Technically midsemester passed a few weeks ago. This means I'm a bit late to the party. My intention was to write this post last week while I was at the Electronic Resources & Library (ERL) conference in Austin. However, that week was a whirlwind. The ERL conference was a great experience. I met lots of very smart people. I got to play with Google Glass. I got to handle 3D printed objects. I met librarians who were struggling with new technology as well as those who were embracing it wholeheartedly. I met librarians from Australia, the UK, Canada, and far flung points of the United States. I met librarians from the Library of Congress, MIT, and scads of other small public or academic libraries from all over. I learned a lot about what employers want out of new MLIS graduates (its all about e-resources!).
Over the past few months I've been thinking about my future. My current situation with my own job is unstable but workable. I love it, so I'm hanging on. The two posts I did on possible jobs (here and here) left me with a sense of maybe that's not really what I want to do when I finish my degree. I've always wanted my PhD and so I started the process of locating a program that speaks to me. The University of Texas at Austin's School of Information was on my short list. While I was in Texas I met with several of the professors in the program. I have some good ideas about what I'd like to do for a doctoral thesis and the professors I met seemed enthusiastic and encouraged me to apply. At first I was enthusiastic too. The school is modern. The professors are personable and interesting. The doctoral students are well adjusted and don't look underfed. Even so, there was something nagging at me saying "Is this really where you want to be in two years?" By the time I was on the road home, the answer had turned from "maybe" to "probably not."
A third experience while in Texas has added to this thought process. One of our projects for the Intro to the Profession class (The one that spawned this blog!) was to visit two libraries and to compare and contrast the two. I chose my local library, the Englewood Public Library and the Casey Memorial Library at Fort Hood, Texas. The Casey Memorial Library is a public library located on the grounds of one of the largest military bases in the world. It is open to everyone, but it caters mostly to soldiers and their families stationed there. While there, I sort of fell in love. When I worked in a public library, the thing I loved the most was the people I served. I spoke before about my desire to work in the defense industry or something related and I think that a military library might be *it.* It combines two of my great loves: Libraries and supporting our soldiers. The director has been employed there since 1974. The second longest serving librarian would not tell me how many years she had in the military library system but a quick tally of the years she said she was in various places brings it to more than 25 years. Any time one finds a place where people are willing to stay for decades at a time, it is worth looking closer at that employer. There are pros and cons to finding a job in a military library. The first would be that one would need to get her foot in the door first, relocate to wherever that opening was, and then later wait for an opening in a geographical area she wanted to be. Something tells me that I want to be in the military library system.
What other thoughts do I have about this semester? Well, for one, after the ER&L conference I'm going to be gearing my education more towards e-resources because of the emphasis librarians placed on being able to hire people qualified to deal with databases and electronic resource licensing. I still love my scripting class. I'm ready to take the summer off. I'm ok with taking three years to complete this degree. I've also decided I'm going to keep this blog. I've canned my other library themed blog and I will continue this one after the semester is over. It's grown on me.
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