Hi folks,

I am interested in getting into the medical library field. There are no medical universities in my city and most of the places to work as a medical librarian are at hospitals or at the local community college that has an excellent nursing program. For the past 3 months, I have volunteered at one of the clincal education centers at one of the best hospitals in my city. The librarian that I work for knows that I am looking for an librarian position as I have an MLIS and have helped this librarian do wonderful work not just in shelving, cataloging, but also in research requests.

Last week, I found out that there is a professional MLIS position open within the same department. However, it does state that they require 2 years experience. Since she is my mentor or manager, I thought she would encourage me to apply even though I don't have two years. Since she is going to be one of the many evaluators, I thought she would say great things about me despite my lack of 2 years experience. She told me she thought about me but she thinks the rest of the evaluators would only want to look at the candidates with a minimum of 2 years med. library experience. She and I had a long talk about this last week after I mentioned the position to her but she only encouraged me to apply for Library Assistant positions at various places that may open up. I replied to her that assistant positions will never allow me to get my foot into the door of a professional MLIS position and she agreed with me.

What is going on? I feel like she is holding me back and I feel like applying to the position anyway. What should I do?

Thanks in advance for helping me to see things from a different perspective.

BTW, I do have over 2 years experience in an information management center, training of business partners, presenting information to management, creation of web content, and also extensive experience in searching library databases (EBSCO, Factiva, LexisNexis, Dialog, etc.), and marketing/sales within corporate. I just want to transition over to the health information discipline.

Tina

I can not tell from your information, but it sounds as if you would be working for someone other than your current manager. Since the listing does say two years experience, and your boss has said that others on the search committee will most likely require that much experience, she may well know the situation better than you could imagine. As BC Gray said, she may well know about office policy and restrictions that would make your application be rejected based on the two-year limit. And she may be using this concrete item to prevent you from walking into a seriously difficult situation. SHe may not be able to discuss or even indicate that there is a serious problem with the people involved, but I would not take this as a negative view of you or your work. And, if you can relocate, I would look for jobs outside the immediate area. . . it will give you options you would not otherwise have.

I think you should pick your career path based on your enjoyment and interests. Yes, you should research chances for employment, but anytime you pick a program of education and try to stay locally, finding a job is harder. There is just more candidates.

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Brian C. Gray
Head of Reference & Engineering Librarian
Kelvin Smith Library
Case Western Reserve University
http://blog.case.edu/bcg8
bcg8@case.edu