I’ve been wanting to blog about this for a while…
I got a job. 🙂
I was offered the position about 11 days ago, but was nervous about blogging about something that was not yet in writing. After having lunch yesterday with the Library Director and her husband, I realized that yes, I really do have a job and I probably wouldn’t be jinxing myself by writing about it. And since we just put an offer in on a house, our first, I guess all of this is all pretty real and won’t dematerialize (though the house might).
So I’m going to be a Distance Learning Librarian in the great state of Vermont. If I could have described my dream position when I first started applying for jobs, it would be “distance learning librarian”, but I held out little hope of finding such a position, as rare as they are these days. And after interviewing for jobs in places that would have required a lot of compromise, my husband and I are ending up in the exact sort of place we’d always wanted to live. Quiet. Small town. Friendly people. Lots of scenic beauty and places to get out into nature. And only 45 minutes from a Banana Republic (hey a girl’s gotta live)! Better yet, I’m only a 30 minute drive from one of the coolest librarians and coolest couple I’ve met in a long time. And my colleagues are just amazing. I’ve never met a nicer bunch of people in my life, and I can’t believe my good fortune to have a job I know will offer me plenty of opportunities to make a difference.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m pretty sure that my blogging activities helped me get the job, or at least the interview. If I’d not had a blog, I would just have been another new librarian with a bit of library experience and not enough of a resume to prove her worth. With my blog, I was a person who is genuinely passionate about the profession and interested in sharing ideas and making libraries better. Because I wanted to create useful content for my blog, I tried out new software offerings and got into screencasting, something I’ll probably be doing a lot of in this position. Blogging, I think, took me out of the anonymous crowd of new librarians and made me a known entity. I know it could have hurt as much as it could have helped — I can be a bit opinionated — but I doubt I’d have wanted to work at a place that thought of my blogging as a bad thing. Blogging has made me more passionate about librarianship than my year and a half in library school ever did. It’s helped me to meet some amazing people in the profession who inspire me every day. People can go on and on about the “objective” worth of blogs, but for me, they have opened up a new world.
So I’m excited to go to the ALA Conference as a Librarian. I guess I’ve been a librarian since the day I graduated with my MLIS, but now I have the opportunity to really get things done, rather than just talking about them.
Life is good.
Congrats! Do blog at some point about the job — perhaps the things you wish you had learned in library school.
Congratulations! I can’t wait to hear about all the new projects you’ll be tackling.
Congratulations and best of luck.
Mazel tov. Congratulations. All that good stuff.
Many congratulations! 🙂 *snoopy dances*
Congratulations! This is terrific news! I am celebrating my 6th day in my first full-time librarian position. I too was afraid that it would go away if I looked at it too hard, but it didn’t and I’m here. I am a new librarian but not a young librarian, and a subject-specialist reference librarian, so we probably won’t be at any of the same events at ALA. Since I can’t say how happy I am about your news in person, I wanted to say it here. I’ve been keeping my fingers crossed for you ever since I visited the wiki and have been using you as an example of the state of librarian job-hunting (if THIS great person can’t find a job, who can?). It makes me feel much better about the state of the profession that you’ve found a good place. Best of luch, you’re going to be great.
Congrats! Enjoy your new job!
Congrats Meredith! And only 30 minutes from Jessamyn, that’s definitely cool! Looking forward to meeting you at ALA.
Congrats. I knew it was just a matter of time. And money. But it’s always a matter of money. 🙂
Knock ’em dead!
Hi there, I’m coming over from Joy Weese Moll’s blog to say congrats. I work as a DE librarian at U of Montana and I think it’s just a great position to be in. Lots of fun stuff! Best of luck to you. I’m adding you to my ever-growing RSS aggregator so I can hear what kind of great stuff you do in Vermont, and maybe learn some new tricks myself.
WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOO!
I do like to see the good ones get hired. 🙂
Well done! I’m really going to miss your posts about job seeking strategies and interview techniques.
Pouring on congrats & well done! Thank you for this blog, the wiki, please keep going and inspiring me!
Congratulations Meridith – We DE Librarians are happy to have you among us. Well OK, I don’t speak for all of ’em, but *I’m* happy 😉
Congratulations! One year into my first DE librarian position (and second librarian position), I can say that DE librarianship is fun, challenging, and all together well worth doing. It’s also full of frustration, but that’s where having a great set of colleagues is so important. Welcome to the club!
Adding my congrats to the list. I must admit when I read that you had an interview the same week that I did, I was very concerned that you were my competition! Therefore, I’m glad to know that there were jobs out there for both of us! While my new position does not involve DE, I’m looking forward to learning about the trends in that field from you. -Jen
Congratulations! I came across here from Jessamyn’s site and you should be very proud of your new position! I’m sure you’ll serve those lovely Vermont people well! 🙂