“Academic and Digital Applications Librarian,” I read off the ARL’s job-database listings today. Hm, that sounds interesting.
Then I read the posting, and it sounded less interesting than, shall we say, suspicious. (So I’m not linking to it. If you’re interested, hop over to the ARL database yourself; you should anyway.)
I’m all but dead sure I’ve seen this one advertised previously. Outsourced HR, the whole nine yards. This was before I was considering myself on the market, so I didn’t apply. It now seems they couldn’t find anybody for it, and are going ’round for a second try.
This surprises me—not at all, reading the requirements. They want a combination half-time researcher, half-time developer, half-time sysadmin, half-time web designer, half-time project manager, half-time librarian, and half-time information architect. That’s just a few too many halves; of course they didn’t find anybody! That’s the kind of job somebody grows into, if it can be done at all by a single person (and I’m not sanguine, not sanguine at all). The kind of person they want—if she exists, she isn’t unemployed, I guarantee it.
I think this is part of the library employment crunch, frankly. Libraries have got their hearts set on people who don’t exist. I’m (frankly, again) just about as close as they’re going to find to what they want—but I doubt they’d look at me; I can’t tick off enough of their checkboxen. And equally frankly, the job as written intimidates me. I get up to speed fast, well-known for it, but what I’d have to learn to be what they apparently want—and how fast I’d have to learn it—is simply appalling.
I may apply anyway. I haven’t decided. But if I got as far as an interview, there would have to be some serious talk about expectations.
(And pay ranges. $45 to $65K, they say. The upper end of that range is the lower end of what I would consider remotely reasonable for someone with that many skills under her belt. But $45K is entry-level academic librarian pay! Fairly high entry-level, but still entry-level. Are these people completely mad? Who told them they could find somebody like this?)
