 Hi there, this is Kim Doherty and I'd like to welcome you to the iSchool's LIS career podcast series where we review practitioners to learn more about their paths to success. Today I'm excited to introduce you to iSchool grad Eric Berman, who is the coordinator of services to young adults for Alameda County Library. Eric has had one of the most fascinating career trajectories I've ever seen since he graduated in 2010 and we're going to ask him to talk a little bit about this, actually a lot, but first let's start off with Eric, tell us about your official title and sort of what that position entails. Sure, hi everyone. So I am the coordinator of services to young adults for Alameda County Library, also known as the Teen Services Coordinator. Our system uses the two terms interchangeably, which sometimes causes confusion, but also makes my business cards very interesting. So I kind of have a couple jobs in my current role. My big one is to support our county's teen librarians. We're one of the systems that still has librarians designated to certain age groups, so each of our locations has somebody who's responsible for teen services, usually a librarian, and my job is to give them the tools they need to succeed and to thrive. So a lot of that is support, helping them manage administrative issues, giving them ideas for programs, navigating finance purchasing, but also it's helping them have a vision of the future for both their own personal professional development and also for the teens in their community. Yeah? I was going to ask you as you've been doing this with the systems teen services librarians, have you seen a change in the kinds of programs that they're wanting to put on or the issues that are being raised about, you know, we need to address this or are things pretty steady? Well, we're in a very interesting position. I've worked all over the Sacramento Valley and now in a couple libraries in the Bay Area, and Alameda County has this very interesting blend of new innovative ideas and sort of older ideas can hold over as from earlier, like library services best practices. So I think our librarians are moving forward and fits and starts and they're coming up with great ideas and every once in a while I have a talk, it's like, you know what, let's find a new way to offer this service. Interesting and are your contacts, the teen librarians that you're working with, I'm guessing based on other teen librarians that I have communicated with, they seem to be incredibly responsive to trying new things, to looking at new ways to connect with teens and young adults. Do you find that? Oh, definitely. They're really looking to try new things and I've been really fortunate in that most of my teen librarians have been hired since I was on the job. So I've got some brand new teen librarians who've got that sort of first job or new job energy and they're ready and willing to go forward. But that's really important for me because of the way our system is structured. So while I'm supporting these teen librarians, they have a direct manager who's the branch manager. So I can't go and say, do this program or drop this program. I actually describe myself as much more of a cheerleader than a boss. So I've had to develop a lot of soft skills for this program. That's a fascinating managerial challenge because I was assuming they all reported to you but you're sort of the soft leadership which gets to your point about developing soft skills which you would very much need. But I'm guessing you're a wonderful backup and sort of moral support for teen services librarians that get to work with you. So one of the questions around this that comes up a lot from students who are interested in YA services, teen services, is what kinds of skills you find are most needed in the job? Well, this is interesting because it's really two different jobs. I was thinking I was going to be asking you about your job as a teen librarian, but actually I'm going to ask you about both. If I can, from your perspective, what about teen librarianship and from your perspective, what about the very unusual role that you played? Sure. I mean, if I had to give one piece of advice to teen librarians and new teen librarians and specific, it's the most important thing is to be yourself when you are a teen librarian. That's the big distinction I think between teen librarians and other types of librarians. Let's be clear, teens assume that any adult that talks to them is probably lying. And an idiot. Yeah. So they're hypersensitive to that stuff. So if you come up and you're acting like their best friend and you hate them, or you're getting really into, you say you're really into like Fortnite and you don't even know what that is, they can tell and they're going to be turned off. But the other half of that is a good teen librarian sort of develops who they want to be as a teen librarian in relationship to those teens. And that's going to be different for every person. So as a teen librarian, I am kind of like sort of like a big brother, maybe like a gang leader. I try to like set a tone. I was notorious for showing them bizarre YouTube videos as an introduction to my millions. Actually, a great story about that is we built a teen center in San Jose. And I got a group of teens that design it. And we had them present at the COA's professional conference. And he got a chance to speak a little bit about it. And that was the first thing he talked about was that I made him watch weird old space videos. So you almost need to remember what it feels like to be a teen and and let that part of you connect with that part of them. Yeah. And what are your interests? What are the things that you're passionate about? Let those guide this projects that you work in. Cool. One thing, there's so many really cool programs people have done in California as teen librarians. One thing I've really noticed is whenever they talk about the amazing things that their teens are doing, they're passionate about that thing too. Now, they that energy came in part from the teen library. Now, sometimes you get dragged along by them. But then you find yourself that now you're really into Fortnite and you've never played a video game in your life. Yeah, I would