Thing 21

Thing 21 is all about identifying your strengths and promoting yourself in job applications and interviews. As some of you know, I just spent two years looking for a job after being laid off and now that the job hunt is behind me I have no desire to revisit it. So I won't relive my interview experience here by listing all my strengths, skills, and interests as we are asked to do. Instead, I will cut to the chase and dispense with a bit of advice. It's just a rundown of how I prepare for a job interview, but I've pretty much gotten it down to a science.

Here's what I do:
- As soon as the interview is scheduled, decide what to wear and make sure it's clean. If needed, take it to the cleaners.

- Spend some time looking at the library's web site and reading any press about the library.

- Deconstruct the job ad, making lists of all the requirements, needed skills and experience, and spend some time thinking about how my skills and experience fit in, and make notes about this.

- Spend some time reading sample interview questions and thinking a lot about how to answer them. Most of my preparation just involves thinking.

- Set up my interview binder. This is incredibly important and is what gets me through the interview successfully!
On the left is a folder area where I put a copy of the job description, a couple copies of my resume, a list of my references, any extras that seem relevant to that position (I usually bring some readers' advisory brochures I made) and directions to the interview.

On the right hand part of my binder is a pad of paper and on the top sheet I write my prep notes. This usually includes 5 main parts:

1. Basic interview info: Name and address of library, interview time, names of interviewers, any specific instructions about parking, etc.
2. VERY basic notes about the job - basically a list of keywords from the ad that seem important.
3. Stuff about me: a list of words describing my style, experience, strengths, and any other descriptors that may come in handy when answering questions about myself. 
4. Examples to use when I'm asked questions beginning "Describe a time when...." and those sorts of things. Plus anything particular I did that I want to be sure to mention, such as a particular program or service I started. 
5. Questions to ask the interviewers. This is truly a 2-way street - you need to know what you may be getting into, and if you'll be able to work with these people. I usually have questions about the position and the library, the director/department head's leadership or management style, and how well staff work together.

On interview day:

- I always figure out how much time it will take me to get there and I add AT LEAST a half hour to that estimate. Usually this means getting there really early, but that's good. You have plenty of time to park and find the correct entrance, and then you can just relax and look over notes, and there will still be time to hit the bathroom before the interview. And one time I did hit unexpected construction on the way to an interview, and although I was delayed a LOT, I was still a few minutes early.

- Based on all the above preparation, I usually have an agenda. When I interview, I have certain things I want to get across because they are my strong points or things I've done that I'm especially proud of, and I make a point to work them into an answer to some question, somewhere.

Is this helpful? Do you have any advice to add? 

The Night Strangers

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian (2011)

I live in an old house and there is a part of the basement we refer to as "scary basement." It's separated from the main part of the basement, lower-ceilinged, and I joke that that's where the previous inhabitants used to hide the bodies. This no longer seems so funny.

In Chris Bohjalian's new novel, Chip Linton moves to Bethel, NH with his wife and twin daughters. In the basement of their big old house, Chip discovers a mysterious door fixed shut with 39 carriage bolts. Coincidentally, 39 is also the number of passengers who died when Chip was forced to land his plane on Lake Champlain just months before. It was the guilt and grief from that accident that drove Chip and his family to Bethel, but now in their new house he is more haunted than ever by the dead passengers.

Their eccentric new neighbors, who all seem to be named after herbs, seem strangely interested in the couple and especially their 10-year-old daughters, Hallie and Garnet. Although the herbalists ostensibly want to be friends, they begin to look a little sinister to the already-vulnerable family. Chip's strange visions become more real and more threatening than ever, as Emily and the twins are drawn further into the group of herbalists.

This is quite a departure for Bohjalian, but he pulls it off quite effectively. It begins with the creepy basement, but that becomes the least of the family's worries. Though the story starts off slowly, you begin to see things taking shape and as the suspense builds, the pace speeds up. I'm not a very fast reader but I flew through this book - admittedly, I didn't want to put it down but when I sat down to read, I read more pages than I would have expected.

