Category: librarianing

Your Virtual Front Door: Defining the Use of Social Media for Archives and Libraries: Part I

[This was first published at AMPed.]
Part I: Introduction
A conversation I seem to have a lot these days is discussing the use and instruction of social media, specifically for archival and library institutions. One particular topic that I keep coming back to over and over again in these conversations is that there is a huge push for institutions to use social media, with this push intensified by conferences and professional organizations (to name a few outlets). These outlets heavily advertise posters, panels and classes (to name a few methods) that teach professionals the hows of social media and networking with specific illustration of the more popular social media tools without really explaining the whys.
This in and of itself is not a bad thing. Last winter, Alexis Braun Marks, Kim Schroeder and I presented at AMIA‘s yearly conference on this very subject. Our topic, “When Are New Technologies For You?” was an attempt to give a general overview of what social media is and why it should be used while illustrating a few of the big players in the social networking world. Our audience poll at the beginning of our presentation only enforced what we knew from our research: Most institutions are desperate to get on the social media bandwagon and know that they should, but they have no idea WHY they should or how to go about doing it. Then what happens is that many institutions end up doing one of two things: they join every social network under the sun and then forget about it or they just ignore the siren call of social media in the first place, artificially secure that they don’t need it in the first place.
Therein, I believe, lies the problem: we have the knowledge of the hows but not necessarily the whys. In the the last year, since our presentation at AMIA, I’ve paid heavy attention to professional organizations and communities and noticed the rise in the offerings in classes on social media methodologies (good) but no real explanation as to they whys (bad). It is becoming widely accepted that these tools are to be and are being integrated into professional job descriptions and daily use, but no one seems to be clearly explaining why these seems to be so important.
This series is going to be a musing of and attempt to list and explain reasons of the WHY libraries and archives need to be using social media while hopefully doing away with marketing buzzwords and jargon. But before we start, let me offer up at least one simple reason as to why libraries and archives need to use social media:

It’s fun!

Next week: Part II: Social Media Simply Explained

So, You Want to be a Librarian? To degree or not to degree: Revisited

I was doing some cleaning around ye olde tags and categories last night when I came across an orphan entry, of sorts, that I wrote in the fall of 2008 – just when I started the MLIS program. I say orphan because while it was tagged to death, it was not put into any category (really) so unless someone was tenacious enough to go back several years (granted, there is not much in 2009, but still!), the entry was missed by anyone perusing my site looking for info on the SYWTBAL shenanigans.
The post, “To degree or not to degree: that is the question”, covers a lot of ground. It goes into my educational path (definitely not straight), choices and decisions on how I got to where I am today. But it also looks at, briefly, what a typical week for me was back in that first semester of school and the stress is so palpable in my words, my left eye started twitching in accompaniment as I read. Last, but not least, it discusses my choices for my first MA, my reasoning for getting a GED and outlines why I despise academic snobbery.
It’s a pretty raw but realistic read at some of the decision processes and as we know the outcome, my own predictions two years hence (“All that is going to matter is that I have them and the outstanding GPAs to back them up. (And the networking, professional associations, president of something or another by the time I graduate.)“) are also kind of amusing (since they turned out to be true!).
I’m highlighting this I think it’s a fantastic accent to the SYWTBAL shenanigans (and has been categorized as such so now it appears on the list), as well as I know numerous current MLIS students (really any grad students) now who could/can relate to the sacrifices we make for our education.
There is, though, one sentiment in my line of arguing that I would change and that is my appearing to be FOR online only distance ed. This change stems from bullocks approach of my MLIS alma mater, how they handled online only distance (badly) and also nearly two years of vaguely researching the topic. But that is a post for another day.
Enjoy.
P.S. Yes, comments are closed as all comments are closed on entries older than 14 days, so if you wish to comment on that post, you must do so here.
P.P.S. No, I don’t remember what set me off to write the post nor who the friend I reference in that post either. Drats.

Don’t Stop Believing: Prom @ ALA ’11. #alaprom

Prom, circa 1988, with my highschool sweetheart. I was a mere baby!

