One of the biggest reasons I wanted to start this blog was to talk about a transition that I hadn’t really seen talked about before: going from a very specialized position to one that is much more general. Normally, once we find a specialization, we stick with it, or get pigeon-holed into it, going forward. My previous job was like this. I had a very specialized niche (technology and terminologies) and it was hard to get involved in other kinds of projects. But I wasn’t really worried about that since I figured I would be staying for a long time. I guess I naturally got a bit comfortable with where I was… until I wasn’t anymore.

I have to admit that when I was looking for a new job, I figured that I would have a difficult time because of the deep specialization of my job. Would academic libraries even look at me since I didn’t have the experiences required, such as reference and instruction? Was I specialized enough to warrant a look at specialist positions in taxonomy?

The answers to both of these questions was pretty much “no”. I couldn’t get the time of day from specialist opportunities (never heard back from any), and I had very little luck with the academic librarian positions that I was applying for. And I didn’t know what else I would be interested in besides. Which made it even more amazing that the job I did manage to get was for a more general academic librarian.

Of course, this comes from being at a smaller institution with a smaller number of staff; there’s less people for the same number of responsibilites so you cover what you can. In practice, that means that not handling just a particular subject/department/college as a liaison, but being available for the entire university. It means not just handling research and reference, but instruction and webpages too. It also means that I get to contribute to collections, not just in my assigned subject areas, but for our general reading collection too (this is something I’ll talk about in a future post)! I need to network with some community college librarians because I bet they have much the same kinds of wide responsibilities and can relate.

So this job is something of a journey for me. I’m having to relearn a lot of skills that I haven’t used since library school, and I’m getting exposed to lots of new things. And I get to juggle all of that with getting the chance to work on my own scholarship (something that I am excited about). It’s still very early days for me; I’m only a month and a half in. There’s a lot to learn and a lot to take in and a lot to write about (eventually).

So yes, I’ll continue to ramble on (when time allows). And once I get more into the swing of things, maybe I’ll even do more than a cursory edit!

-Rob