librarypunk - 138 - Hiring Librarians feat. Emily Weak

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

This week we’re talking with Emily Weak from Hiring Librarians and answering listener questions about getting the MLS, job hunting, and more! https://x.com/HiringLib  https://emilyweak.com/ https://bsky.app/profile/hiringlibrarians.com https://livingwage.mit.edu/  Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/zzEpV9QEAG Transcripts: https://pastecode.io/s/rakyczca 

I'm Justin. I'm a scholarly communications librarian. My pronouns are he and they. I'm Jay. I'm a cataloging librarian. My pronouns are he, him. And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. Thank you. I'm Emily. I run the website hiring librarians. And my pronouns are she and her. Oops. Is that like the Queen's music there? That was a, whenever we're doing legislation would come up. I'll just give it, give it that one. I'm reordering my soundboard. because I can't like manually edit it. So I have to like rebuild it. And I'm on the old one. It's too many. I have too many things. I have a question for you right away, if that's okay, which might be rude.

It's the library punk podcast, but the music is more drum and bass to me. Yeah, it's library punk. Well, the original conceit when I came up with the idea of doing a podcast, it was punk themed. But once we actually got around to making it and in 2020, I thought, no, I think we should do it more like a cyberpunk sense, which is kind of worked out because we've had some people on recently to talk about like cybernetics and systems of control. And I think actually, what if we came up with a theory of library punk so that we will be in the cyberpunk present talking about all the ways that, you know, relics surveils us and the interactions of that with general surveillance and libraries or data collection, that sort of thing. So it worked out. Yeah. All right. All right. The theory of library punk, I look forward to it.

Yeah, one day when we make the inevitable podcast book or something, which all the nerd podcasts do, and they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to make a big bumper book, the horror vanguard, pracies. Anyway, so thanks Emily for coming on. We got a question in the Discord, which is quite common about, like, hey, I'm thinking about being a librarian. What advice do people have? And Jay and I have a friend who also just was interested in starting library school. And so I'd already kind of walked someone through all of the like, think about, you know, if you really, really want to do a specialty, think about how many jobs there are, how much you might have to move. Like, if you're going for something really specialist, what's, you know, what could that mean for your personal life? All the way to, you know, trying to get a feel if they really would enjoy being a librarian. And then they always always ask like, what program?

And it's like, ah, it doesn't really matter as long as I have the courses you like, stuff like that. But you've been running hiring librarians for a while and I wanted to. You actually were recommended to this person in the Discord as something another person who listens was using to get an idea of like what the landscape is like. So I'm just curious, how did you get started doing hiring librarians? I, so hiring librarians has run in two chunks. I started it right after I finished library school. I finished in 2011. and then I started it in 2012, and I ran it for about four years, and then I stopped, and then I started

again in 2021. And I started the first time because I had graduated library school, and I had been a person who had very little library experience. Like, I was working in a museum library as a library assistant, but I had been doing that for, like, that was my internship in library school, and I had been doing that for like five months, and then I graduated. And I was trying to look in public libraries, in academic libraries and I was just very confused. I had come from working in grocery stores and I had hired people even in grocery stores, but it's a totally different landscape. So at that time, like, all of the ideas that were in my head from library school were like, that was when like we were talking about, is Wikipedia okay? Like, can people use Wikipedia? What does authority mean? That's when library students were really

being advised to have an online presence. So like, yeah, I went to SJSU. We did unit in second life in 2010, which is kind of silly. So I was looking for work and I had no idea what I was doing. And I was like, I was looking in both public and academic libraries. And I was like, you know what? What if I just ask people? Because I was getting all of this advice, but it was like advice from people that worked in

corporate jobs and it's totally different. So I put together a survey. and I got just, you know, people I knew, like the handful of people I knew in libraries to answer the survey. And so about seven people answered it. And then I think maybe I put it on a list serve and the next month, 160 people answered it. And so all of a sudden I had all of this different replies about, it was a survey of people who hired librarians. So we're, yeah, hired librarians. And different replies about what they looked for in hiring.

And yeah. So it was just to get that. information and then I sort of kept doing it. And then I stopped because I wanted to do other things. As you probably know from running a podcast, it can take over like your side projects take a lot of time and resources. And so I stopped for a while. And then I started again in 2021 when I had quit working in libraries and I decided I wanted to do consulting. And I was like, well, what? I wanted to have more of a voice and sort of like libraries or like, you know, more of a how I was like, how could I speak to a lot of people? And I looked at the hiring librarians Twitter account and it had 5,000 followers. And I was like, okay, we'll we'll start hiring librarians again and see how that goes. Yeah. So that is my story. How has it gone since you started it back up in 2021? It's interesting. It's a different landscape. When in 2011, people were still blogging, it was like the tail end of library blogs, but like people were blogging, people would comment on blogs, people would share blogs. And now I feel like that doesn't really exist as much.

anymore. And with Twitter imploding, oh, and all of the listservs got that ALA owned got moved to ALA Connect. So like a lot of the places where people talk about things online have sort of gone away. But I do still get very good feedback. There's just sort of less bubble and buzz around things. I think I'm also doing less incendiary material or less terrible material than I had the first time around. I had some pretty terrible surveys and terrible answers to surveys, and I think it's more sedate, so it's sort of less shareable. But I have done things like I ran a course for core on getting hired. I have just finished. We had about 12 people send in their resumes or CVs to do crowdsourced resume or CV review.

So you can look at those at the blog. I have two active surveys right now. One is a survey of people who hire, and it's called, it's about, the state of library hiring and I've got about 190 responses to that. So I'm working through posting those. And then the other survey is of people who are looking for work and that has 490 responses. So I'm working through posting those. Yeah. So, you know, it's just, it's, it's different. It's good. It's been heartening, like a lot of the things that I see people who hire doing feel better than they were. Like, I feel like people who hire are more interested in

equity in hiring and in just sort of generally not being an asshole. Yeah. So like that's nice. And there's more like I think people now are more people who are looking for work are more able to say like this is what I want. I'm not going to, this is what I'm looking for. This is the money I want. You know, you're not necessarily able to get it, but you're more able to know that

you have your own say in that process. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's also been a lot of changes in. in standards and organizations regarding job posting because kind of the ecosystem of job posting is these listservs. And some of the listservs like Texas Digital Libraries will not share your job posts if it doesn't have a salary listed. And that's a, so I think there are eight states

that require that so that like governments and municipalities are also requiring that. So as that Massachusetts. Yeah, as that gets built in. Of course, then you get the people that are like, I saw one, And somebody shared one with me the other day that was the salary range was it was for librarians one through five. So it was for five different classes. But the range they had was like $40,000 to $120,000. Helpful. Yeah, not that's super helpful. But maybe there was more information available somewhere when you looked at what those classes were.