One way or another (weaseled, forced, sweet-talked), I was able to get on the pre-planning committee for a prom themed charity event to be held at ALA’s annual conference next year in New Orleans. I say pre-planning because nothing is absolutely official yet as some intelligence still needs to be done and money needs grease a few hands to see if this can be a go, but word on the street is even if it’s not 100% officially approved by the powers that be at ALA, it WILL happen one way or another.
All this excitement on the committee got me thinking about my own prom 22 (!) years ago. To your right is a picture of me at 15 with my highschool sweetheart. While we look positively innocent and damned near virginal, the smiles on our faces were a facade of sorts. We had, in fact, broken up a few weeks before prom night (which was also his birthday) with the excuse as he was going off to college, I still had a few years of high school left and he wanted to be a free man or some such crap. If I remember correctly, I cried through most of the night, early morning and for weeks after.1
While over the years I’ve attended various charity events that mimicked the prom theme, this will be the first time I’ll be able to wear my prom dress, which found its way back to me a few years ago.2 Tonight I’ll raise a few to Chuck, who took me to prom, introduced me to R.E.M., New Order and Joy Division and who also broke my heart and later would mend it back again.
While I’m raising a few tonight, tell me about your prom(s)3! Did you love it? Hate it? If you had the chance to do it all over again, what would you do anything differently? What would have made that night magical for you or if you didn’t go, what would have persuaded you to attend?

1. Despite my 15 year old melodramatics, we ended up staying in touch and dated again a decade later. But that’s another story for another time.
2. The dress was in storage at a friend’s parent’s house for nearly two decades. A few years ago, said friend was cleaning out her parent’s attic and found the dress and presented it back to me.
3. I knew people who not only went to their own proms for junior and senior years, but also their respective boyfriend/girlfriends proms.

So, You Want To Be A Librarian/Archivist: Job Hunt Part III: 75 and counting

Hire me./QR code shirt I made for ALA’s annual conference this year. Yes, the QR code DOES work.
Since I’ve got a number of entries in draft format that are more or less about the same topic (various statuses/commentary of The Great Job Hunt, 2010 ™), I thought it would be easier to write one entry in bullet form then pontificate endlessly on. This is how I roll.

