A Little Help From My Friends:
Why Finding A Library Job Is Easy
Ted Gentle
Since the end of my position, against my will, at the
Midwestern University Emporia State University, I have written extensively
about my quest to find a second job as a librarian. This has included and involved participating
in easily over fifty dead-end interviews throughout Alabama and the South. Countless committees, interviewers, spokesmen,
voices over the phone, and brief, corporate-sounding emails and letters have
given me a “no,” for a variety of reasons.
Sadly I will say for the profession, little additional help was given to
me as to how I could get back on the right track. I was shocked, then, to learn merely days ago
of opportunities available through “Friends” groups, or groups of volunteers,
available at many public libraries throughout the country. The process was as simple as filling out a
form, sometimes with a fee, and submitting it to your librarian or online. Oh, if only more librarians and library staff
members knew of this option and were more diligent about recommending it to up-and-coming,
and, yes, struggling, job applicants.
These networks really are a great way to build up a resume, gain
experience, and get back on your feet.
With a constitution and set of bylaws, friends groups
assist with most libraries in providing more efficient, direct, and, yes,
friendly service. These can exist at the
level of the library, or at the state and national level. The friends also raise money for their
library, commonly through book sales, but also by simply taking donations. Fees also contribute to the yearly earnings
of the friends. These funds may be used
by the library, the friends themselves for the library, or even to host events
such as a yearly celebration (“Friends of Libraries,” Wikipedia).
Can you believe that a process as potentially grueling as
a job search could be so heartwarming and community-centered? The friends, and the groups who support them,
live up to their name and keep the atmosphere of the library from being too
corporate, strict, and policy-based. It
is a shortcoming of the University of Alabama, as well as the average library
institution, for not pointing out this option sooner to me and to others! It is to such school’s detriment that they
leave their students and alumni at such a profound disadvantage. I think that a required course in library
school on library friends groups would do the highly charitable job of
“catching” library students or, more properly, librarians who fall
through the cracks of their later, more official library career. Let all environments that include children
also be childlike, and child-minded, at heart, always to include and never to
exclude.
The purpose of this study, therefore, will be to study
the role of friends groups in library communities in recent times. Their multiple roles as bookseller, gift
givers, food providers, and desk workers will be examined, to give those
readers struggling for work a sense of how this role is important. The similarities of friends to librarians,
and their importance as a support network for those who use and love libraries,
will be studied. In doing this, the
reader will come to understand that the friends have the same level of
importance to the librarians they serve.
Works
Cited
“Friends of Libraries,” Wikipedia.
Friends of Libraries
- Wikipedia
February 6, 2021.