At least the bottom was. Yeah. I've also noticed that like with job postings, the like question about whether or not the degree is required. Like I feel like I see more job postings now that it's like this. or an equivalent, like not necessarily experience equivalent, but like if you're getting like, I don't know, like a reference and instruction job at a university, like I've known librarians who don't have MLS degrees, but have like degrees in education, for example. Yeah. So one of the things that I do for the blog is I get people that have done research in library hiring to like write

a friendly post about their research. And one of the folks, one of the groups that I had summarized or research were they were hiring science librarians who didn't have MLASs. So they have this whole post about, you know, what is it? What are you looking for? And sort of a corollary to that, which is if you are a scientist interested in working for libraries, here is where you can look for work. So like they put through, they put together some documentation there. It's in the University of Oklahoma is where those librarians were from. Yeah, I feel like I would love to do research on the job market in libraries because I, I've had Google job alerts running since graduate school, so over 10 years now.

And so I have all of this data that was coming in for a long time, and particularly once I started looking specifically for Scarlet Communications jobs, you know, what's changing over time. And I would love to really dive into it and start coding that data. But so much of it is hard to get into one place and to see if everyone is posting the jobs in the same places. Sorry, I have a cat issue. Yeah, it's fine. We love Texas.

Right by the mic. This is Steve. He's the bad cat. Yeah. He's a sweetie, but he is very needy. Yeah. I always try and keep an eye on like what's changing in the field. I did want to ask, like, aside from what you've already mentioned, like, people knowing more about like what they're looking for and things like that.

Have you seen any other trends in the field? Maybe not just directly related to hiring, but any other trends that like stand out to you? I mean, there's definitely people want to do hybrid. or remote work. I think there's also a trend of people being really exasperated with how little we get paid. And, you know, perhaps that's a trend that's been around for a while. But I hear a lot from people who want to know more about doing library work outside of libraries. What else? I wrote a few down. This is, I have to confess, this is like my bedtime. So you're getting, if I put my head down on my desk and take a little nap, like, just carry on without me. Yeah, I think one of the trends,

That's a hiring related trend that's very specific is I think people are interested in doing things like providing questions ahead of time. So providing interview questions in advance can be something that makes interviewing more accessible to people with neurodivergence, but is also something that is kind and helpful for everyone. Like, imagine if instead of wondering what you were going to be asked in the interview, you have, you knew the questions a week in advance and you could work on them or not work on them as you wished. So that, I see more people doing that. more sort of remote interviews. So I think there are things, a lot of things that are COVID related. So the idea that you don't, for an academic library, you don't come in for the full day of interviews.

I think fewer people are doing things that are social because of the potential during social time, like dinners for bias to creep in. Yeah, I don't know. Is it the kind of things you were thinking about? Yeah. I mean, there's also, of course, the wider trend in the field of people banning, trying to ban books. I mean,

it's criminals. Like, that's a really big trend right now. Yeah. Trends and hiring are, I think, pretty,

are mostly going in the right direction in terms of like, yeah, providing questions ahead of time is good, providing salary information, things like that. I was wondering if,

like, the nature of the jobs that people are hiring for, do you see changes? Like, changes in managerial or changes for like mid-career to later career jobs?

That's something that I know less about because I actually don't look at job postings. Like I hear more from people about the mechanics of their search or the mechanics of how they, the mechanics of the search on either side. So I don't necessarily look at like, I'm hiring, you know, medical librarians and you need to know how to do a systematic review. So I feel like I know less about that. Although, yeah, yeah, that's, that's not one that I, that I, is in my wheelhouse. Well, focusing on just like the, the mechanics of the hiring process, like, do you remember any of the advice that you got, if any, while going into libraries about how to do in the

interview or prepare for the interview or prepare for applications? Um, I actually got some really good advice from my mom, believe it or not, my mom worked in community colleges. And so she, and she had actually, um, she had actually, um, she, had been an adjunct for most of her life, and then in her 50s had gotten a faculty or a full-time position. And so she said to me, you know, in the interview, they can't ask you about anything you don't talk about. So you have to just talk about everything because she was talking about structured interviews, which was also applicable on public libraries, where they were like, we have these six questions that we can ask you. Oh my gosh, do you have a bunny? You have a bunny.

Yes. Sorry, I got distracted by pets. He's got three bunnies. Three bunnies? Wow. Oh, yeah, I see two. Oh, they're so cute. Two right there. Yeah.

And the other ones in the corner over there eating hay. Oh, yeah. Aw. What sweet pets. Mm-hmm. My tuxedo cat is on the other side of my computer monitor in the windowsill. Yeah. Oh, is shy or sunning himself?

He just likes sitting in the window sill and looking outside, I guess, at, like, the Boston University students who live in the apartment. neighborhoods nearby. We, when we moved out to our house that's in the suburbs, we put in bird feeders. And man, that the cats go crazy for that. Sorry, what was I answering? What was I talking about? The advice your mom gave. Oh, yeah. She said, yeah, so she said, yeah, so she was like, you need to, you know, for structured interviews where it's not a conversation, which can be pretty common, I think, in things that are, and particularly in public libraries or other sort of government run job dealies, you have to mention everything.

So they can't ask you about things that, you know, they can't. You have, if you want it to count for your interview, you have to mention it. And then she also bought me a Laura Ashley suit, which I think I wore once, maybe twice. Yeah, that's a good point because usually for equity and fairness, you have to plan the questions ahead and give everyone the same questions. But you have some wiggle room with follow-up questions. So if the person just keeps bringing up stuff, you can say, hey, you mentioned that. tell me more about it. I think she was so, right, you may, but also in some public libraries, the first interview is like an oral exam, kind of. So you have six questions and the interviewers

cannot ask follow-up questions. So this was true for the public libraries that I applied for in California. You would walk in, they would slide a piece of paper across to you with the questions. They would go through the questions in order. They would often not make any face, like they would keep their faces very calm and they would write notes and you would answer each of the six questions within your a lot of 30 minutes or generally 30 minutes and then you would leave. And that was the first round. So that was to get you on the list. So they would then score all of the people that they interviewed and then you would learn that you were ranked third or 20th on the list and then they would pull from the list when they went to actually fill positions. I feel like Seattle Public to something like

that. Like they like you, you apply to like be a part of a pool that they'll then, because I remember when I was in grad schools, they came to like talk about like, hey, do you want to get in the pool or whatever? This to me is like one of the reasons why I started the blog is because it's confusing. Like there are civil service lists, right? If you're applying for a public library position, you are probably going to have to get on a civil service list and you'll get a letter from like an HR office that's not really going to talk to you very much and it'll say you're number seven. So you don't know what that means. Often it means like they'll do something which I probably am going to explain incorrectly called the rule of three where they will call people in threes.