  • As I mentioned before, my “So, You Want To Be A Librarian/Archivist?” series is fairly popular. To make it easier to keep track of posts that fall under that heading, there is now a tab at the top of the header bar, SYWTBAL?, that will take you directly to a page with posts in that category that is automatically updated. For everything else relating to the library and archives world, there is a second category, Library*.*, that includes not only all posts on SYWTBAL? but everything else written on the topic.
  • I’ve been asked by a couple of people to share my spreadsheet for The Great Job Hunt, 2010™. Here it is. [JobTracker.xls] Most of the fields are obvious, however, here are the ones that may need a bit of explaining:
    • Job Ad: Location of where I found the job (LibGig, JobList, whatever). 80%+ of places require this information for the web based applications. Also handy to have when writing letters of interest.
    • End Date: Last day to apply for the position. If no date listed, I put in “Until Filled.”
    • Resume Type: How did I apply for the position? Via email/fax/snail or web? If by web, I also include confirmation number. Not all places email receipt that application was received.
  • This next serves more as a PSA: DO NOT EVER APPLY TO A JOB VIA JOBFOX.COM. In an effort to expand my job search, I started using general job search engines to look for jobs outside of the dozen or so specialized websites and mailing lists that I currently pillage. A job for a part-time reference librarian at a small state school on the East Coast popped up via one of those sites and when I clicked to apply, it took me to the Job Fox website. In another tab, I went to the school itself looking for information on the job and even an HR department and found nothing. This is not, necessarily, unusual: A lot of places outsource their application process via a 3rd party software site or post jobs ONLY on HigerEd or other professional websites, not necessarily on their website. In short: I thought nothing was terribly unusual about the job application procedure. I created an account and jumped through their hoops. Upon account completion and notification that my application had been sent to the school, that’s when the funny began:
    • Based upon my answers to their fairly lengthy “questionnaire,” Job Fox claimed to “match me” with other jobs based on my resume and near my zip code. All I received were sales and retail jobs, many from the same hiring company. The interesting part was that there was only 1 job in my last 10 years of work history that had anything remotely to do with retail and that was at $corporate_bookstore. No information professional, librarian, archivist or some mix were even in the listings.
    • Several days after I opened my account, I received an email from one of their “Resume Experts” that gave me a detailed laundry list of why my resume suckss. In fact, it was a word for word analysis IDENTICAL to this one. Swap out “Laura” for “Lisa” and “Mechanical Engineer” for “Librarian” and it was word perfect. As you can see at the bottom, after bashing you in and attempting to make you feel like a worthless human being, Job Fox will, for the low low price of $399 USD, make your resume stand out and shine! Laura, from Word Cynic, wrote a fanfuckingtastic response to her resume wrangler.
    • Having already had my resume poked at vigorously by professional editors and librarians and archivists in a variety of different fields AND based upon the fact that I’ve gotten more interviews then others I know who just got out of school, I KNOW my resume is da bomb shiz. Since I was getting that funny feeling when their bullshit emails started coming through, I started doing research on Job Fox and the results were highly interesting. It turns out Job Fox supposedly acts as an aggregator from other job sites, attempting to make it a one stop shop for job applications. Sounds good in theory, but in reality – it IS a scam. I read, horrified, of what people were saying about their awful experiences with Job Fox and their promises of getting you the job were falling really short and to the point that people were demanding their money back and in some cases, threatening legal action.
    • Further research also indicated that Job Fox is not current enough in that while it supposedly aggregates other job sites, it is NOT removing jobs that are long filled or past their application deadline. Many of the comments I read from other job hunters also discussed that a good portion of the companies and institutions do NOT accept resumes/CVs via job aggregation sites like Job Fox as they treat those application as recruiter applications. Additionally, it was also commented that Job Fox was asked by companies and institutions to remove job listings from their site since they do not accept 3rd party applications and it apparently took legal threats to get it done.
    • Several other jobs I found via one of the aggregate sites also took me to Job Fox. I went directly to the institution and applied through the institution itself. It is also interesting to note that each one of those institutions have wording that specifically states that they do NOT accept recruiter or 3rd party submission/application sites.
    • Moral of the story: If you find an interesting job and the link for the application is via Job Fox, check the institution directly and apply through it. You’ll have a much better chance of your resume going to the right people instead into the bit bin.
  • As of today, I’ve applied for 75 jobs, 50 of which since June 14. There are some days I don’t know why I’m awfully proud of that number or if I want to weep. If I hear one more person tell me how lucky I am that I’m at least getting interviews, I want to punch them in the throat. When I also hear that the average time from ending of school to getting a job is about six months and I’m three months in and GEE, look at how great you’re doing! I want to punch them in the throat. The reality is that despite interviewing numerous times for numerous positions, I’m still passed over. I am three months out of school and still jobless. For positions where I’ve had only a single interview and was rejected, I’ve done postmortems on those interviews in an attempt to figure out WHY I’m not getting additional interviews. For positions where I interviewed multiple times and got rejected, when asked what I could do to better improve myself in the market, all I got was crickets. I’ve revised answers, created interview talking points and practiced speaking. I’ve networked like crazy.  I made god dammed shirts that I wore through ALA10 to get people to notice me. I’ve made sure tattoos and piercings are neatly packed away for face to face interviews. I’ve cut back on saying the word “fuck,” talking about topics that would make a sailor blush on Twitter and any place where my actions are publicly online. None of those things have helped. I have a plan in motion (with Justin’s permission) that begins when I hit the magical number of 100. Some of you are aware of this plan, but I’m keeping it on the down low until 100 applications have been reached.
  • The great “baby boomer librarian myth” told to newbie librarians upon entering library school: That “baby boomers are finally retiring, thus the library market is wide open” is FINALLY happening. This is evident when I was at ALA10 and majority of the recruiters were looking for directors/heads NOT first years out, that looking through ALA JobList and LibGig also shows the same trend that majority of the jobs opening up and posting are also for Librarian III/Director/Head. This should all make me swoon with glee, but it doesn’t. An informal poll on the twitters asking people to PLEASE APPLY FOR PROMOTIONS to open up their positions for first years to get into was met with incredulousness. The responses as to why people were staying put were interesting: Many had the experience but no management responsibility to qualify for some of the positions, others didn’t want the responsibility/stress and lastly, there were those that loved their job security. So yes, jobs ARE opening up for librarians but only those with experience, thus there is a large gap of open jobs for librarians/information professionals with tons of experience, no one to fill them and loads of first years with very little experience and no where to go meaning that the work force is still remaining stagnant. Doesn’t this just seem FUCKED to you? Selfish gits.
  • To add even more salt to the wound, I was reading an article in the NY Times recently that the recession? Not really over. Unemployment is staying put and will more than likely rise before falling and eventually leveling out. In a similar NY Times article that I read, but cannot find online, the prediction was that it would be 2013 before the unemployment will be back to a reasonable levels of 6-7%. The NY Times is not the only place writing about this – Slate wrote a piece detailing why people are not taking crappy, low paying jobs to fill in their gap. It’s not me, then, it’s you. And even knowing that it really is not me, does not erase the fact that this is the first time in my working life (since age 14), I have not been in school or without a job. That the frustration of the lack of landing a job and being rejected over and over again is like living through the worst possible break-up, magnified a thousand times. Repeatedly.
  • To say I’m bitter is putting it mildly.