The thing is, you really want everything to go well for this family. They've been through a lot, you've gotten to know them, and you want to protect them from harm. As a reader, of course, all you can do is watch them succumb to powerful forces and hope they have the strength to pull themselves out. The Night Strangers is a gripping novel that made me incredibly tense. I recommend reading it, but be sure to stock up on your anti-anxiety meds.

Coraline has begun

I've swatched for the Coraline cardigan before, but couldn't get gauge, and with this pattern you need to get row gauge as well as stitch gauge. Moreover, the pattern calls for DK weight yarn which, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, is more expensive than other yarn weights. Consequently I haven't been doing much experimenting. But. Recently I found this lovely purple yarn - Queensland Collection Rustic Wool DK - and I think it is perfect.

Coraline is knit from the bottom up with a folden hem. I have made a folded hem before on my first and second versions of the Hourglass Sweater (sorry for the Ravelry links, this was pre-blog!) but Ysolda's design is a little bit different.

The basic idea of a folded hem is that you cast on provisionally, knit a bunch of rows, knit a bunch more rows, fold it in half, then take off your waste yarn and knit the provisional stitches together with your live stitches. Then just keep knitting.

With the hourglass sweater, there was a purl row which I think the pattern referred to as a "turning row" between the front rows and the back rows (if that makes sense). This clearly defined the fold. On Coraline there is no turning row, and also the pattern says to slip the first THREE stitches of every row. I've never seen such a thing before. Of course I forgot to do this on my first 15 rows and did not want to rip it all out because these are some long damn rows. I'm sure it will be fine. (Just as I'm sure those are famous last words.)

Here's a picture of the back - I've gone just a few rows beyond where the hem is attached. See how neat it looks where the hem attaches?

Now that I've finished the hem, I have to knit 95 rows in plain stockinette. Easy peasy. This means that I have to either a) find a good show to watch, b) find some good podcasts to listen to, or c) finally figure out how to read and knit at the same time, from the comfort of the papasan chair where I have been recently living.

Tonight I am watching Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a desire inspired by recently reading this book. I wonder how many rows I will get done?

Like the Willow Tree

Like the Willow Tree: The Diary of Lydia Amelia Pierce, Portland, Maine, 1918 by Lois Lowry (2011)(audio)

Lydia and her brother Daniel live a regular life with their parents and new baby sister, Lucy. But they begin hearing about a deadly disease arriving in Maine, and soon their school is closed and they have to stay inside and can't even visit their friends. Then, their parents and Lucy all become ill and in just days they are dead, leaving Lydia and Daniel alone. Their uncle comes and brings them to his house but he and his wife already have more children than they can really care for, so one day he takes Lydia and Daniel to live with the Shakers at Sabbath Day Lake.

Their new life with the Shakers is very different - they cannot keep their own possessions and Lydia has to give up her copy of The Secret Garden and the ring from her grandmother which is very precious to her. All material items belong to everybody here. In addition to school, all the children must work and Lydia learns to knit, iron, and make baskets, though what she really can't wait to try is candy-making. Boys and girls live separately, for Shakers do not every marry and there is little interaction between the sexes. Also they must regularly "open their minds" to one another, which is similar to the Catholics' confessions.

Part of the Dear America series, Like the Willow Tree was a very fun slice-of-life audiobook that was perfect for my commute. It covered such a short period of time and I was really curious whether Lydia would come to embrace the Shaker life long-term or if she would return to "the world" (as the Shakers say). I was prepared to not have these questions answered - it's a children's book after all, and only meant to cover what it was like at that place and time. But to my surprise, the book included an epilogue which answered my questions. As if that weren't enough, there was additional material about the historical period as well as some performances of Shaker songs.

Although I found the narrator's voice a bit grating at the beginning, I grew used to it and came to really look forward to listening. I enjoyed this book a lot - I am always a sucker for old-timey novels - and will absolutely consider other books from this series in the future.

