A Little Help From My Friends: Why Finding A Library Job Is Easy

 

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.