KEEP CALM and LIBRARY ON #KCaLO

I recently became obsessed with the “KEEP CALM AND” campaigns popping up, parodies of the KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON British WWII campaign. After spending hours flipping through the Flickr group and Google images1, I noticed there seemed to be a KEEP CALM parody for just about everything EXCEPT for libraries.
Libraries, regardless of what type, are more in danger now then every before. The reasoning, however, as to why and what can be done would be not blog posts but websites about the topic. Several groups/websites have already begun to push this importance of saving libraries/library advocacy to the public forefront such as Agnostic, Maybe, Losing Libraries, Crave Libraries and Save LA Public Libraries. These are just a few of the dozens of grassroots people/websites bringing to the public advocacy and grassroots campaigns to better serve/protect/save libraries.
Once discovering the font (Gill Sans, amongst friends, seems to be closest2), I planned on blocking out some time later week to play around to create a library parody but then I stumbled upon the KEEP CALM-O-Matic website! Who needs to fiddle with Photoshop and fonts when the web can do it for you? Plus this just saved me ton of time on trying to make everything “just right.”
To the above is mock-up I did for “KEEP CALM AND LIBRARY ON,” which I think is a great umbrella term that, like the British during the throes of WWII, illustrates libraries and librarians will persevere. We have lasted two millennia of cutbacks, burnings, bombings, death, scandals, awful stereotypes and whatever else has been thrown our way. In short, there is nothing we can’t handle and librarians are certainly not going anywhere.
While KEEP CALM-O-Matic is fabulous since you can instantly create and purchase, via Zazzle, your KEEP CALM stuff, you cannot upload your own images (for example, I would like to swap out the crown for the ALA “Reader” logo3). And the t-shirts are not solid colors, rather, they are the image created by the KEEP CALM-O-Matic and just superimposed on the shirt, like an iron-on. I know there are loads of other super talented people out there who would totally dig this and can make this spectactular. Me? Probably not so much.
So if anyone plays around with this, let me know either via Twitter using the tag #KCaLO or in the comments below.
Keep calm and library on.

1. One of my favorites.
2. Thanks Chris!
3. Thanks to Librarian JP for the heads up on the name of that blasted logo.

Naked Librarians: ALA 10 Unplugged. #ala10 (Part I.)

I made several of these shirts in several different colors for the #ala10 conference and wore them all weekend. The QR Code does indeed work.

Holy. Cats.
After much hemming & hawing, I made it to D.C. this past week for the American Library Association’s annual convention (or known in Twitterland as #ala10). Geeks, by the way, have NOTHING on the librarians ifyouknowwhatImean.
Now that the conference is over, there have been a trickle of posts coming out of the blogosphere about various libarians’ experiences with #ala10. A few worth mentioning are: I’ve been a passive fan girl of Andy Woodworth for some time now as he’s been super helpful in helping me with that murky area between the ending of my SLIS program and being thrust out to the world of librarianship with only a single arm floatie to prop me up. Andy wrote a breakdown of of the conference, specifically talking about social media advocacy. What I took away from this was, “STFU. You’ve got the tools, now USE THEM.”
P.C. Sweeney also wrote up his experiences for the PLA blog, which captured some of the spirit of the conference. While not a blog post, I DID ran into (almost literally) to one of the creators of Crave Libraries on the exhibit floor (and also scored a few cool buttons FTW!). Advocacy, awareness and grassroots-esque ideas while not heavy on the sessions list, were definitely huge topic of conversation at the dinners and social events.
A knockoff of my Moo cards that I printed at home since I forgot to order new batch before the conference. These were also a big hit at #ala10.