encourage anyone who has never played a video game in their life to consider a different line. I think that be yourself advice is really, really crucial and wise. Because to your point, and having raised a teen, they are so amazing and so wonderful. But boy, do they have a detector out for, as you say, when you're not authentic, when you're trying to bluff your way through to a relationship, they just aren't for it. And it makes sense because they're looking for an adult that they can trust. Exactly. And I think that's something really important for everyone to think about is you might be the only teen in their life, the only adult in their life rather, who doesn't have authority over them. Obviously, we can tell them to quit eating Cheetos by the computers. But when they're at home, they have to be the dutiful son or daughter. And when they're at school, they've got to be the good student. Where do they learn to be themselves? And when I was a kid, I was able to go out and play in like playgrounds and hang out at my local pizza joint. But those places are diminishing real quickly for our current teens. And they're not always welcome there in the way that they would be by the teen librarian. That's a really good point. I love telling the story about, I think they're called the screechers that malls used to install. Do you ever hear about those? Oh, yeah. I'm out in Colorado. And what they do out here is play classical music. Yeah. That's more effective. What are the screechers? So it turns out that as you get older, you can't hear higher registers as well. So what malls were doing was installing these devices in there that played sounds at that really high register. So it would be really annoying for teens. But adults with money couldn't hear about it. But then what happened is the teens learned about that and they started using it as their ringtone. They started texting each other in the middle class. That's really smart. And this is one of the great things about teens is that give them a challenge and they will find a way around it. That is priceless. I love that. But I think that your points are so well taken because you're approaching this from, yes, you are the authority figure in the room, but also you are treating them with respect and as if you liked teens and you think they're cool. And to your point, there are not a lot of places where that happens. So that does make that role really special for them. So now I get to ask you about your career trajectory and I get to lead this off this question with all of the things that you've done. So I have you starting your career as a library page for Yolo County Library, then the branch manager at Calusa County Library, then the youth services librarian at El Dorado County Library, then at the San Jose Public Library for five and a half years where you were librarian, youth services librarian and acting senior librarian, and then the coordinator of services to young adults where you are now. Tell us about that. Or as one of my students said to me once when I was talking about all of the different careers you're going to have with information and library skills, and I was charting my career and she very compassionately said to me, do you ever worry that you don't seem to be able to hold a job? And I looked at your trajectory and said, I get this guy, you can't resist the next terrific challenge, the next terrific opportunity. So tell us about moving through these jobs and what you were thinking. Did you have any concerns or fears that you had to overcome? Tell us about that. Sure. Well, I guess I'll start with an admission, which is that when I was in high school and college, I did not think I would be a librarian. In fact, the other day I found a personality test that I'd taken when I was in like fifth grade, and I had a list of like 100 occupations and librarian was the third from the bottom, which I think is pretty funny. Actually it is. You know, but I did, I started out as a page as just a after school job just to make some money because I love books. I've always loved books. I've always loved reading, and so it just seemed like a natural fit. And I had a great time as a page there. I was a page for like eight years, and that was probably four years too long. Because by the end of that, I was like, I was not a good page because I was like tired of that. I was tired of shelving books. I wanted to help. I wanted to run programs. I ended up being taken under the mentorship of the teen librarian there, who I did largely because I kept on telling her that she was categorizing the graphic novels all wrong. She was like, well, you do it then. But when I graduated college, I realized I don't want to do what I studied. What was your undergraduate degree? I had a degree in political science and philosophy. Okay. Oh, and I love those. I still love talking about both of those. My focus was on political ethics, which is both relevant and incredibly depressing. I can imagine both. But it turned out I didn't love writing papers about it. But I had, I took a little bit of me time afterwards, and I thought really hard and I realized I've been working in libraries for a long time. I could do this forever. And it was like, it was like a revelation. I kind of felt like the sun started shining through the clouds and the birds played because this tension I had was like, well, what am I going to do? What sort of job am I going to be like a trucker? Or am I going to be a math teacher? I didn't know idea. Actually, seriously, both of those. The last job I applied for before I went back to library school was to be a TSA agent. I remember taking that test. I had to look at x-rays and examine what was what. But just things started working out well. I ended up knowing somebody who was taking on the role of county librarian in Clusa County. And she offered me a job there. And how did you know that person? She was a librarian that I worked with in Yolo County. Okay. And I just told her that, hey, I've said I'm going to library school. And I think that's something that's important is that one of the best things about being a librarian, especially a librarian in California, or a library worker is that there's this culture of wanting to support you and promote