Boston Book Festival!

Today was the 3rd annual Boston Book Festival. I'm not sure how I missed this the last two years, but you can bet I'll be there again next year! It's like a huge literary conference and book sale and it's FREE. Amazing! And these are not little-known authors, they are big names. The kid's keynote speaker was Mo Willems and tonight's keynote is Michael Ondaatje. Other authors in attendance include Jennifer Egan, Mitchell Zuckoff, Andre Dubus III, Julia Alvarez, Gregory Maguire, Karen Russell, Richard Russo and many many others. Not to mention several WBUR personalities including Tom Ashbrook, Robin Young, and Christopher Lydon (no longer on WBUR, but I have very fond memories of listening to The Connection every single day.)

I started my day by attending Steampunk, hosted by my former co-worker, the always funkily-dressed Maya Escobar. The panel included Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, who co-edited a steampunk anthology, artist/creator Allison DeBlasio, and young adult author Holly Black. I have heard many wonderful things about Black and she was just lovely in person (as were all the panelists). In an effort to define the genre, Holly Black said "Steampunk is what happens when goths discover brown." Clever!

The next session I attended was YA Fiction: On the Edge. Amy Pattee from Simmons, who I've enjoyed as a presenter at NELA, was moderator. Ellen Levine wrote a novel called In Trouble, set in the 1950s, which was rejected by many publishers because one of the characters has an abortion. Daniel Nayeri recently wrote a collection of novellas on his iphone, and was a great speaker with a fascinating background. Danica Novgorodoff shared excerpts from her graphic novel Refresh, Refresh, a coming-of-age story about teenage boys in Bend, Oregon whose fathers are fighting in Iraq. This was a very well-balanced panel of authors who did very different work that is edge in different ways.

After standing in line for over a half hour for what was, thankfully, a fantastic sandwich from Roxy's Grilled Cheese truck, I was late arriving at Fiction: Truth and Consequences and had to sit in the overflow room. Unfortunately the screen was set up in such a way that only the first few rows could actually see the panelists. It was again a great group. Ha Jin spoke about his new book Nanjing Requiem. Jennifer Haigh, author of The Condition (link is to my review), spoke about her newest novel, Faith. Last but not least, Vanessa Diffenbaugh,whose first novel The Language of Flowers is getting lots of buzz, spoke about being a foster parent and about the Victorian flower-based code, both of which are fascinating subjects and really made me want to read her novel.

It was so fantastic to go to an event that was all about books, and just swarming with people who love books enough to spend their Saturday listening to people talk about them. It was inspiring and now I have even more books on my list waiting to be devoured. So now you'll have to excuse me, I'm going to go read!

Thing 20

In Thing 20 we are asked to blog about our library roots and routes - how we got into the profession, and the path our careers have taken, and to link the posts to the Library Routes Project Wiki.

Roots : how and why you got into the profession

It may have been destiny. When I was a kid I had a set of Little Golden Books with records, and they all fit into a neat little box with a cover. All the titles were listed and numbered on the back. When I recently took this set from my mother's house after not seeing it for years, I opened it and discovered that I had gone through the set as a child and written the number corresponding to the list on the box on each freaking book with a marker, and then assembled the books in numerical order.

My high school work experience all consisted of babysitting and food service, so my work-study assignment in college was of course the glamorous job of working in a dining hall. But I stayed on campus one summer and scored a job in the library, where I continued to work until I graduated. It was a great job but I never thought of it as a career path. Then when I graduated from college and had no idea what sort of work to look for, I ended up in a horrible retail job from which I was fired after one excruciating year. Desperate for more relaxing employment, I applied for a job working in the cataloging department of a library at a college in Boston.