The second thing I want to tackle before I going my observations on the conference (and because I know how wordy I am, this will be a two part post, with the first discussing the positive and the second post why ALA (and by extension, most librarians) are still huddling in the 19th century) is the plethora forwarding and retweeting of a blog post by Bobbi Newman that she wrote last year called, Why I’m over people Twittering Conferences, Meetings.
A year ago I would have been nodding my head vigorously and shaking a fist while proclaiming, “Right on, sister!” but having attended three separate conferences within the last year, I can only respectfully disagree.
Here’s why:

  • If you’re Twittering, you’re not paying attention – multitasking is a myth The problem I have with this statement is that it’s flat generalization across learning and theory styles. Statistically, I do much better cognitively if I took notes and in lieu of having a pen/paper or my netbook with me, tweeted the information for later user. I also am a much better visual learner so I need something to connect the aural with the visceral. This also doesn’t take into account those who have smart phones (and thus there is an app for that productivity if you’re sans your netbook) or those with just text only options, so texting at leas to their Twitter accounts may be the only way to keep notes.

Documenting the American South

[This was first published at AMPed.]
To say those from the South are proud of their heritage is putting it mildly. Every year dozens if not hundreds of groups, towns and culture centers celebrate some aspect of Southern life from Civil War reenactments to living history villages to a wide array of festivals honoring everything from fruit and food to music and specialty local events. 1
To help commemorate the South’s (and also America’s) illustrious background and to give a voice to the Southern perspective, the University of North Carolina has put together a digital initiative of primary and secondary sources on the Internet. Since 2004, Documenting the American South has been the premier location for education and research materials on Southern life not just on the Internet, but also in the world. The fourteen thematic collections offer wide range of digital materials that includes books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs. This vibrant digital collection consists of numerous large print, photograph and rare materials collections made possible by Southern Historical Collection, the North Carolina Collection, UNC’s Rare Book Collection and the Davis Library.
What makes Documenting the American South such a rich resource is not just because of the various large collections that have been consolidated into a single landing point for research and discovery rather it is also because the scope, design and ease of use of the site that makes it such a valuable resource. In addition, the site is consistantly updated with new information and materials, making it not only a valuable resource for things past, but also for things present and future.
Documenting the American South has a number of discovery and mapping tools to help viewers explore the collection. This includes a Highlights section, a monthly update that explores content in the collection, which is also available via RSS. In addition is the Collections section, a listing of the digital collections by theme, also available for researchers and educators to use for finding materials that range from first person narratives, slave narratives to Southern literature and more. Specific content can also be found by using the Subjects, Geographical, Authors and Titles tabs in the top navigation bar. And if you still can’t find what you’re looking for, there is also a search option to search the entire collection by keyword to find exactly what you need.
UNC has also put together Classroom Resources, which includes kits, lesson plans and additional materials to help bring Southern life vividly into the classroom.
This is a wonderful treasure trove of materials, that is not only rich for discovery but also a valuable archive of not just Southern life, but American life as well.
 
1. In addition, Southern Festivals is a fantastic resource for festivals happening in the South. This site is organized by state, so if you’re traveling south this year and looking for things to do, this would definitely be one site you want to bookmark.

The Power of the Retweet

[This was first published at AMPed.]
I’ve discussed Twitter in a variety of capacities on AMPed but mainly within the context of using mashable technologies that include Twitter, but I have not discussed a feature of Twitter that sometimes is overlooked – retweeting.
What exactly is retweeting? Retweeting is taking a tweet that was originally sent by one person that you follow and you in turn forward it on to your own followers, usually with an added comment so that the new tweet would look something like this:

Awww RT@stephenfry Plus *eyelidflutter* Steve Jobs said “Hi, Stephen” *swoon*.

