Cathy the Librarian

Okay, so you’ve been asking me about it… so maybe it was just Adrienne. I’m just going to pretend it was a lot of people. I had my interviews at Brockport (as director) and Fairport (as children’s librarian). Really I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be a director, but I wanted more experience interviewing, and since I’m on the II list, I thought what the heck.
I was really nervous about the interview at Brockport. I have been working in libraries since 1997, but I’ve only been a librarian since 2003, and I was only acting director for two months. So I wasn’t sure… well I wasn’t sure about anything.
I dressed pretty conservatively, but I kept my nose stud in and all my earrings, I guess I figured that if the people in Hilton could handle me and didn’t seem to have a problem, why should the people in Brockport. While one of the interviewers (there were three, two were board members, and the other was a clerk, who was also acting director) didn’t say anything about it, he rubbed his nose incessantly. Believe me, I got the point. Anyway. Then the acting director asked me “How do you feel your time at Brighton will impact your job?” Hmmm. I don’t know since I’VE NEVER WORKED AT BRIGHTON! In fact, she was looking at MY boss’ resume. She casually tried to hide my boss’ resume and look at mine, but I knew. Plus, what if I hadn’t known that she had interviewed? How crazy would that be?
We moved on from that. I think I did okay, but there still were a couple of questions that I flubbed. “What would you like to know about the budget?” I dunno… “What would you do about Outreach?” I dunno… haven’t thought about it… Then at some point I said that the first thing I would do is buy a PS2, DDR and the pads so that the teens (and who knows, maybe even the adults) could come and play. They liked that, I think.
Overall, it wasn’t too bad. I smiled a lot, and they laughed at the right times. I think that they liked me, I just don’t think that they think I’m director material. Realistically, I don’t think that I am either. I honestly think that I like working directly with kids and teens too much. Plus I think that there are so few people that are willing to be advocates for them, that they shouldn’t lose people like me who like working with them. Nevermind the fact that dealing with three districts, people who don’t want to share the wealth, and way too few staff is really scary.
On to Fairport.
I wasn’t nervous until we were trying to get everyone in the car and I knew that we were going to be late. I knew that I could do the job, I knew that I would like the job since Stephanie (the super teen librarian) loves it there and it was pretty exciting to think about working somewhere a little closer to where I live, in fact, it was ALOT exciting.
Luckily, when I got to the library, I saw Stephanie and she was really friendly and calming, so that I was able to settle a little. Then, when I went into the conference room, I realized that I knew both of the women interviewing me, and I liked them! I sort of figured that Robin would be in the interview, since she is the other children’s librarian and I would be working really closely with her. Then I looked at my potential future boss and realized that I knew her too! She’s pretty good friends with my boss from Highland, so that she knew a lot of the people that I worked with. That managed to break the ice pretty quickly. The first few minutes are always the worst anyway.
Then for the meat of the interview.
They both asked a lot of good questions, some sort of typical “Where do you see yourself in five years?” but most of them I think that I answered pretty well. On of the best was when Robin asked “What would you do if an elementary aged child asked for a good funny novel?” Good grief. I haven’t read anything really funny in ages. Everything has been sad, depressing or life changing. Hmmm. I would give them Walter the Farting Dog. No. I didn’t really say that, although I should have. I really couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head, so I said. “Thank goodness we have such great children’s librarians, who make terrific book lists. I would look for our humorous books list, and show that to them.” I was also lucky, because when they asked “How do you handle stress?” and in my typical (koff koff) witty style, I said “I yell at my husband of course!” I then went on to say that I try and stay organized, and I ask for help if I get overwhelmed, then I show them my programming for kids and teens, I think that they may have appreciated that. I did mention, since I figured it would come up at some point, that I had had a seizure and after being in that overwhelming situation, I was able to put things in perspective. Plus, having a 10 month old makes you stay on your toes!
Robin did bring up my color coded system on my calendar. I have moved on to my PDA since Christmas, but I still use the color coded calendar at my desk. I hope that Robin taking notice of that gave me a couple of brownie points.
I really enjoyed my interview at Fairport, and I would be thrilled if they gave me the job. It sounds like everyone really likes each other and people stay there for years, so that’s a plus. They told me that they have a couple more people to interview, so that it will be a little while before I find out. I am keeping fingers, toes, eyes and tongue crossed and I hope I get the job. I love Parma and I’ll miss everyone a lot, but I’d really like to find somewhere that I could be permanently that’s closer, focuses on children or teens and has a better salary.
Well I applaud you if you managed to read that entire post. I haven’t written much of anything for the longest time and then I suddenly get diarrhea of the mouth. I would write even more, but Jeff is supposed to pick me up (I’ve been alone in the closed library for an hour now) in a couple minutes. It really sucks on Fridays. The library closes at 5 PM and I’m here until about 6 PM. Oh well what can I do?
Good bye and god bless. Or whatever. Fhhpppt.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2006 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Librarians. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.