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[sphinxi]

In Blackpool at the moment applying for lots of jobs, just finished 2 week work experience at Swansea Uni Library which I hope will help get something interesting but I am applying both to Library and Archive jobs and also admin type jobs. I got the impression from work experience that some academic library jobs are not much different from general

Comments

[robot_mel]

Nice to hear from you. There are some admin type jobs going here at Kings but no library or achive work atm. Because of the new grading scales the admin jobs actually pay more, which in my opinion is rather rubbish, but the archives pay best of all. They also get to do historical research as part of their jobs so it sounds pretty cool. I think you are right about some library jobs lacking books, my last one was a bit like that. I on the other hand the one I'm at the moment has plenty of books but not many visitors.

[sphinxi]

Yes I think a job in archives or a smaller or specialist collections library would be really interesting - it just looked like in the large academic library that people had very narrow specialised roles such as ordering books that had already been selected by academic staff, when I worked for a week in the smaller adult learning library in the firts week of the placement that seemed a lot more interesting, they let me help with putting bibliographies together and stuff.
Thanks- I will look at King's vacancies now.

[robot_mel]

I think it depends on what job your doing. The information specalists/subject librarians are the ones who put together the reading lists and information resources in academic libraries. Working in special collections is nice though because it's a small team and we get to do a bit of everything. Including cataloguing and helping with the exhibitions. Small specalist libraries are very good though, particularly if you like the subject area. Unfortunately for me the library I worked in like that was on health service management, which while everyone there was really great, didn't exact fill me with excitment.

Good luck with your search!!!

[itinerantsphinx]

Oh, and congratulations on forthcoming publication of thesis!

[sphinxi]

Thank you - I liked the pictures of Zeus - he seems a fine fellow.