In this case I’m commenting on a tweet originally sent by @stephenfry, whom I follow and in turn, I forwarded that tweet to my followers along with my comment. Because of the format of the tweet, it is generally understood that everything before the “RT” is by me and everything after the “RT” is by the originating author. And this is accepted as the norm in Twitter communication for since time immortal (or 2006).
It is exactly like email forwarding, with the exception that you cannot selective choose who your retweet goes out to, it has to go out to all of those that follow you or none at all.
When Twitter first came to being, it didn’t have an official re-tweet option, at least not on Twitter.com. A lot of the retweeting that went on was done by hand, meaning simple cut and paste with formatting to make it fit within 140 characters. As Twitter, and obviously by extension tweeting, became more popular, applications and websites like HootSuite, Seesmic and TweetDeck started building tools within their clients to make retweeting easier, thus no more cut and paste! One could simply select the option to retweet a tweet and the application would do the formatting for you.
But then, everything changed. In the fall of 2009, Twitter announced they were going to do something a little bit differently: change how people retweeted. This may not seem like earth shattering details but in the context of how people use Twitter and for people who use Twitter.com, it was a big deal.
Here is what they did:
For ages, applications were already incorporating ways for people to retweet content, allowing people to style how they disseminated the information as seen by my example above. Twitter.com, sometimes late to their own party, decided to shake things up by adding a retweet option natively into the website. What this option did is that if you were reading your Twitter timeline on Twitter.com and saw something you wanted to retweet, the retweet option would re-post the tweet for you but as it originated from the author, with no option to restyle it or adding commentary. So, if I retweeted my example from above to my followers, what they would see is the tweet as it was originally sent by Stephen Fry with “retweeted by” appended on. The interesting thing about this new option is that for those who ALREADY follow Stephen Fry on Twitter, they would not see my retweet since it already appeared originally in their timeline.
Applications and websites have started incorporating this option into their software, giving users a choice to do it natively or to add commentary.
Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter, explains the rationale behind the the new format and the ideology of how retweeting emerged organically.
So now that we’ve covered what retweeting is, how it’s used and how to use it, what exactly makes it powerful? There are a number of reasons (in no particular order):

  1. It introduces new users to your followers that they may not already know. For example, there are a number of Twitter users who have become massively popular due to the viralness of retweeting, such as @ArchivesOpen and @UkNatArchives. The viralness of a Twitter account is not limited to an account that is for pure entertainment, as news & culture magazins, think tanks, research groups and individuals that I do not follow have appeared in my timeline, retweeted by people who think that information is interesting or useful.
  2. It draws attention to a particular action, ideology or commentary that you believe in and want to share with your followers.
  3. It illustrates something you agree or disagree with, but sharing the orignal tweet with your own commentary, thus drawing attention to something that may not have been noticed before.
  4. Retweeting gives credit to sources, which again goes back to expanding your social network, either professionally or personally.
  5. It creates conversations with your followers by them retweeting or responding directly to you about your retweet or by retweeting a tweet that originated from yourself.

This list is just the tip of the iceberg and there could be a series on the power of retweeting, but for now we’ll just cover the basics to lay the foundation on becoming a better tweeter. By understanding why people use retweeting, how to use it, what it does and why it can be so powerful gives you a better foundation to be a better tweeter and at the end of the day, isn’t that what everyone wants?

Hire me or the pug gets it.

