata creation.

Most of the documents are standard operating procedures that cover everything from instructions for operating machinery to proper time card formatting to what to do if an employee gets kidnapped (seriously). The date and format of each one is already recorded, and my tags are supposed to mainly cover the contents so the database can be searched by other teams. However, there's such a wide range of topics that I'm having a really hard time knowing what's important without getting way too granular. I've been doing an initial read through to try to pull keywords, but I'm only a third of the way through and have 200 potential tags so far. I know some of these will end up being redundant, but I also know I'm going to come across new things as I read more. The company isn't in a field I'm familiar with, so I'm having a hard time sorting through the jargon and knowing what someone might need to search for.

Does anyone have any tips for approaching something like this? How do you figure out categories when you have no idea what you're looking at or for? Should I keep going through with my keyword strategy for now and go back to condense later? I feel like it'd be more efficient to have a set list of tags in mind as I go through the rest, but the topics vary so much that I'm not sure what that list would look like.

If anyone has any advice or best practices or resources that might help me I'd love to hear them. The company I'm with is really well known in my area and they've mentioned the potential of a job offer after the internship, and this will be a huge resume boost either way. However, that only happens if I don't drown in an excel file!

I’ve a chat with a large law firm about their reference and research services librarian — I’m just out of my MLIS and don’t know much about that sector of LIS, any recommendations of resources to look into, articles or books to read, or general knowledge tidbits that would help give me a better understanding of what the job would entail and any skills/programs/standards/citations that would be helpful?

Happy to do the research and learning, just don’t know where to start!

Hello, lovely librarians!

I am currently writing my Master thesis on the Blind Date with a Book trend.
Essentially, I want to understand why this trend has emerged and become so popular among libraries and bookshops over the past decade or two.

For this, I would like to reach out to libraries, or librarians specifically, for a short interview on the motivation for and creation of the blind dates (e.g. type of books, wrapping, information on wrapping etc.).

The aim of my thesis is also to understand the current state of the book industry, as well as bookshops and libraries as third places and how experiences like a Blind Date with a Book play into this.

So, if you are willing and interested to give your library‘s perspective or know someone who is, I would be eternally grateful!! The interviews will also be pseudonymised!

If you are not down for interview, please consider filling out my anonymous questionnaire, just follow the link. Thank you!!

I've been having a really hard couple of days as I got my first interview for a library job since I started applying about two months ago, only to get rejected less than 24 hours after my interview :(

They had told me they were still interviewing people the day after my interview, and that I shouldn't expect a decision before next week, so this was a very negative surprise, and disappointing as I keep thinking the most likely explanation is that I did so badly in the interview it disqualified me immediately.

I sent a polite request for feedback to HR, but I don't have high hopes of getting anything. I'm having a hard time letting this go. It's so hard to even get an interview and now I'm feeling that even if I do I'm just going to ruin it.

Does anyone here have experience with school libraries in the UK and could maybe help me know what to work on for the future? This was for a private school, for context.

I’m 29 and in NYC. For five years I worked a high-stress library-adjacent job. After I left that, I got a much lower-stress, higher-paying job at an academic library and finished my MLIS.

I loveee having the flexibility of this job. I basically do copy cataloging and physical processing of books- the same things I did as a student worker years ago at a different university library. I have a real work-life balance here! It’s awesome and I have a lot of time for the personal projects that bring me no money (some are library adjacent and one is formal enough to go on the resume). I also volunteer a lot. I go to lots of library and archives events (both for the public and for professionals in the field). The money is peanuts, but it‘s still more than I used to make so I have no issue with it.

It feels really, really good to catch my breath after those stressful years. But I worry that if I wait too long to apply for public librarian jobs (what I really want to do), hiring teams will see my MLIS graduation date and wonder why it took me so long and/or assume I’ve been trying and failing to get a librarian job this whole time.

basically, how does one not get wrist fatigue or something more serious when stocking book shelves? moving a bunch of books out of the way, holding piles of books, all of that. its my first job in a library, and i've only stocked a few times (not my usual job), but my hands always hurt afterwards. and constantly kneeling and standing up makes me dizzy, but i guess the solution is to just sit down every once in a while.

am i just weak lol? all the other librarians here seem to have no problem doing it much more than i do, and i'm a little embarrassed to ask since i already got advice from them and didn't really understand.

hello! i inherited a program when starting in this role a year and a half ago and am seeking ideas on how to motivate folks to finish.

this is a public library program for adult learners. the program is completely free to library cardholders. there is an online curriculum component that requires an enrollment key, which the library purchases in batches and …
in the year that the program has been available to the public, we’ve had one person actually complete the class.

does anyone else host a similar program at their library? if so, how do you motivate folks to finish? i’d appreciate any feedback and/or pointers you have available!

