Every year the library school students' association organizes job shadows for the students. They call this event Partner's Week, although it's scheduled for one week in October and one week in January.
From a student's perspective, we're provided with a list of potential librarians to shadow divided into three categories -- public, academic and special. Each listing includes the librarian's name, their work location (and maybe address), when they're available and a very, very brief description of their job. I don't know how the organizer's collect this info, and what sort of screening they do, if any, before they put someone on the list. Based on my personal experience, I suspect they don't do any screening of librarians.
I selected a librarian that worked in a 'special' library as a research analyst. Based on the organization where she worked and the brief job description, it sounded like an interesting job and possibly something I'd like. How very wrong I was!!!
The job shadow I signed up for was in Calgary -- therefore it was a 3 hour drive (one way) to get there. I was there for 3 hours on a Friday afternoon. The woman seemed very nice, but I discovered pretty quickly that while she'd graduated from SLIS a couple of years ago, this job was the first one she had related to library science, and she only started it 2 months earlier!!! I have absolutely no idea why she thought it would be a good idea to sign up to have someone shadow her when she's only been in the job for 2 months!!!
Unfortunately the job shadow went downhill from there. She showed me her job posting and I discovered that they had only been looking for someone with a bachelor's degree. It was very much an entry-level position and not designed for someone with an advanced degree. And while there was some content management involved, it did not require someone with a degree specifically in information science. Essentially she was over-qualified and under-employed in this job.
By the end of the job shadow I did learn that -- for her -- this job was perfect. It seemed right up her alley and she seemed to really like where she worked. But it was also apparent that there was no need for her to have a masters degree. In fact, she worked in an extremely similar job for 7 years before she went back to school to get her MLIS. Technically I don't think her MLIS was necessary, she could have gotten this job based simply on her past experience. Interestingly, even her past experience made her over-qualified. I'm just glad she seemed happy where she was and didn't seem to think she was in the wrong place or at the wrong level.
Having said that though, when I asked her what her career plans were for after this, she had none. Not because she wasn't yet sure what she wanted to do, but because she didn't want to do anything else. She claimed she loved this job so much she'd be happy in it for the rest of her life! She had no plans to ever get another job, a promotion or change organizations! If she's that happy, power to her. But I'd like to ask her that question again in a year and see if she still feels the same way!
While I learned a lot about her and the job she does, none of it was helpful for my own career plans or future. The job she was doing was something I could do with one hand tied behind my back. Most of her job consists of gathering data from online sources and giving it to someone else to use in an analysis. She doesn't actually do any analysis, so I'm not really sure why they called the position a 'research analyst.' It should just be 'researcher.'
She had also apparently taken one database course in school over a year ago that did go over Access a little bit. Based on this limited knowledge she actually argued with me about what Access can and can't be used for. I've used Access for a large variety of projects for years. For every suggestion I made, I had done it before in Access myself -- therefore I knew it could be done. But no matter what suggestion I made, she claimed it couldn't be done. Based on her understanding of Access, it can't be used for much. That is very unfortunate as Access can be a great tool if you know how to use it right.
Ironically the tools she did have she didn't know how to use. She showed them to me, but couldn't explain their purpose or what they were suppose to be for, only what she had been experimenting with.
Overall I was very disappointed and a little annoyed. It wasn't until after that a fellow LIS student mentioned that she checks all the librarians on Linkedin before she decides if she wants to shadow them. I totally should have done this, but in all honesty I never thought someone with so little experience would have been included. If I can volunteer to run the event next year, I totally will. Not only can they benefit from using more automated methods in the whole thing, but they could benefit from screening out some of their librarian candidates. After all, based on who had signed up in the books, they had more librarians than students, so it wouldn't be a bad thing to screen some of them out.
I sure hope that other students had a better experience than me. And I sure hope that I have a better experience in January at my next 2 shadows. Before I contact those people, however, I will be checking them out online to make sure the same thing doesn't happen.
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