find a job worthy of my talents

I moved back to cataloging. Was this depressing? No, actually it was somewhat of a relief. Did anyone thank me for running the library for 2 1/2 years. Well, Sandy wrote me a thank you card. Remember her, one of the people who wrote a recommendation for assistent. Well, some things about moving left me feeling empty. No one cared that I left, no one particularly wanted me in cataloging. It was interesting. But I follow the Lord. I am not subject to my feelings. And there are good things ahead. AND there’s more motivation to find another job.

1. My contract ends on June 30, 2006
2. Reasons for 01/19/06:
Conversation with Jose Mallea
I decided to be frank. He asked me what I was doing after I leave this position. I said I’m looking for a job, I don’t know, it’s no tragedy, the Ctr didn’t want me around. - Oh, reallY? - that’s right, I was the library person - maybe they weren’t consulted, they had another person - no, there was no other person, furthermore, it seemed to be a gender thing with Joseba Z - Oh, but Basque men are quite egalitarian, you know - Well, no, not entirely - yes they are - well, no they’re not—woman in the U.S. haven’t had the vote for all that long, just since 1919 [implication is that in Spain they had something better] ** enough of that conversation.
3. conversation with G. Willis:
Here’s a list of tasks that you can work on. They are Mary’s responsibility but she won’t do them. —
OK, let’s work on posters, stopwords and Nevada control vocabulary.
4. conversation with D. Curtis:
Stopwords and control vocabulary are in Mary’s job description. Will you work with her on these projects?—I don’t really want to, but if her supervisor tells her to contact me, and she does it, then we can talk about it.
5. 2 hours later, here’s the email I get from Mary:

I wish I’d known about this before the meeting this afternoon! Are you free tomorrow to talk about this?
—-Original Message-—
From: Rick Anderson
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 3:46 PM
To: Mary Taylor
Subject: Authority work

Donnie came by my office today and mentioned that Kathryn is talking about spending part of her remaining time here working on an authority system and stopwords list for CONTENTdm. Donnie and I talked about it and both agreed that this sounds more like something for you to do (as per item 3 below), but that Kathryn’s expertise as a cataloger would probably come in handy. Would you get in touch with her (Kathryn) and talk to her about collaborating on that project during the next six months, before she departs? I don’t know how much background you have in authority work already, but if it’s less than Kathryn’s then this will be a valuable opportunity to pick her brain while she’s still here.

Make sense? Let me know if you have questions or concerns. (You could add this to your PE document, too!)

Thanks,
Rick

I think I’ll write a bit about my search for a job. These notes will remind me of where I am in the process, but may serve as an inspiration to others :-)

I took today as annual leave, intending to spend time contacting library employers in Carson City and hand them my resume. I spent half the day re-writing that resume; it’s never quite good enough.

Last week I meet with Pru Jones in career serviices at UNR. Thankfully, I’m enrolled as a student there, so their services are available to me. I checked out a few books with resume help and began to retool my library-oriented resume.

Today I visited:
Carson City Library, talked with Sally Edwards. Learned that she may have a position soon, but was reluctant to talk abou it. It’s head of cataloging—interesting. Also learned that CC doesn’t use the Washoe County pool to hire; they list jobs directly on the Carson City site.

Nevada State Library and Archives, talked with Sara Jones and Phyllis ?? who has a copy of my resume now. Sara says they will advertise for a govt docs librarian soon. She encouraged me to see Kathy Herrington at Supreme Court Library also. What the heck, it was next door, and I haven’t seen those people for a while
Supreme Court Library, spoke with Charlene and Kathy. Kathy hired an assistent last May. We chatted for some time about NJC and our kids. She suggested talking with Nan at the Legislative Council Bureau; they hire temps during legislative sessions.

I think I’ll take about 1 day a month to do things like this.

Then there’s the work I’m doing on the appearance front. It’s not easy looking for a job in your 50’s. One has to look her best. I’ve lost 14 lbs. I colored my hair this morning. I have some new clothes with a contemporary professional look. Makeup, well, I’m always open to improvement there.

So it begins. I’ll write entries from time to time to note my observations and my progress.