Hire me or else the pug gets it.
The closer my friend Jessica got to graduation from our alma mater, the more worried she got about not finding a job. Understandably, Jessica had been pimping herself out for six moths prior to graduation and had not so much as a phone interview yet. Jessica was my litmus stick in the world of job hunting – if SHE couldn’t get a job (and Jessica is super awesome beyond words), then my chances of obtaining employment nirvana upon my graduation were damned near close to nil.
Literally two weeks before our exams at the end of December, Jessica bagged not only an interview but also a job offer! The day after our last class together, Jessica packed up her crap and moved to Chicago. While I knew she was stressed about the barely-making it to her deadline, she would often tell me that she wasn’t AS worried because things would work out – they had to. You couldn’t, she kept telling me, stress about probabilities because things could and CAN change in an instant, as certainly shown by her obtaining a position seemingly minutes before graduation.
My own graduation was looming six months after Jessica’s and based upon Jessica’s experiences, I swore to myself that I would start immediately on the job hunt once we came back from holiday break in January. I would apply weekly! Keep a spreadsheet! Be diligent in my cover letters and resume tactics!
For the most part, I did all of the above starting with having a few friends who have worked as professional editors help me prefect my resume near the end of the fall term. In addition to the professional editors, I also had my resume looked at by professionals in the librarian and archives fields. I even started the damn spreadsheet and kept track of my job hunt diligently. I networked like crazy and while I didn’t apply weekly for jobs starting in January as I had planned, the closer I got to graduation, the more frequently I applied. Spending hours shifting through mailing lists, job sites, and emails from friends looking for a job, any job, that would fit me. But as I started automating the process of applying for jobs, I began to notice several trends:

  • Job descriptions were more often than not vague and/or really generic. “We want a creative or innovative person!” (One of the most common starts to the job ads.)
  • Qualifications, at least when listed under “desired,” sometimes bordered on the outrageous or impossible. “10 years in social media experience.” Say what? Sure you could PROBABLY make the claim that community managers from days of yore could be counted in this, but in reality, not really.
  • Jobs looking for someone tech savvy would use least likely tech savvy way of contact. For example, position for a job required faxing my application and resume, which was fine except nowhere on the HR or institution’s website was a listing for email OR phone number for HR or even hell, the library system. So, if I had questions – how was I to contact them?

These are complaints echo what I’ve complained about on Twitter, but I couldn’t REALLY justify the bitching: In comparison to many of those in my graduating class at said alma mater: I was getting interviews and rejection notices. Many, if not most, were barely getting the latter. My frustration may have been with the system but I was still getting a response from the system, many of my peers were not. Here is how my stats break down: As of June 10, 2010:

  • Total number of jobs applied for: 28
  • Total number of rejections (email/snail): 12
  • Total number of interviews (phone/video/f2f): 7
  • Total number of rejections from interviews: 4
  • Total number of still open applications: 10
  • Total number of still open interviews: 3

Right now I have three open interviews, which means that I have not heard back from two of them (those were done in the last week or so) and the third is attempting to schedule something to fly me out to do a campus interview, as I apparently rocked the video interview but there seems to be scheduling conflict. Of the two outstanding, I’m pretty sure I won’t be extended a second interview for one of them. I realized in the shower the day after WHY I wasn’t getting beyond the first interview with least three of them, and possibly one that is still open: I am prepping for a job description that does NOT match what they are looking for.
For example if a university says they want someone with knowledge of HTML, fine. But there is a difference between having working knowledge and being a full blown web developer. Stating that you want someone with preferred qualifications in a specific ILS does not translate into asking me about information architecture, usability or what my work flow is for web development. And when I ask you, for example, about the ILS qualification, being told that your institution is replacing it with another brand also makes the qualification seem slightly above silly, even more so when the ILS’ are wildly different.
This has been a costly mistake to me: the bugger all is that I CAN speak intelligently about information architecture, usability, and work flow design. I DO have examples of how to mock up a website and examples of my work. I AM knowledgeable on social media and networking. But I’m prepping for their job description, not my resume. This has been the largest, and hopefully only, mistake that I’ve done. I’m hoping that my understanding of this now will pay off in the near future. In conjunction with applying for jobs, I’ve started putting together a talking points list of questions I bombed, unintentionally, in past interviews.
The point of this is that when asked to discuss on X, I have keywords to help jump me off on the topic and keep my thoughts straight. This is inspired by the institution that wants to fly me out who sent me a list of questions they were going to ask me 24 hours before my video interview. What was so great about this is after I put my thoughts and notes down, I didn’t need to check the list since it was all fresh in my brain. Since it was all fresh in my mind, I was able to rock the interview. The irony of this is that the questions this institution asked me is almost identical to the ones asked of me by the places that I bombed. Heh. Like I said, expensive mistake. I’ve also been plotting with a few experienced librarians about my assault on #ALA10, which includes interesting ways to get my resume noticed. And if after all of this, and the continued job search AND the assault on #ALA10 doesn’t pan out – then what? I’ve got two other life plans worked out – but that’s another entry for another time.
P.S. Please do not comment about the “Dos” and “Don’ts” of resume/cv, what HR’s are looking for and what have you. Not only have I heard them all BUT a lot of the “advice” I’ve been given contradicts itself. For example, was told by one HR person my resume was “far too detailed.” When I related this to a hiring manager at another institution, who was in fact interviewing me at the time, they said that having details makes it far EASIER to scan for keywords. Making my resume too general doesn’t allow me to stand out of the crowd. Secondly, I’ve had my resume/cv looked at by a number of qualified people in my profession (all of whom are on or have been on search committees) who helped me with some adjustments but they all pretty much said my resume was rock solid. Clearly, it is NOT my resume that needs help. I’m just ranting/ruminating on the process thus far and am NOT seeking advice. Thanks and etc.

