On the hunt…

I will be flying up to freezing Chicago next week for a second interview for a job I am absolutely dying to get. I’d have to be VERY interested in a job to be willing to fly to Chicago in January! This job could hardly come closer to my description of a perfect job for me — working with technology, instructing people, and doing reference work. I always worried when I started looking for jobs that I’d either have to choose reference work or tech librarianship (systems or web librarian). It’s nice to see that there are more and more jobs out there for blended librarians — librarians conversant with the latest technologies, but who are still interested in the public service aspect of library work. There is, in fact, a blended librarian community that was started last year by Steven Bell and John Shank. Although it states that a blended librarian works in an academic library, I think more and more public librarians are becoming blended librarians as well. Public libraries deal with many of the same technologies these days. Anyways, I am very hopeful about this job interview and about becoming a blended librarian. If not, I have another interview next week with a library system in New Jersey that I’ve heard is very tech-forward and a great place to work (according to a certain blogger who works there). Maybe things are looking up? I hope so, but it doesn’t make me doubt the “librarian shortage” any less. And I’m certainly not the only person who feels that way.