The Corporate Librarian

Sorry to be duplicating content across blogs, but I think this is important. Meredith Farkas is conducting another survey of people considering themselves bibliobloggers, as a follow up to her August 2005 survey. She notes:

I’m looking for both people in the profession who have blogs and people who blog at their library as part of an official library blog. You don’t have to have an MLS to be a part of the survey and you don’t have to work in a traditional library setting. If you consider yourself a part of the profession and you blog, please do take part. I’ll probably keep the survey open for four weeks. Just like last time, I’ll be sure to publicly share all the details. I definitely can’t wait to see the results myself!

I’m very curious to see what has changed in 2 years - please check out her post and participate! The results of her first survey are here.

So, the plan is to try and find a job in the Bay Area, fly back to the East Coast to finish packing up and help run Library Camp NYC, then fly back to the Bay Area and move into the apartment my friend is offering insanely low rent for in Mountain View.

Reality is not being so obliging. Apparently, in the Bay Area it’s not so easy to find a corporate job, especially in the summer. Especially if one does not have a science background or legal research skills.

I’ve been hitting the Combined Library Job Postings feed from LISjobs.com, Craiglist, DBM’s Job Scout, SLA’s job site, kvetching to acquaintances on IRC and using my Mountain View friend’s network.

So far, the two leads I have are:

• A job offer which may or may not come - the company has been putting me through interviews for a month, they say they like me, but haven’t said anything about compensation, start date, etc.. I was supposed to hear from them yesterday - nothing.
•  A company which would like to see me for an in-person interview - the hours would be long (we’re talking, work till 10 P.M. long) which might mean I’m too busy/tired to have a social life, the commute would not be fun (in fact, I’d probably want to move to San Francisco or Marin County) and the salary would be significantly lower. On the other hand, it’s pretty much what I want to do. So I’m waffling on that one.

So I throw myself on the mercy of my readers: anybody in the Bay Area looking for a corporate librarian with 13 years of experience doing company and industry profiles for consulting firms? Functional version of my resume below. Best way to reach me is either e-mail or my cell.

Functional resume

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Courtesy of the beautiful but deadly Dan Smith, some library-related artwork. Now you can see what I really look like.

For people who are curious about what goes into planning an unconference, the latest addition to the Library Camp NYC wiki is a History page which gives an abbreviated timeline. For those wondering at the gap between October and January, from what I can reconstruct from my e-mails and blogs it was spent getting advice from John Blyberg and Alan Gray, talking with people from METRO and even more so preparing for a potential move to the West Coast.

The amazing thing is, none of us (the organizers - Stephen Francoeur, myself and Rachel Watstein) have actually met. I contacted Rachel because she’d said something about being willing to help in response to one of my mailings, and I honestly don’t remember how Stephen and I first got into contact. I think it was when he e-mailed me in April. We’ve exchanged e-mails and IMs and been on conference calls together, but August will be the first time we all meet face-to-face.

OK, I’d actually seen the meme before, but give the man some referrer love!

So the idea is that I list 5 non-library blogs I follow and this gives you penetrating insight into the very fabric of my being. Make something of this!

1. Medgadget, because I find medical developments more fascinating than what the latest cell phone can do
2. Infocult, in which my mad doomed friend Bryan attempts to digest every possible permutation of information for the benefit of society. That’s him in the comments to my previous entry.
3. Eric Rice - Official Site, because after ‘meeting’ him on the #joiito IRC channel and seeing him across a crowded room in Brooklyn he’s become my go-to guy for what’s happening with social media. Also, I’m curious to see what happens when his blog gets hit by a swarm of librarians.
4. Final Girl, the best non-professional commentator on horror movies. And better than several professional commentators whose work I’ve had the misfortune to read.
5. William Buehler Seabrook discussion, both because LiveJournals don’t get enough respect and because William Buehler Seabrook is not well-known enough for my liking.

And because I love you so, and because Numbers 2 and 3 could be said to be library-related:

1. The Spy Who Billed Me, a blog I recently found through an online acquaintance’s LiveJournal, about the outsourcing of intel.
2. meine kleine fabrik, what Boing Boing would be like if it had many fewer posts and were worth following.

As long-promised, my review of Mary Ellen Bates‘ Building & Running a Successful Research Business (Reva Basch edited it as part of a series, but Bates’ name is on the spine so I’m calling it hers). I recently completed a one-off consulting job as a step towards considering a freelance career, so I feel I can provide at least some “road testing.” Unlike books touting how to become an information broker from the early 90’s, Bates freely admits that the independent information professional may not be a career for everyone, and gives good advice on determining for oneself if that’s the case. This won her major points with me off the bat.

The first section is all about starting your business - do you even want to be an independent information professional, what sort of research will you do, how to find clients, what your competition is like, considerations for incorporation, work-life balance, etc.. Bates uses plenty of real-world examples, with important points called out in sidebars or endbars. The tone is helpful and fairly informal.

The second section is devoted to running your business once you’ve launched, and is invaluable. Everything from problem clients (and potential clients) and how to deal with them to financial issues (billing and collections, taxes, setting rates and fees), to subcontracting, to the ethics and legalities involved, to how to get yourself professional development and how to conduct strategic planning for your business. I put some of her guidance to use when writing and sending an invoice to my client, such as including a W-9 form and providing a Taxpayer Identification Number. Sadly, I set my rate for the job before reading her advice on the topic, and lowballed myself as a result.

The section on marketing is full of dos and don’ts - I have to admit to only skimming this section, as I was doing a one-off job to see how I might like freelancing. However, the piece on marketing by writing and speaking should be taught in library schools as a core class, to my mind.

The final section is dedicated to research - how to conduct different types (online, phone, public records, etc.), how to approach online research, how to structure your deliverables and other services you can offer. Again, plenty of advice and real-world examples, in the text as well as sidebars and endbars. Appendices offer information on the Association of Independent Information Professionals, how to stay up-to-date, useful tools (associations, books, government agencies, Web sites, etc.) for independent information professionals and contact information for people quoted in the book.

I would urge anyone considering a career as an independent information professional to read through this book first, as essential preparation, as well as to anyone curious what non-traditional career options are available to librarians.

Questions, comments, peasants with torches?