So if they have three openings, they'll call the first people on the list for the three opening. Then the second three people will get called because there's a second opening. And then the third three people will get called because there's a third opening. So they'll pull from the pool of nine to fill those three openings, even though you might be 20th. So if you're 10th on the list, you don't get an interview. But if you're 8th, you do or 9th you do that. It's super confusing. Like who, you know, who knows about those things? And, and or if also if you want to work for a state

library, you have to be on a civil service list. And each one is slightly different. So you might take, you might have to do as little as a sending in your resume and cover letter or you might, uh, go in for the interview or you might answer supplementary questions. So there's different processes for all different civil service lists. Yeah. Like I recently made the switch from academic to public libraries. Congratulations. How do you like it? And I actually really enjoy it. I'm quite glad to be out of academia. And the public library where I work that I will not name. But with them, it was like the application process was so weird because like it was all through like the city's job portal website. And you could apply to multiple jobs at the same time. But you couldn't,

you can only upload your CV or your resume. So you couldn't actually upload cover letters. Like I guess if you wanted to make it part of your resume, but then how do you account for if I, because I applied just everything I thought I might be remotely qualified for because I'm trying to get the hell out of my other job. Sure. And I was like, well, if it's this easy to just be like, I want to apply to that one too, then I'm going to do it. But I was like, I felt like naked because I never, I'm so used like academic like page and a half like see like cover. cover letters. I'm like, what the hell is going on? And it was just like a really weird process of applying to jobs. I was not used to it. And I think like this is another thing that I feel like I really

learned from the blog is like everything is different, right? Like, you know, you can't just say this is how you get hired in a library because each library type is different. Academic libraries and public libraries are very different. And then library to library, like there's no standard. You know what I mean? there's no like, this is how we all do a library interview. Yeah, like for some smaller public libraries in the area that we're putting out searches for directors. And in my previous job, I was a library director. I was a solo library and it's not that special.

But I was technically a library director. So I was looking at other ones. And they were all, like, all of the postings were done by companies because they hired external companies to do the cert, which I, like, to me is like, I would never see an academic library do that kind of thing. Really? You did no headhunters? I guess not. No, it was all like, yeah, these companies doing the searches for the public library directors, yeah. And there were some public libraries in rural areas. I saw a post. I did see a posting for one today that was 1750 an hour for their part-time director. Yeah, I've seen people naming and shaming that one on Twitter. Like, name and shame.

Yeah, yeah. Which is like, yeah. You know, I, I, I, I, I, I, You know, I sometimes have, I have a little bit of mixed feelings because, like, yeah, I think there, you know, there is a lot of gatekeeping around who can be a librarian and who can be a library director and some of that is not necessary. And can you run a library on part time, maybe? Like, if you're, if, if it's small, like, is it better to have a library or not have a library and what is 1750 mean? Like that, what that means in San Francisco is entirely different from what that means in the middle of Missouri, you know? Like, are you just doing admin work or are you actually doing a library? work. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. So I, you know, I definitely think that 1750 is not a living wage, but it also, like, it, there are extra, you can't just say, you know, everywhere that, like, that's terrible for everyone, although it kind of maybe. That job looked pretty awful. That job in particular looked pretty awful because ultimately everything was your responsibility from circulation to checking the door statistics to providing. So it was like, yeah, you can delegate, but ultimately every single. single job is your job in the library. So it wasn't like you just pop in and talk to the direct, the board of trustees. It was, it looked pretty terrible. Well, it was like a solo librarian job, right? Like, or a solo. I mean, like, that's how I was reading it is like, yeah, you're the director. Yeah, you have me, you maybe have a couple clerks, but yeah. So yeah,

it was, it was, you would do everything for, and that was not a living wage for the area. Some people were looking it up. Yeah. So, yeah, it's. it was pretty, pretty terrible. I was, I think I was thinking of, I had survey that posted recently that was, the person was like, I can't believe the salaries. They're so terrible. And they were like, I just want to know where I can find a library that's going to pay $75,000 as their starting wage for an entry level librarian.

And another reader was like, they're looking for, good luck, looking for that guy. And you can get that, actually. You can get 75K as a starting wage, but you have to live in a high cost of living area. And then it's not living. Then it's not that much. Yeah. Because I'm thinking about... Or you move to New Hampshire.

And then the University of New Hampshire will pay you that. But you have to be in New Hampshire. So that's right off. Yeah. I definitely have to do a lot of math when I look at salaries at other places that I apply to because where I live is a very low cost of living. And so my salary is actually quite good. But so if, you know, there was one that was paying 50,000 more a year,

than my current position, but I still had to be like, yeah, but what's the cost of living? Because where I live is an extremely low cost of living. Yeah. And there's a, I don't know if you want to, you do links, right? On your, on a page somewhere, there's the MIT cost of living calculator that's pretty Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. Yeah.

I love the MIT cost of living calculator. I've used that like since grad school when I was job hunting. Do I link to it? I don't think I linked to it. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was interviewing for a job. at Hong Kong University. And so usually what I do is I just look at housing.

And I'm just like, how much is housing? And then I work out like what the wage would have to be to live there roughly. So that was more difficult because like Hong Kong housing market is obviously like chaotic. So I saw things that were like definitely like renovated bathrooms or whatever or walk in closets that had been made into a bedroom. I lived in San Francisco in 2000, which was the height of the dot-com boom. and we moved six times in the first year that I lived there because you couldn't find a place to live. And one of the places that we looked at but we did not live in was a man who had made a loft above the bathroom. And my husband at the time and I were like, yeah, we'd pay $400 a month to live above the bathroom in this apartment.