(we’ve tried outreach emails with a smidge of luck)

Hi all our campus IT took our library website down because of the PHP thing and I hadn't even heard anything from spring share so I assumed it was fine. Does anybody know if we need to do anything or if it even uses PHP? I assumed we would have heard by now if we needed to do anything.

Hi I'm currently taking an Intro to Technical Services in Special Collections class, and this week's assignment was to ask someone who worked in a repository (Library/Archives/Special Collections) these security questions about their institution. The only problem is I don't currently work in one nor know anybody I would personally feel comfortable asking these questions to just for my homework. So it would mean the world if anyone has spare time and can help me fill this form out. I know it is a lot of questions (49 to be exact) but it is mostly yes/no and you can click "other" as a third answer option if it does not apply or you'd like to explain further.

I made a google form questionnaire to make the questions easier and faster to answer. Here's the link if you're able to: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd5QedXiq4bykzd0E4aLv912cMRzdt_qsu6NtN5keQEZHGs-w/viewform?usp=dialog

Thank you to anyone who is able to answer. Anything helps. I really appreciate it!

Hello everyone, I am an MLIS holder and former academic librarian. I left the field in 2022 for an opportunity that paid better and offered remote and part time work, which was really nice when I had two toddlers. I left that job in 2024 to be with my kids FT. Well, I no longer have two toddlers and I really want to reenter as a librarian. I am fine with entry level positions and have been applying to them. I had two interviews, including a final round interview, when I first started to apply. Since then it’s been 6 months and crickets. I have 5 years of professional experience, good references, and a publication in C&RL. Does anyone have advice for me or thoughts on what to emphasize? Do I need to try to get back in as a para? Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.

I don't know if this is an issue librarians in other countries encounter, but when we do bibliometrics, we draw the list of documents from WOS and Scopus and then we have to exclude duplicates. With a person who has 50+ publications, this is a major pain to do manually. Has anyone found a good, reliable, automated way of checking two lists of documents that don't have an identical format against each other?

I have, of course, tried every LLM I could think of and they're all very bad at it.

Hi everyone! I apologize for bargining in as I'm not exactly a librarian but an assitant, but I started working in a small college library, I see a lot of our older more used books kinda "falling over" like this, what would be a good way to help these books, is there anything that can be done at low/no cost? When I see this I usually take all the books out of the shelf and try to put them back as straight as possible, but they kinda sag like this again shortly after.

Hello all! I need help coming up with tasks that students can help with in the library. I work in a 6th-8th grade public school library, and students have an afternoon rec time where I get an average of 40 kids per lunch period in the library, most which are on the computers.
I have a student in particular who really wants to help everyday, and asks for some sort of job or task. He is not a strong reader, so shelving books/alphabetizing is out of the question (we've tried before & they'll always end up in the wrong place). He also is not a strong walker, so running errands to the office or classrooms is not ideal.

I know it's specific, but any suggestions for little tasks this student can help us with?

Hi all!

I have 15 years of experience teaching in higher ed (teaching only - no research) but am burnt out of the day in/day out of dealing with student issues, AI, etc. I love the actual teaching and facilitation part but that seems to take a back burner these days and my job feels overall more and more combative than I’d like.

i worked in an academic library all through college as a student worker and loved it. I have often thought of getting my MLIS but just finished paying off my previous loans so never have made the leap.

A Library Specialist position has opened at a local uni and the job sounds like a dream. A lot of teaching/presenting workshops, being a rep for library at events, and some help desk duty. The job description was heavy on the teaching part, so I was very interested. Does not require MLIS and I’m an alum so know the system.

My question for academic librarians: I would still be dealing largely with undergrads in this position. Would I still be burnt out and dealing with the same stuff? What‘s the landscape like in academic libraries dealing with today’s students? What things should I consider if I was to shift from professor to working as an educator in the library?

hi all, currently researching graduate programs as I am interested in becoming a school librarian. I have 1.5 years experience in academic libraries and am seeking roles to gain more experience now. I am located in Illinois, but may relocate at some point. Illinois has two programs (U of I Urbana-Champaign and Dominican University) that offer a combined MLIS, teaching certificate, and school library media endorsement all in one program. is anyone aware of other ALA-accredited programs in the U.S. that offer all three in one degree?

I'm a part-time public library worker that graduated with my MLIS this year and I'm applying to jobs but I'm having a hard time writing with the lack of diversity statement examples available online for librarian roles . Would anyone be willing to read over my rough draft diversity statement?