I hope this doesn't push any buttons, but I'm not a librarian. I've been reading this board and have read some stories similar to my husband's, so I thought I would post his story hoping for some sage advice.

My husband received his MLIS in May 2007. He worked on this part time while serving as the cataloger (the ONLY cataloger) for the library of a small, liberal arts college, where he served in this capacity for almost six years and as a work study student for four years previously. His undergraduate degree is in Computer Science, and he also served as the Assistant Server Administrator for the library. He began searching for jobs as a librarian in about February of 2007, before he received his degree.

He applied for jobs everywhere in the country, with very few responses. His first phone interview was in June 2007 with a law school in Phoenix, which began arranging to fly him from Kentucky for an all-day interview. We were very excited because Phoenix was our top choice location. He received a call a week later saying that the position was on hold at least until the next semester, perhaps indefinitely. No one ever returned his calls to find out if the job was open again, and he has applied for other positions there since then and received no response.

He didn't get anymore calls for interviews, either locally or out of state, for either librarian or paraprofessional jobs, either in public or academic libraries. He applied for many jobs in Arizona and other states but never received even a nibble. After a lot of consideration, we decided that the job market in Central KY was saturated and that he might never get a response from an out-of-state library. There were so many jobs in Arizona, and we had an opportunity to get a house with cheap rent and help out family at the same time, so he decided to quit his $24k a year paraprofessional job and pack up and move to Arizona without any real prospects in April 2008. (Incidentally, a professional librarian took his low-paying job when he left, which probably should have told us something.)

He has had a handful of interviews since then, all with disappointing results. One was for a cataloging job in the public library system in Mesa, during which he was shocked to see that a lady he actually had MLIS classes with at UK was on the search committee. A second was for a paraprofessional position at the library here in town, which went from full time to part time after he applied; he consented to interview for the part time job and was still not offered a job. The third was for a part-time IT job at the Chandler library, during which they hinted that he was overqualified and would be better suited for a full-time job they planned to post in the following weeks (he applied and didn't get an interview). The final and most depressing was for the School Media Coordinator, at a new middle school in the town we live in, which required little experience and no MLIS or school media specialization, and he did not get the job even though one of the administrators who has worked in the district for thirty years was in his corner.

As you can imagine, he is pretty demoralized. It has been a year and eight months since he finished his degree, and now he has been out of work for ten months. He has to have applied for a hundred jobs. He's applied for professional librarian, paraprofessional, IT, programming, and even some completely random jobs. I lucked into a job as an English professor to keep us afloat, and I have consequently had to put my dissertation on hold. We're locked into the Phoenix area until at least June, longer if my contract is renewed.

I've been reading the posts here, and the first thing I'm going to suggest to him when I get home today is to develop an online portfolio. I know he doesn't have one, and he may not even know that such a thing could be helpful. But we feel that he is between a rock and a hard place--he has no "professional experience," even though he practically did the job of a professional cataloger on a paraprofessional salary, but he is overqualified for any non-professional jobs. He also fears that he is falling victim to the adage "it's not what you can do, but who you know," but even knowing someone hasn't helped him so far (he didn't even get an interview for an IT job at the college I work for). He always comes out of this interviews feeling that he did very well, and he's not an overconfident person.

Any wisdom at all would be appreciated, no matter how mundane. Is it bad to wear a tie? Very often he is more professionally dressed than the people on the committee. Last week he shaved his six year old neat goatee in hopes that it will make a difference if he has another interview. Please help!

Thank you for your response! He has had a pretty low percentage of interviews, but it has increased since we moved to Arizona and he started applying only for local jobs. He's had his former library co-workers look over his resume, and I have worked with him on his resume extensively (but what do I know?). I don't think he's had anyone he doesn't know look over it though; that seems like good advice. I may ask one of the librarians I work with if she'd mind looking it over.

What you've just described is happening all over. With the economy starting to have a very noticeable effect on the number of library jobs available, there could be some very good fruits that come out of this situation. I see it forcing library schools who haven't been very proactive in marketing their students or even assisting them in library job placements to finally get with the program. Deprofessionalization invokes a lot of emotions in newer librarians, and some of them are getting quite vocal. In the future, some of the state organizations who oversee the profession will be pressured for stronger standards for library employment (i.e. certification.)

With that being said, it's important for unemployed librarians or underemployed librarians to develop strong networks now for mentoring opportunities, networking opportunities that help keep people focused and positive, and quite frankly that open new doors, even if that means using those skill sets you learned in library school in another profession.

I wanted to post an update on our situation--it's not the best possible outcome, but certainly the situation has improved. After applying and interviewing for more paraprofessional jobs, my husband finally had some luck last month. He got a job as a Library Technician at a new library opening on a nearby Indian reservation. It is still not a professional job, but it pays more and has better benefits than his previous job. It's certainly not enough to support a family, which means I will not be able to take time off from teaching this fall when our first child will be born, but it's better than nothing. And now, of course, he will have public library experience, which opens up a whole new world for him, and he is learning about what's required to open and run a library. It's a relief to him just to be employed again. My only hope is that eventually he will be able to use this as a stepping stone to a professional job and not be consigned to hourly jobs for the rest of his library career.