And I'm very glad that we did not get that apartment. Yeah. I do have some stuff, some general advice questions. For people thinking of getting into the libraries, did you get any advice or have any advice about like choosing a program. Because I personally don't think the program matters as long as it covers what you're interested in. And ideally, if you don't already work in a library, has a place where you could get a job

as a student worker because I think experience is the most important thing. And also avoid debt. Yeah. Definitely. I gave to someone in the Discord. I was like, they're the one that's free. Yeah. Like if there, it doesn't matter.

Like, so when, and maybe 2015, maybe I did a survey that was like, what should students learn in library school? And one of the questions was like, are there any schools you avoid? And very few people said, I have schools I avoid. So I would agree. I don't think the school matters as much as like, can you avoid debt? Will you enjoy it? I like the idea that, yeah, if you don't have experience, is there some way that you're going to get experience through working there? I went to online school. And at the time, people were like, oh, I don't know if I would hire somebody who went to online school, which I don't think is a prejudice anymore. But you do get different. I don't think

I don't think there are that many fully in-person programs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Illinois, Washington, and all of those have online programs. Like I went to UIUC. Like I was there 2015 through 2017.

And like I was an on-campus student and still most of my classes were online because if there was only one section of a course and they wanted the online students to be able to take it to, just the on-campus students also. took the online version instead of like an on-campus version of it. So most of my classes were online anyway, even though I was an on-campus student. Basically, I just had a student job working in the library and then took a lot of online classes at the same time. Yeah, that's what I did too.

I had like two hybrid courses. Yeah. I think like those things that you get from an in-person school. So working in a library and also like making friends with people that work in libraries is important. Like networking is really, really useful. And the more that you can, you know, you don't have to be a schmooze, a super schmooze, but the more that you can just talk to other people that work in libraries, the better off you will be.

There is a, there was a person on Twitter, is it last year? So I have a section on my website called Resources, and one of the topics is picking a library school. And there's somebody who, on Reddit, put together a spreadsheet of online MLIS costs and areas of emphasis. So this is from 2023. So I've got a link to that on, which I think is useful just to see it all in one place if you have that kind of mind. Yeah, I know. I don't know if it's still on there just because I haven't looked obviously in like years. But ALA used to also have like a filter for like area of specialty for schools. But I don't know how accurate it ever was.

They do have. I mean, you can at least, I mean, that's the other thing is you want to go to an ALA accredited school just because there are still a lot of employers who want your degree to be ALA accredited school. just because there are still a lot of employers who want your degree to be ALA accredited. But they do definitely have, well, actually, I haven't looked at it in a while either. But they have programs that aren't ALA accredited at this point? There are, like if you went to like an I school somewhere, like getting an information degree, you might think. Or if you go to something that's international, I think there probably are unaccredited. There are also schools that lose their accredited. I'm not going to say it right.

They're accreditation, accreditation. It's like trying to say accompaniment. Like I can never get that one, right. Yeah. Accompany. I can do that one. Accompany. Ha ha, I can do that one.

Yeah, or accreditation. I think that's how you say it. So there were school, like you have to maintain your accreditation. So if you went to a school and it lost it, you might be in trouble. But I think often they comp people or they, if you start and are accredited, you get to finish and are accredited. Yeah, this is something I did some research on for a paper in library school, which is programs that were intentionally not becoming ALA accredited because they were focused on highly recruiting men,

highly recruiting for non-library jobs. So they were information science degrees that did not want library in their name. And there's also around the time where some programs were removing library from their name because they said, oh, people who go to programs that don't have the library word in it are making more money, not looking at the fact that those programs were all attended by men who would account for the pay gap. Yeah, that's really interesting. I do have one friend. UC Berkeley had a,

I think their high school doesn't teach library stuff anymore, but they had an eye school with, I had a librarian friend who had gone to. It wasn't an ice school at the time as before I schools existed. So it was like an information school or whatever. And she could only work at the one. So this was in the Bay Area. And the Hayward,

the city of Hayward, they did not require their librarians to have an ALA accredited degree. So she was felt she was stuck. she was stuck in her position because she couldn't go go anywhere else in the area because they all wanted the accreditation. Yeah. I have always kind of felt, because we've kind of avoided talking about like MLS degree, like, is it worth it?

Is it not? How should it change? Because there's like a lot of pitfalls in this discussion. Like step one, abolish capitalism. Then we can go from there, you know? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of pitfalls in terms of like accidentally saying something that you might realize, like, oh, that was kind of a classist assumption that was built in that I hadn't realized and

like all kinds of things of like, oh, if we abolish the MLS and what would be the effect, if we keep it, what's the effect? But at least for experience, I've always felt like experience is just so necessary to get any position, to get your foot in the door anywhere, which is wild because it creates a regress problem. Like, well, how do you get the experience to get the experience? And there was that terrible, you know, two years experience required. Well, where the hell do I get the two years because everyone entry level job requires two years experience. So, you know, I worked through my entire MLS program. So that was two years part-time experience.

So I was doing better than most. Yeah, me too. In the responses and stuff that you get to the surveys, how does experience come up and where the different ways experience gets mentioned by hiring managers? Yeah, well, I was thinking more. The people, the job, people who are looking for work are. Okay. I hear from a lot of people who are upset because there aren't entry-level jobs and are people who maybe went to library school and didn't have any library experience or have or even have paraprofessional experience and feel like that doesn't get counted.

And I'm using the word paraprofessional with a caveat because it's, yeah, the problematic word. Yeah. And I think I have heard from people who hire that they are worried that there isn't a good enough entry into the profession for people like we will. You know, I have heard recently that people are getting smaller pools, so they're getting fewer qualified people applying. But I don't have any sort of backup for that. And I think, and I hear from people who say we're getting fewer qualified pools because we don't have this good way to shepherd people into the profession because we're asking for two years experience or not. And I wonder a part of that is because of like all of the programs moving online and not providing graduate assistantships. I like, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, go ahead. No, no, you go ahead.

I mean, like, I was looking enough that, like, my undergrad student job was also in a library. That's what made me want to be a librarian was like, I got a job working in the music library. And I was like, hey, I kind of like this. I want to, I think I want to be a librarian. How the hell do I do that? And my boss, like, walked me through the process, took me out for lunch and a drink. I was like, why do you want to be a librarian? There is a wrong answer. And I have to, we have to, we should say.

