Monday, 24 February 2014
Elisabeth Doucett "What They Don’t Teach You In Library School"
This book serves as a practical guide in going from theory to practice, namely from student life to that of a librarian. While a lot of it is common to any industry, such as how to handle unruly people or unrealistic expectations of your career, there are a few pockets of wisdom unique to the library industry.
Encouraging the reader to look beyond their own library and form a sisterhood with another library, the idea is to both take lessons from each other, for the betterment of your job and yourself. Through this relationship, you can improve your management, programs, and marketing, amongst other things, and it gives tips and tricks in how to achieve this.
The advanced chapter contains a healthy dosage of business-like attitudes, from networking to teamwork, which are important in practically any career, as well as how to analyse trends and handle figures.
Although I really enjoyed this book, I think a lot of it is common knowledge if you’ve worked before, whether it is the community, hospitality, retail, or another industry. It is rather hefty, at $38 on a Kindle, let alone a hard copy, and I’m not sure it earns the price-tag. Check it out at your local library, but a new-job guide and an ALIA journal probably cover the same amount of content, and would be just as digestible.
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