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Re: The job market: a collateral view



I like your remarks about committees creating "pie in the sky" job
descriptions. In hiring within a Christian religious context, we sum up such
descriptions by saying applicants must have such and such qualifications,
and, "of course, walks on water, too."

Thelma Boeder, MN Conference Archives, United Methodist Church
----- Original Message -----
From: J. Michael Pemberton <jpembert@UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU>
To: <ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 10:57 AM
Subject: The job market: a collateral view


> I very much appreciated Richard Cox's comments on this topic. I'd like to
> share both a cynical view and then a positive suggestion.
>
> As I tell my students when they ask why some positions require so much and
> pay so poorly, search committees often sit around and cobble together
> requirements that may have too little to do with what the job is really
> about (e.g., content, complexity, skills really needed). It's what they
> think it's about or should be about. (The incumbent is usually gone and is
> hardly ever consulted.) Then, we see "those ads": "three modern foreign
> languages, working knowledge of Latin and Greek, doctorate, 10 years of
> progressively responsible experience, $28,000 a year . . ." Then, because
> no one on the planet has all of those qualifications--or, if they do, will
> not come to that place, do that work, for that salary--the search is
> "re-opened." This is just one more way in which the profession shoots
> itself in the foot.
>
> In a more positive vein, I'm absolutely convinced that the disciplines are
> converging, that doing more with less will also mean knowing more than the
> lore and tradition of one information field, and that librarians,
> archivists, records managers, and our cognate cousins would do well to
> look around and note that the "better" jobs expect a greater breadth and
> higher level of understanding vs. a narrow discipline-specific world view.
> Some may recall Teilhard's concept: "Everything that rises converges." If
> we look at finding aids development and book cataloging, we *could* stress
> how different they are at a lower level of technical details--or we could
> see that at a level *above* each we're talking about document surrogation
> and at a still level higher information representation (not everything is
> a document). Today, I would rather hire someone who understands the
> principles of all rather than the craft of but one field.
>
> If this really is a knowledge society, those that know more, have more
> know-how, and so more to offer a hiring organization will fare better than
> those with only one piece of the puzzle.
>
> My daughter recently accepted a two-year post-MLS fellowship at the North
> Carolina State University Library (interviews with 3 other ARL libraries).
> Here's a 25-year-old woman, just finishing her professional degree
> program, and making $36,000. (It took me a *long* time to reach that
> level.) She was not chosen just because she can do a bunch of IT tricks or
> can recite the MARC record fields and what goes in them; they found her
> breadth of understanding and vision remarkable in one so young. It's not
> just technical skills any more.
>
> Thought for the day,
>
> Mike
>
> __________________________________________________________________________
> *                                                                        *
> *                  J. Michael Pemberton, Ph.D., CRM, FAI                 *
> *                                                                        *
> * Professor                      | Voice: 865-974-6509 Sch. of Inf. Sci. *
> * School of Information Sciences | Fax:   865-974-4967 Sch. of Inf. Sci. *
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> *                                                                        *
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