Right. And the wrong answer is because I like books, which seems really like a really kind of a jerk thing, right? Like you have all the people who love books and you're like, well, sorry, the one career that you think is perfect for you is not. Unless you like are like a rare, like maybe rare books or like book historian like that kind of thing. Yeah. But yeah, like so like I already had like three years of like, like I don't know if that's paraprofessional yet, but I was doing more than just circulation and like shelf reading. It's like I was doing above. of page work as a student. And like, so I already had three years going into library school. And then because I was an on-campus student, I had two graduate assistantships each year for like 20 hours a week. And those were paraprofessional, meaning I couldn't be in the union. Um, that's dumb. Yeah. And our tuition waiver was taxed because of it, uh, which was fun. But like, yeah, I, and I still had a hard time getting jobs out of grad school because my heart was dead set on like traditional mark cataloging. And because my graduate assistantship was in reference and I didn't have a lot of actual

cataloging experience. Catalogers are like, oh, you haven't done batch loads in this very specific ILS. We're not going to hire you because there's no way you could learn that on the job on your first day. You know what used Wii wo? Dude, it's literally on boopi. Just go on GMO and upload the files. Dude, it's on cranko.

It's on webop. It's literally in webop. Go on webop. Yeah. Primo Explodo, you know. Primo Explodo. Yeah. Like, that was like one interesting thing about my current job and that the way that they,

this wasn't part of like the experience of like hiring me, but like when they decided which step in the salary grade to give me, they said, give us a different resume. And on this one, put every single thing that you have experience that you think might count to show what you can do, even if it's like when you were in high school. Because they want the experience, because that's the step. The step is like I have X amount, your union at your current job. Is that union? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was like, okay, here's my grad school practicum. Here's like my undergrad job where I did a little bit of classification work. Yeah. I think that got that got me a salary. Let me tell you what. I was like,

ooh, I'm not negotiating this. This is great. I think that's an, I think that's an interesting tip that's a hidden tip is like you you think about for some jobs like the salary is not negotiable because it's stepped, right? So like the salary for level one is X. But it is negotiable because you can do things like say, well, I have, look at all of this experience I have. And you want to go in at the highest step possible because that, you know, that's, that's the money, man. Although, and then at some point you hit the last step and there are no more increases. Yeah, like this one, it was like it was hiring at a grade. Like, it was this grade. And then within that, like, the step wasn't part of the job posting. It was like, here's the range. And it's from the lowest

step to the highest step within this grade. And then they offered me a step within that, that grade. And then, yeah, like, I'll go up a. step each year. And then once I hit the top of the grade, then it's like at some point, I think I can negotiate going up a grade. But then at that point, I'm almost like managerial. I think another good piece of advice for people that people don't always understand while they're looking for work is like all of that experience counts. So when you're thinking about applying for a position that says you need three years of experience, you know, they don't, maybe they don't specify part-time or full-time experience. So for me, if I can say on my resume, right,

I have, I worked from 2020 to 20-23, that's three years. So there are ways that you can reach for things that, like, be generous with yourself. I think that's, you know, you have to take care of yourself in the job search. So you have to be the person who advocates for yourself and who reaches past those things. Don't give yourself in barriers that you don't need to give yourself. Like if they don't accept it, then they won't accept it and you won't get the job. But if they, if they do, then you will. Yeah, don't know that. Yeah, like, it felt like my, it felt like my CVs I was submitting for my first job when all my experience was undergrad and grad school stuff. Like, I was like, you know, I, like, I'm like seven, eight years into my career now. Like,

there's no way I would ever put that on my, my resume or CV now. Because it's just not, but they were like, no, like, you're our candidate. We've picked you, but like, in order to determine your salary, give us this kind of resume. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, and I'm thinking more of that as a tip for like people in your head when you're, when you're going, am I qualified for this job? You probably are. Like, you can make that, you make that case for yourself. Don't let them talk you out of it before you go in. But I, that's a wonderful thing that they did for you because I think they could have just been like, okay, great, here's your step.

You got to take it, you know, and instead. I would have gotten a lower one. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really, that's pretty cool. Yeah. I think, I think probably the last time I was, I was unemployed for a long period of time, after getting laid off, that was when I really, I think something kind of broke in my brain

because I was writing all these applications and I realized no one else is going to advocate for me. And so that's when I decided I was God's gift to librarianship. And the only thing I should do is talk about how great I am because like, who else is going to do it? It's up to them to decide I'm not good enough. And I try, I meet so many people who are like, I don't know, am I qualified for this? So I'm like, yeah, you are. If you, if you can look at it and ask yourself that question, you're probably qualified. And if not, like, find a way to make yourself look qualified. But yeah, like you mentioned with if they don't specify part time, I was definitely trying to

sneak my part time as full time right out of grad school. But they weren't having that. It was two years full time equivalent. So it was. And I hate that. That was terrible. Yeah. I think, I think there are also things like, so another thing people often ask about is like how I want transfer, they want to do what Jay did. They want to transfer from academic libraries to public libraries. And for that, it's you have to, you have to tell them how you know you can do their job, right? Like, you have to say, like, this is my experience. And you can't just say my experience is with X, Y, and Z, you have to translate X, Y, and Z into whatever they've asked for. Yeah. So, like, you have to do that crosswalk for them. There are people that, you know, there are people

who hire, who know and who are looking for stuff like that, but it's rare than people who need their handheld understanding that you're qualified for a job. Yeah, like one thing, and this was actually a tip Justin gave me, and during when I, not this most recent job search, but the one before it, um, was to like, like in the cover letter, say, you know, not just this is the things that I've done and how I'm qualified, but these are ideas I have about like what I could bring to this job. Like, oh, I have this idea about what could happen or this is how I would shape it or this is a plan I would have or whatever, especially if it's like higher level job where you have to come up with shit all the time.

Which I think like that can be the fun part of job hunting, right? That's the fun part to be able to imagine like, well, what, what I do there, you know, and to be able to share that with somebody else. But it's also can be the heartbreaking part because once you've imagined yourself in that job and then you don't get it for whatever reason, which probably is just luck, you know, then that part of you gets real sad. Yeah. A lot of it is luck too. And actually, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned hiring managers saying they feel like there's not a good ramp in because I was just hiring a librarian. And the position, because of where I am, you know, we only expect people to be fresh out of graduate school or to not have had a librarian rank

position before. And all of our candidates did not have librarian ranked positions before. But there was one candidate who was much more experienced in, because they worked at a different part of the university. And there was another candidate who had only like very, he had very impressive, like series of internships and looked like he looked very young in his CV. And I thought, I need to give this guy an interview just so he gets an interview because he just needs the experience, like, kind of just as like, you know, let's get these new librarians up there. Let's get them the job interviewing experience. And then he came in and he did a great interview. And the more experienced person, I realized had a whole sort of thing that they were going to bring to the job that I would have to undo a lot of training they had gotten in that job for compliance stuff.