After working there for a while I began to consider libraries as a career option. At some point I also worked my way through "What Color is Your Parachute?" Library school seemed like the answer. It was expensive though, at least if I went to the local school. I considered moving away for library school but was just becoming acclimated to Boston and didn't want to make another move. So Simmons it was. I couldn't afford it on what I was making so I left that job for a better-paying job at a small company that did fund-raising for non-profit organizations. I learned a lot about databases, lessons that have served me well in my library career though I had no idea they would when I took the job. I started library school part-time, but soon grew impatient to start my new career, so I quit that job, got a part-time library assistant job in a corporate library and went to school full-time.

Routes: the career path you've taken so far

"Path" isn't a good descriptor for the shape of my career so far as it implies a linear, forward motion and my career, sadly, has not taken that form.

I graduated from library school 10 years ago and got a job as a reference librarian. After a year or so I started looking for a department head job. I am still a reference librarian. Competition is fierce, the economy sucks, and at the risk of sounding cynical and jaded, my impression is that nobody wants to hire someone for a job that they haven't done before. I've gotten little bits of supervisory experience here and there, including as a volunteer (which I'll talk more about in Thing 22) but when I've interviewed for Reference Head positions (or Circ Head or Assistant Director or any number of managerial positions for which I've gotten interviews), no matter how well I interview - and I interview very well - it always comes down to someone else having more experience. And there will always be someone else with more experience. I've been stuck in this loop of purgatory in which I can't get the right experience because I don't have the right experience.

But right now after being laid off and spending two years job-hunting, while working at a part-time/temp job, I'm pretty damn happy to have a full-time reference job again. Also? I am doing a shit load of collection development which I've always wanted to do, but haven't been allowed to do much of in the past. I did a little collection development in reference (boring!) and ESL (interesting, but a small collection). Now I'm buying music CDs, knitting books, large print, Russian books and all manner of interesting items. There is a lot of change at my workplace and I've only been there for about three months myself, but I think I'll have opportunities for all sorts of programming, outreach, and other fun things.

Yes, someday I'd still like to be in management. I have no idea how to get there. It seems like the best way is to apply for a job within the organization where you already work, but people in libraries tend to stay in their jobs for a loooong time and if they leave there are no guarantees. At my last library the union dictated promotions according to seniority, not based on strengths of the applicants.

Anyhow, I'm done with applying for jobs and interviewing. I spent so much time and energy in the last two years trying to land a full-time job that I'm just not interested in doing it again for a long long time. Right now I just want to work on my projects and stay at my job long enough to see them evolve, and take an active role in making my library a better library.

What You See in the Dark

What You See in the Dark by Manuel Muñoz (2011)

In the late 1950s an actress and a director come to Bakersfield California looking for the perfect motel for their movie. That perfect motel - which they ultimately aren't given permission to use - is owned by Arlene Watson, a waitress at the local diner, and single mother of a young man named Dan who is much admired by the local ladies. But not all is peaceful in this sleepy little town, and one day Dan's Mexican girlfriend is dead and Dan has left town.

I almost didn't make it past the first chapter, and surely would have put it down if I weren't reading it for my book group. The first (and last) chapter was written in second person, to a co-worker of the murdered girl. But that wasn't very clear and I still don't understand why this choice was made. I found it incredibly confusing and disorienting.

Otherwise it was a well-crafted story, and I found myself re-reading a few sentences here and there to savor his choice of words. This atmospheric novel is the first from Muñoz, who has two short story collections to his credit. Moody and noir-feeling, the style in some ways echoed the Hitchcock film that serves as it's backdrop.

I'll admit I didn't care much for this novel. Once I got past the first chapter, the straightforward third person perspective was much easier to read, but the book is simply not to my taste. Dark and slow-moving, there is a certain amount of distance between the reader and the characters. Aside from Arlene, with whom we spent a great deal of time, we barely scratch the surface of what is going on with the characters, and have few facts about what is happening. It wasn't my kind of book, but if you like that sort of atmospheric novel where the details are hazy but the mood is strong, this may be up your alley.