"A library doesn't need windows. A library is a window." – Stewart Brand

Jan 5, 2010

I return!

Hello there. I hope you had wonderful holidays! I was home with my family for Christmas, then came back to Ann Arbor for New Year's with my boyfriend. It was a nice vacation!

Now I'm preparing for my last (wow!) semester to start tomorrow morning. I'm excited and stressed all at once. The need to find a job is definitely looming. I've started applications for a few positions that look good. It's a little nervewracking -- since this is my first "real" set of job applications, I'm realizing that there's a bunch of etiquette and strategy I don't know (thank goodness for great career counselors like the ones at my school!) -- but I feel that I'm a really strong candidate, and I hope that I'm able to get that message to come through effectively in my application materials. I'm also trying to network as much as I can, when I can squeeze the time for that into my day. I had a couple of great informational interviews back home over vacation (more on that is hopefully forthcoming), so I'm at least starting to get my name and face out there.

Other than job applications, I'm mostly just thinking about my classes. I'm planning on taking courses on:

  • Grantwriting and fundraising. This is my cognate (we're required to take at least one graduate-level course outside of the School of Information). It's a popular cognate for SI folks offered through the School of Social Work. It sounds like it will be a lot of work but also really informative and useful. We'll have to actually write a real grant and make a real fundraising plan; I've already got a couple of ideas in mind...
  • Library/nonprofit management. Another requirement I need to fill. I think that it will be useful. The first iteration of this course was last year; I shopped it and decided to take something else at the time. I think that this is a better time in my program for me to take it; I have a broader understanding now of how libraries work as organizations, and I think that that understanding will help me fit management concepts into context.
I'm also deciding between a course on graphic design and a course on information-seeking behavior. I will probably take the latter; the syllabus for the graphic design course makes me think that it's really going to be more about learning Adobe software than about the fundamental design concepts that I want to learn. But I'll shop it, at least. It's always worth giving something a chance.

And with that... it's 12:30 and I should get some sleep! Class and my internship await early tomorrow morning... (yay for getting back to the reference desk!)

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