And I realized I'm going to have to train both these people equally. Now they're kind of on a 50-50 scale. On this person I just took a, I just gave them an interview mostly as a professional courtesy so that they get experience. And then that was the person I ended up hiring. And so I think some of that problem is people just not taking a chance and going like, well, you know, let's not bring this person in. we don't want to waste their time. It's like, you don't know it's, I didn't know that would happen. I really was surprised by that outcome. Or waste your, or waste your time. It's just like, is the process of hiring. It takes a lot of time and energy for, I think everybody involved,

it takes time for the people that are hiring as well. So to be willing to take a chance. You got to be a little bit, have a little gumption. I will say all of my jobs, except my first one out of grad school were people taking chances on me. My first job was a residency. And that was great, but, you know, still not. like the perfect type of experience to get the job that I, jobs I wanted. And my job right out of, after that was like metadata and discovery. And I had never done discovery stuff before, right? And I was honest about that. And they hired me anyway because like, it's like someone gave me the tip. It's like you do have experience

with discovery layers as a patron and as a librarian doing instruction with one. Just so you know how the back end and influences the front end and all that. And I was like, Oh, okay. So just spin when you don't have experience, spin it so that you do. And that flip something in me. And like my previous job, I was the solo librarian at a music library. I do not have a music degree. I just had to prove I knew something about music. And they were like, okay. So what song did you sing for your interview? Happy birthday. No. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, no. I saw, I was watching one of the drag races last night. And that's what one of the queens did for.

for her talent was she did a joke routine to singing, happy birthday. It was kind of funny. And like, in this position, it's, I'm actually doing traditional cataloging finally. Like the job that I went to grad school for, right? I finally have it. And I've not actually done any mark cataloging and my jobs primarily. I did a little bit my last one just because I was a solo librarian. And like, I was like, yeah, I know how to do the cataloging. I just haven't done it and they'll, you know, consistently. And I was honest about that. And they

hired me for this position anyway, and they're like, we're expecting you to make some mistakes and let us know if you need a refresher course or something. Like, tomorrow I have to submit five records that I've done. And I'm like, I hope these are okay. Can you submit like the five that you did in grad school for your cataloging class? Oh, God. These are ones that I've had to do in like the past month. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking that would be funny. Yeah. That's when I had to do five records was in. Oh yeah, mine would have been immaculate because Bobby Bothman was my cataloging teacher. So they would have been great. Way better probably than the ones I'm doing right now.

But yeah, like, you know, I only have seven or eight years of experience. And I know people with more experience who went for my, this job and didn't get it. And part of me is like Justin said, because cataloging especially is an area of librarianship that people get very inflexible. They get very rules focused. And it's like, I have been trained to do the cataloging. this way. And often when you're working with weird shit, it's like you have to know how to just go with it. So yeah, like I've been given chances. Like people, like all of my positions basically have been people taking a chance on me. Yeah. So I don't know if people hear that and go, oh God, or or not. But yeah, like I, that's how I've gotten all of my jobs, basically. You know, you're describing what people are getting with you, which is flexibility or like new catalog or thing. right? Not the type of person who's done mark records for the past 10 years, but somebody who's thinking outside the box into, you know, what cataloging is and needs to be. Yeah. And that's,

that's definitely the asset is because you don't, you've already got the other people. If there are like internal candidates, you've already got their expertise in the house. It is, you know, and that's why like, for example, I was taking a chance on someone. Because I had to, I had to argue actually with my dean about the choice because I was a steering committee chair. And we made the recommendation for the less experienced candidate. And then the dean immediately called me on the phone and said, okay, explain this to me. Because he had an idea of which candidate was going to get it. I said, okay, here's our thinking. And I had to lay it out for him exactly like why this person would be an asset. And a lot of it was, I think he has more flexibility and just raw potential to become a really

great librarian in this role. And so that was, we were looking at, you know, in the long term of of developing talent. I do want to move on to other experiences, maybe things people could focus on in library school about like what courses are the most important. So for me, I always feel like education and teaching has to be up there. So do pay attention in your reference class, take a specialist reference class, take a pedagogy class. Like that's like education focused. And then if you're if you've never taken a public speaking class or can't speak publicly very well, do it then because don't it the longer you wait because once you do a public speaking class that stays in your head and you get better at it over time because you learn little tricks and stuff

to practice. So the sooner you do it, the more it pays off over time. Although I would say that's like maybe you would do that. You can do public speaking classes outside of grad school. So I would say like maybe you do that through Tosmasters, you know, or some other, right? So my grad school offered a Spanish class and I was like, I'm not going to take Spanish. class in grad school because I'm not going to pay grad school prices for like learning Spanish when I can do that in adult school and it's so much deeper. But to me the advice is start reading job ads immediately. Look at jobs that that are interest to you. Look at the skills that they ask for and then see if those are available in your classes or in whatever classes. I think I agree,

like education in public speaking are super important. But I also like, I think things change. Public speaking seems like that's a foundational skill that you would use for anything. But I don't know. Maybe there's a feature in which libraries don't care about education. Maybe not. I don't know. Like, you know, just things like I think if you were a librarian, you know, even 20 years ago, would you think about, oh, I need to know about digital asset management or right?

So I feel like there's so much that's changing in our fields that it's important to, like, for us to sit here and say like, these are X, X, Y, these are the skills that you need. It's, I think you need to look at like what it's. what are you saying that is interesting to you and then go from there? Yeah, Google Job Alert Search is very good. It catches almost everything. So definitely set one up now and start using it. Join list serves.

Yeah. You can do that. That's what I did in grad school. Yeah. I really, there used to be a lot of really good lists serves. And now they're all behind ALA connected. They're not very good anymore. There's still a lot of good metadata ones that are outside of that.

