What I’m Glad I Didn’t Know Upon Graduating

While writing my last post about what I wish I had known upon graduating (from library school), I decided that I wanted to write a companion piece about what I was glad I didn’t know. Perhaps the reason for this will soon become clear. So here we go:

• You know nothing. No, seriously, you don’t. You know all that time you just spent learning how to connect to Dialog database via a 300-baud acoustic coupler modem? That’s worth 3-5 years, tops. Then it’s toast. What comes next YOU HAVE NO IDEA. So just stop with the anguish, and meet it like a woman.
• I mean, seriously, YOU KNOW NOTHING. All that stuff you wrote papers about? Gone, too late. Something else is on the horizon, about to mow you down like so much new grass.
• If you can’t learn constantly, like ALL THE TIME, then you are toast. BITNET, UUNET, bulletin boards, WAIS, Gopher, Hytelnet, Veronica, Gopher, ALL of these would come and go within a small number of years. You will learn them, forget them, and bury them all within a decade. Have a nice life.
• You should have taken more cataloging courses. I was more of a public services kind of person, but frankly, public services was completely transformed during the period when we still had the MARC record. So more cataloging courses regarding MARC would have had more staying power than how to give bibliographic instruction talks. I’m sorry to say that I actually would wheel in a book truck with the Reader’s Guide, Biography Index, and other such print volumes to pitch to students who within a year would be lining up to search INFOTRAC instead. Talk about futility.
• You are being disintermediated. None of us at the time could possibly have predicted Google. I mean not even close. We’re talking about a period before AltaVista, which I would argue was the first web search engine that actually worked well. I lived through the era where we switched from people having to come to us to us to meeting people where they are (via mobile, out in the community, etc.). This isn’t a bad thing, but I can assure you it wasn’t what we expected when we graduated in 1986.
• There are fewer jobs than you think there are. I graduated into a job situation where there were plenty of professionals who graduated ahead of me who already had jobs and weren’t going to give them up for decades. We still have this issue. Only in the last few years have we begun to see the beginning of the tidal wave of Baby Boomer retirements that will open up positions for new librarians.
• The future jobs will be more technical or more community oriented than you may expect. If you look at today’s jobs, which really are only a trend that started back close to when I graduated, you will see a distinct shift toward two directions: technical positions, whether it be a software developer or a digital archivist, or toward engaging a community like a university-based “embedded librarian” or someone who serves teens at a public library. The point is that either you are public-facing or you are highly skilled in new technical requirements.
• Personal connections are much more important than a degree. When you obtain your degree you may think that you are done, that you have punched your card and you are good. In reality, it is only just the beginning. What you really need are connections to others. You need to know people who also know you. That is why I am so focused on mentoring young librarians. Young librarians need to focus on building networks of both peers and potential mentors. Who can help you be successful? Who can give you a needed recommendation? Seek these people out and make a connection.

Finally, on a personal note, there is one last thing that I am glad I didn’t know upon graduation. But first I must explain. To get through library school I did the following:

• Worked 30 hours a week as an Evening/Weekend Circulation Assistant as UC Berkeley staff.
• Drove 5 1/2 hours each way nearly every weekend to visit my wife working in Northern California (Arcata).
• Took a one-calendar year full course load MLIS program at UC Berkeley.

Doing this meant that I would leave on Friday for Arcata with an aching back and barely able to stay awake, having gotten perhaps 5 hours of sleep for five nights straight.

As it turns out, this was all simply good training for having twins. It’s really remarkable how life turns out sometimes.