Twitter hits its 10 billionth tweet: What this means for you

[This was first published at AMPed.]
If you are following any blogs on social media, the one that should be at the top of your list is Mashable. While at times the writing is a bit sensationalistic, Mashable is great for getting news and information as it happens making it one of the definitive sources on social media and networking on the web.
Anyone old enough to remember the days when McDonald’s used to change their signs when they sold X number of burgers? Fan fare and promotions were a blazed the numbers climbed and once McDonald’s hit 99 billion burgers, it stopped counting.
Today, Mashable reported that Twitter reached 10 billion tweets. Here is how the numbers work out: Twitter begins in early 2006 and it takes nearly 2.5 years to reach the first billion tweets (fall of 2008). One year later, it quintupled the number of tweets (from one billion to five billion) in 1/3rd of the time. And six months later, Twitter doubled that figure to ten billion tweets served.
Yowza.
And unlike McDonald’s, Twitter is not going to stop counting.
There are a couple of things that make this information interesting and to some degree, crucial:

  • Twitter is not dying or on death’s door. Despite various predictions from anyone with online access that Twitter had run its course, people still creating Twitter accounts every second. Sure, Twitter has had growing pains and due to the unbelievable increase of traffic it has occurred, it will still continue to have growing pains but this does not denote death or dying of the service. While there is no definitive word as to how Twitter (if ever) will monetize their services, this has not stopped the zillions of third parties from making money off the Twitter API. In short, Twitter should not be discounted because clearly, it is doing nothing but grow. The benefits of using the service are only going to get better.
  • Studies by Pew Internet and other social researchers keep observing and recording new trends within social media and primarily within Twitter. Sometimes conflicting reports will appear that suggest: teens love Twitter, teens hate Twitter or only old people are using Twitter. While in the beginning the conflicts were more wide spread, the older Twitter gets, the more about who/why/when is using Twitter information will stabilize.

For Twitter, and for its users, this information is great news, but for an archivist dealing with born digital preservation – this could be a nightmare. Due to storage constraints, Twitter does NOT archive the entire breadth of your Twitter account anymore. Thus if you’re someone like myself who has nearly 15,000 tweets on record (since 2007!), that to process and produce an archival system to keep it all intact, preferably off of the Twitter cloud would be huge. While personally I am an extreme example of a Twitter user, I’m not really all that unique with wanting to preserve my tweet history. Several months ago I installed a lifestream plugin for my personal blog for the simple reason to collate and preserve my online activity, so that I could personally archive everything myself. But even that was not enough because more than 75% of my Twitter life is in the ethers since I did not think to set up any kind of backup plan to preserve my Twitter history. For a long time, I (like most people) depended too much on Twitter to do this for me, but now that the growth spurts have put an end to Twitter keeping an active Twitter history for all of their users.
In late 2009, the APA style guide released an online update detailing how to cite Twitter. If APA can take Twitter seriously, then archivists need to start thinking of the Twitter model as the springboard to help come up with solutions to born digital preservation issues, primarily in social media and networking. If this scenario was presented about tangible, physical objects, 15 manuals would appear by the SAA within a month. As it stands, there is currently no definitive way on how to archive these born digital creations and as such, we will eventually lose access to them. And since Twitter is not archived via the Internet Archive or by Google, once those tweets are gone, they are gone.

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