Like, I remember even when I was in grad school, like the code for Lib job board was always really solid. There's AutoCat too. Yeah. So I believe you on that one. But it's a pain point for me on other. Yeah, see, I didn't even know about that because I've not been involved with ALA in years. So I didn't even know that all of those listservs got moved behind a paywall, I guess.

Yeah. There used to be. So when I was first running the blog, I had this list of like, it was a Google Doc, like a whole page. list of list serves that I would post to. And now I have like five maybe that I post when I do a new survey and the rest are all different ALA Connect sites. And people don't use ALA Connect as much as they did, you know. And now there's, yeah, I was just, I was thinking about that because it like, with, like, with Twitter being ruined and everybody is scattered and then there's no list serves, it's like, it's really hard right now, I think, to like the online library discourses in a sad

state. Yeah, it's in a really bad state. Yeah, the ALA Connect ones, you don't have to be an ALA member to get in them. You just have to sign up for a free Connect account and get in there. And a lot of people didn't when they migrated over. And there's also some are, so somewhere behind a paywall. Like, for example, I used to post to the new member roundtable list serve. And that wasn't behind a paywall. But now you have to be a member of the new member roundtable. If it's like a roundtable. Yeah. Oh, okay. The Salkaum one, for example, isn't. Yeah. So some of them, you don't have to be. be a member, but others, like, they don't want you on there unless you're giving them your extra 30 bucks or whatever. Yeah. I think there are a couple larger Discord channels that servers that people are hanging out in. And some smaller ones that didn't really take off, but I'm definitely one for like, what's the O'Neill community for negotiations for negotiations with vendors. That one's not super active, but I could see it becoming superactive if people got in there. And then there's one for like scolcom people. ALA is only like 50 bucks a year when you're a grad student.

And so if you want to be a part of these roundtables and stuff, some of those are free when you're a student, I think. Oh, that would be an advice to students is to, yeah, join your and then get on a committee. Yeah, I was on a committee in grad school. Yeah. But you can find easy ones that you just have to go to a meeting. Like it doesn't have to be your whole life, but get on a committee because that looks good on your resume. And then you will meet people who you can network with. Yeah, Rainbow Roundtable, I think is what they're called.

it now. That's the one I was on. Anything with like social responsibilities around table probably would be fun. But yeah, join ALA as a student. That's what I did. And it's do it while it's cheap players student. So take advantage of it. And I think like I remember being really intimidated because it's such a big organization. And so you don't you don't like know, you know, what's interesting. Where do I belong? How do things work? But I think a lot of people feel that way. And also librarians, many librarians are nice and will tell you. So you, you can ask, it's okay to be ignorant when you're starting out. Yeah, like so many of my like friends who are librarians I met before I was even in grad

school because when I decided I wanted to be a librarian, like I found library Twitter as well as library Tumblr that Tommy and Justin met was library Tumblr. But yeah, like there are so many catalogers I met on library Twitter who have been in my sort of extended network, you know, before I was even in grad school because I just sought them out. and was like, hi, I'm new and I want to be a librarian. And I'm forcing myself into your life now. Just be like that's the best way to be a librarian. It's like when I was in kindergarten and I was chasing someone around the playground and

trying to force them to be my friend. And then I told on them to add to a teacher when they wouldn't be my friend. So I thought that's how you made friends. So just be like that, but for networking. It's a real pushy tattletale. Yeah. It's great. It works every time. You have a note in here, Emily. Make a plan to take really good care of yourself and what may be a marathon. Yeah. That's something that I started thinking about within the last couple years is just the fact that it is self-care. I know self-care is kind of a cheesy thing to talk about, but it is, I think, super important. You are doing something really hard when you're looking for work. You're doing something that even if you're really good at your job or you're really good at looking for work, you're probably going to be disappointed at least once. So I think it's really helpful if you can make some sort of self-care plan. And there are any number of things that could be on that plan.

It could be just like, I'm only going to look at jobs from five to seven on Saturdays. Or it could be like, I'm going to get a pedicure every week. Or it could be like my friends from library school and I are going to have a monthly zoom in which we talk about how much it sucks to look for work. But, you know, building those things in to know that you are doing something hard and it's okay to feel sad and bad and mad. And you, and we sort of talked about that earlier. Like, you have to talk, you have to advocate for yourself. You have to take care of yourself. No one else is going to do that for you right now. I think that's pretty important. And we focused on a lot of,

like, early career advice, but I didn't want to limit to just newer people. As things change, how does the advice that we give change? Because I feel like right now in my career, whenever I'm asking for advice, it's sort of like, do I have enough experience to go for this level of a job? If I'm like looking at another like department head position. And, you know, it feels like I ask more political questions rather than like,

I guess some questions like, should my cover letter be one page or two page at this point? How long should the CV get that kind of thing? Like, how have you noticed that like the advice you give changes? I mean, it is different. Like I think if you get to mid-career, it's likely that you will have sat on hiring committees, either being in charge of them or as a member. So you know more about the nuts and bolts of how it works. I think the questions when you get to mid-career or later career are you have more people that you can talk to. So there are fewer like questions, but there are still the things that maybe you feel like you should know that you don't. So maybe you feel like you should know whether or not your cover letter should be one or two pages. So again, I think there's no shame in. asking those dumb questions, and just they're not dumb questions, but asking those questions that you maybe feel you should know. But also more of the questions I think are about how,

the quality of life questions, right? They're, do I feel, they maybe have nothing to do with the job. They're like, do I want to move right now? You know, does my pension transfer? I have tenure. Should I move somewhere else even though I have tenure? I think there's a, this can be a veil of mystery when you're stepping from like a mid-career position and like you want to become a director or a dean. People sometimes don't know how that works. So I did have a recent question that was asking for advice around that. And I could not tell you what the advice was, but it's on the blog somewhere if you want to search for it. Yeah. I think the other nice thing about being mid-career or having a job and searching for a job is it you, it's, it can be tiring because you're working and

and also doing the second job of looking for work, but you're coming more from a position of power. And especially if you already have a job that's okay or that you like and you're just looking for something that's maybe better, then that can be really helpful. And my advice then would be like, I'll keep an eye out as much as you can. So even if you're happy in your current position,

like keep looking at those job ads. Oh yeah. Yeah, I never turn those off. Just keep them coming in, those alerts going. because it just tells you kind of like what to put on your CV, oh, I need to get some experience doing this. I get some experience doing that. Yeah, yeah. And also, like, it's okay to apply for things that you're not sure that you want.

