Looking for Ty?

I seem to get a lot of hits from people looking for the post with the picture of me and Ty Pennington. To make it easier on you if you are one of these people, I have added a link in the sidebar to that post under "Links" and titled it "Katie and Ty". If you can't find it from there, you need more help than I can give.

New look, new address, and new article!

Well, I'm unveiling a lot of things tonight. The Young Librarian main website has a new look, a new and permanent (well, as anything on the web is permanent) address, and a new article.

The look, well, I'm not a graphic designer by any stretch of the imagination, so I tried to keep it simple.

The address is http://www.younglibrarian.net. You may be saying "but you've been using that address in your signature on listservs for the last year!" Well, I have had that address registered to me, but I had it redirected to the Geocities site. The Geocities site is still up, but will no longer be updated, so please adjust your bookmarks accordingly.

The article is "A Day in the Life of a Digital Librarian" by Alana Boyajian. Thanks to Alana for helping me to kick of the new website with a great new article!

As always, please contact me about any broken links or irregularities.

International opportunities

I'm just a posting fool tonight. Check out "See the World - Be A Librarian" by Dallas Long on LISCareer.com. Not only is the article extremely interesting and informative, Dallas is a former classmate of mine and a very cool guy.

Babyboomer Librarian

I had to point out this new blog by Bill Drew, he of the Wireless Librarian. He's just starting out, but it should be interesting to see his take on things. Good luck, Bill!

Prison librarian

I've seen stories of prison librarians here and there and had a friend in library school who wanted to be one for a time. Well, if anyone out there is harboring a desire to be one, check out a posting for one here. The listing is kind of sparse, but it does say it's full-time, gives the *very* general job duties, and the salary.

Feeds

On the sidebar, the RSS feed has been updated to the correct address and I've also added in the Blogger Atom feed. Take your pick.

Still working on updates

Well, I finally figured out my FTP problems with the new site, so I'm going to be testing the functionality of the site this week. I've also been notified that my RSS feed got broken, so I'm working on fixing that too. Hopefully should have that fixed tonight.

Site conversion update

My goal is to migrate one section per day. It doesn't help that when I had the "My Documents" folder wiped out last October, it looks like all of my files for this site were wiped out despite the supposed recovery of them. So, what I'm having to do is copy and paste the information off of the website directly. I'd have to copy and paste anyway as I created an actual template this time around, but it's still tedious. At this rate I should be done by my goal date of February 1st.

I couldn't let it sit

Since I complained about the lack of information about what you need to get certification in Michigan to be a public librarian, I did what I was supposed to and looked it up. You can find it here. And may I say that whoever designed the information structure of the Michigan.gov site needs to go talk to a librarian, as I was unable to find the answer without using the search function. Even knowing where it was located didn't help me when I went back to see if I could find it. Doing this made me wonder if anyone had ever compiled a list of which states require certification for public librarians and where to find the information on how to get certified.

What happened to the website?

The website is still there, only I decided to buy hosting space so the younglibrarian.net address is now pointing to the temporary page on the new server. The site is still available at Geocities at http://www.geocities.com/young_librarian/

Tonight I think I got the basic idea down for the redesign. I'm not really going to screw with the information architecture of it because it really does allow for growth. So, I'm hoping to have all of the files migrated by the end of the month. The site design is really simple, but then I lay no claim to any degree of graphic design skill.

U.S. Coast Guard Academy librarian ad

Ad: http://tinyurl.com/6zsf6 and in case this URL doesn't work, go to http://www.usajobs.opm.gov and do a "Series search" for "1410 - Librarian" and look for a date of Dec 15, 2004 with Homeland Security, U.S. Coast Guard as the agency and US-CT-New London as the location

Why it caught my eye:

This is basically an academic librarian position (service academy) in a special library institution (government). So, if you're looking for an academic position, but like the benefits of working for the government, you might want to check this one out.

Public Services Librarian ad

Ad: http://www.cadl.org/jobs/HA_PSlibrarian.htm

Why it caught my eye:

There are a number of reasons why this ad caught my eye. First, it's full-time and it tells you the number of hours the institution considers full-time. In this case it's 40 hours/week, but many other places may consider 35 and 37.5 hours/week to be full-time. Not only is this a full-time position, they're specifically calling this an entry-level position. Ideal for new graduates, but probably will also be hotly contested. The general duties are also defined, and what especially caught my eye was the prominence given to readers' advisory service and not "reference." There seems to be a dearth of positions, requiring an MLS, where one of the primary duties is readers advisory. That skill is usually considered a secondary duty behind general reference. So, for all of you who are interested in readers advisory as a sub-specialty, heads up! The salary. I'm not sure how far $38K+ will get you in Lansing, but it's not something to sneeze at!

What else could be listed:

• General benefits associated with the position beyond "with benefits".
  
• Explanation of what's required to get a Michigan Librarian's Professional Certificate if you don't already have one.

Website changes

Well, it's been up for a year, so change is in order anyway. I've received some notices from people that my CSS style sheets were causing problems with their browsers being able to view the site. The incidence of this problem has increased along with the usage of the Firefox browser. Considering that's the browser that I've switched over to also, it kind of helps to be able to actually view your own website. I'm going to work on creating a new site over the next couple of weeks, so if I'm AWOL, it partially because of that. Committee work will also be kicking into gear over the next few months as ALA Annual in Chicago approaches. One of my New Year's Resolutions was to spend more time with this site, so what I'm going to try to do, in order not to overload myself with my other committments, is to comment on up to 5 job ads that catch my eye per week. This is to highlight what I look for as a professional beginning in the field when I look at job ads. Maybe employers will find this of use, too. Hope everyone survived New Year's!