Oh, yeah. You can decide. I think sometimes people are like, oh, I'm not going to apply for that job because I won't take it. And I'm like, well, you haven't even been offered the job yet. So why don't you take, you know, why don't you go through the process and see if they offer you the job and then go from there. Yeah, because like everything interviewing is a skill. And the only way you can get better is by practicing. So you've got to do it.

For the next season of my podcast, I talk with Dr. Colleen Harris, who has, she talks about her job search. And she says she was looking for a director position. And she, during the process of looking for the director position, convinced herself that she could do it. Because she just had to answer so many applications and say like, oh, yeah, here's how I can meet these qualifications. Here's how I can meet these qualifications. And by the end, she was like, I am fully qualified for this position.

versus when she started, she wasn't sure. So I think that that can be a useful part of the process. All right. You've got a final question for us. What question should Emily ask people who hire library workers this month? So once a month, I ask a question to a group of folks who hire library workers, a group of 27 folks in different library types, and one non-library. I also ask the question on social media.

So let me pull that up further questions. So is it questions like, do like, do library? libraries consider the impact of their choice. So this is us asking hiring managers. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a group of 27 people who hire library workers. And I ask all kinds of questions. So I ask like how many pages should a cover letter be? But I also, the most recent one that's publishing this Friday is how do you know it's time to leave a job? So it could be sort of anything that you want to ask a big group of people who hire. Like what do you think would be interesting to know about people's opinions? Yeah. I'm kind of, keep getting stuck on like early career questions. So like, you know, how do you, how do you fairly

evaluate new MLIS graduates who haven't been able to demonstrate what they're capable of yet? So how do you give them a fair shot? I feel like I can do that, but I would love to know how people give that answer. I think also I can do that simply because we have fewer candidates because of where I am. So even if I pull in three candidates, that might be like all of our candidates that are that made it through the first round of interviews. I like that question. I'm taking notes. Yeah. Or something that I was thinking about during my most recent job search was like, I mean, because I always do the thing where I was like, I put my Twitter on private and everything

and all that. But like my Instagram's not private. And like I'm sure there are librarians in my network who are like at the places I'm applying at or something. Right. Like who knows, like maybe the person who's on my hiring committee is one of my Twitter mutuals or something or listens to this podcast. And like, I'm a very politically active person, especially regarding things like Palestine and stuff, right? And it's, I'm always sort of curious, like my outside of library work stuff. Like, you know, I don't want to work at a place where that's going to bite me in the ass, but, you know, there are certain things where, well, absolutely there's a risk of biting you in the So I guess like, you know, when they do their cursory social media search, like, how seriously do they actually take that, you know?

That was actually my kind of my most recent question was when you're hiring, do you look at a candidate's social media? And most of the answers I got were no and just sort of no, like no other explanation. Nope. And some people were like, nope, my university doesn't allow it. So I don't know. This was most of the no answers I saw the just knows were on Twitter. So I don't know if people. people were saying no because that's the legal answer they have to provide. But I think many people are not. Yeah, many people are not. Yeah. Someone says, didn't even cross my mind. Nope, I don't think I am allowed, but I don't. But they did say that they would check things. Like, so if you included a link in your resume, so they would look at your work if you included samples of your work. So if you had if you had been like, Jay, check out my Twitter and my views on Palestine, then they would have been allowed to. Click in. I definitely had links to my GitHub and my CV. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Steve is back. And then I guess because I, so one thing I noticed about the place where I currently work is that a lot of the catalogers are from academic libraries originally, but we're all in public libraries now.

And I guess like one thing I've always heard is like moving from one sector to the other is like kind of hard, especially going public to academic. I've heard is the really hard jump. But I'm assuming it's hard in either direction. So do you have, do you like ever ask about that or get questions about that? I have. I don't know if I've asked about that recently. I definitely get a lot of questions about that from people that are looking for work. And a lot of the things that I say nowadays about crosswalking, what you do have to do with

things that I've heard from people who hire. Like you have, you know, you have to make the connections. Like I did this in academic libraries and it's exactly like this skill that you use. and public libraries or vice versa. I agree with you that I think it's harder to go from public to academic, and I think a large part of that is just the scholarship expectations. Yeah. Because you don't have that expectation.

And there's also, I think there's a little bit of rivalry where academic librarians don't think public librarians are as smart or as, I don't know, there's a little bit of a bias there, I think. I say that as a public librarian or a former public librarian. Yeah, I don't know how much of that actually exists and how much of it is sort of everyone kind of assumes. Mm-hmm. It's kind of hard to tell.

I think that there are plenty of like tech services, public librarians who do scholarship. Yeah. But, but it's not the time. Well, and I guess, you know, more and more, there are plenty of academic librarians that are, don't, that are more faculty, not, not faculty status that are, maybe don't have the scholarship expectations. But like, there isn't time made for it in the public library, right? Like, theoretically, you have time carved out of your day in an academic library for doing your scholarship. if it's an expectation. Yeah.

Versus in the public library, you do that, like, on your own time. I don't know. Okay. Is there anything you want us to share in the notes when this comes out? So I've got the hiring librarian's Twitter. Do you want me to link to your website?

Yeah, this site's probably the best place to link to. I'm on blue sky too. I don't know. Maybe a blue sky. I'm like, I am on all the social media sites and I hate it. So maybe just link to the, you can link to whatever you want.

We have a blue sky. Yeah. We want to use it more, I think. I have a blue sky and then I have, I'm on Nastodon on glamour. That's the, yeah. But then I'm also like the blog will just auto post to like threads too. So it auto post to threads into Facebook and like a bunch of other places. I still have a Tumblr actually, which I never check.

Yeah. I think our stuff is regularly auto post into the Tumblr. But because it's a sub blog, sometimes I think, think it gets a little confused, but okay. They get posted to your personal one too. Yeah, I think it has to do it that way. I think it auto posts to mine and then re-blocks it to the sub-tumbler. That's funny.

I think that's why it does it that way. I'm not sure, though. Okay, then this has been great. Hopefully people will find this helpful. Yeah. In the Discord who are asking, and it should be out relatively soon. I also really like to hear from people. So, like, you know, part of my, I was going to say, disgust with social media.

but disappointment in social media right now is like I just I don't hear as much from people who about what they think or what they want to know or what they're dealing with. So my email is up on the blog or it's hiring librarians at Gmail. So you're welcome to contact me and we'll chat. Yeah, do that. Good night.