you and get you up. Right. Anyway, so I started working in Williams, California, as the branch manager, which is a lot more impressive until you realize I was the only employee of that library. You know, thank you for saying that because the fact that you had gone from being a page to being a branch manager was like the most amazing leap in career move I'd ever seen in my life. You know, I'd say that, but I mean, I was doing everything at that library from cleaning floors to, you know, doing the daily cash report to designing programs. Actually found the other day, I designed an entire summer reading program for my library system. Like I have this little, it was passport to adventure. I think that was like the 2004, no, it must have been like 2010 or eight summer reading programs. So I had all these programs. And then a fantastic experience, though, to be able to inhabit all of those different roles. It was so great. I mean, I could get, I could get a class and learn about some new technique, learn about folks that I'm used to something like that. And then the next day, I go to work and implement it and try it out. I tell you, I was complaining about having to write philosophy papers. But when I went to graduate school, it actually scared me the very first day. The teacher came in and was like, this is a graduate level program. I expect graduate level work and it scared the crap out of me for years. But I had such an easier time writing about something that I cared and loved about. And there are definitely days where I was like, you know, this 12 page paper probably should be like a four page paper. But that makes so much sense because if you are passionate about the work that you're doing, and especially in this field versus if you come from a discipline where part of the the premise is this very rigorous, objective sort of neutral approach, I can see how much fun it would have been for you to go through the grad program and do this. It's a totally different type of writing and honestly way more fun. Okay. And so you were the branch manager at Calusa County. And then what made you decide to take the job as youth services librarian at El Dorado County? There were a couple of things. I mean, one, I was the branch manager, but I was working, you know, 20, 30 hours a week. And I was driving out to the middle of nowhere. Williams, California is about, I'll say 40 miles north of Sacramento on I-5 and exists because there's an almond field and two highways that intersect. You're right. That's the middle of nowhere. There's not a lot of growth opportunity. There wasn't a lot of ways to like challenge myself for do more than I was doing. So I got a job in El Dorado County Library. And in actuality, my job was six to 18, which was six years old to 18 years old. So some children's programming, but really the understanding was a lot of desk time and a lot of teamwork. Okay. And then a week after I got hired, there's zero to five specialists got out and had to leave. And this El Dorado County, I think is still known today for their amazing children's services and their amazing zero to five services. Like, I think there's someone who's a pioneer touch points. Oh my gosh. And I think my director at the time now works for the state library. So I mean, great, great mentors, great teachers, but what they needed is a zero to five librarian. And I was not a zero to five librarian. I learned very quickly. I ended up doing six story times a week, which was very, I only had to present four of them, but I had to prepare for the other two and do a lot of work. So it didn't work out. It didn't like fit with what they wanted and it fit with what I wanted. So I left that job because otherwise I think they would have gone insane and I definitely would have gone insane. And I think your recognition that you weren't the right person for them in the same way that they weren't the right organization for you is something that people struggle with. They feel like, Oh, I took this job. I should stay here. I should try to make it work. But sometimes it's exactly what you experienced. It seems like a good fit at the time. And then maybe circumstances change or other realities come into play and it's better just to be honest about it. Yeah. And that was a hard decision. I definitely regretted a lot of things afterwards, but it was the right looking back at it. I learned a whole lot that I'll never forget. I now own a pirate costume because of them, which is sitting in my cubicle. But leaving that was definitely a good move for me. And then did you go pretty much directly from El Dorado to the San Jose Public Library jobs? No, then there was a definite period of time trying to find a new position. And, you know, this was a time right when a lot of librarians who would normally be retiring were staying on a couple extra years just to just pull everything kind of recovered a little bit. And it was a hard struggle. I interviewed a ton of times. I actually interviewed for jobs out of state. I drove up to Washington for like the weirdest interview I've ever done. They sat me down and they gave me a pile of six books that I'd never seen before. They said, what age group is each of these books for and how would you book talk to them? You have a five minutes. Oh my gosh. And then they said, all right, read one of these books. It's just do a story time test. And then they acted like children. They're like, he's hitting me. Can I have a cookie? You know, I have to say, if you're thinking, okay, this is the management team. This is not really confidence inspiring. But I was fortunate in that San Jose was beginning to expand after the Great Recession. They'd actually built four library buildings that were brand new and ready to go because of bond money. And then they had no money to hire librarians or staff for those buildings. So I was brought on basically to help open those libraries. And in particularly the educational park branch, which was right next to the largest school in San Jose and one of the largest high schools in the state. And was there a lot of collaboration with their school librarians? No, there really wasn't. They didn't have a school librarian. They had a librarian that had, I think, four schools that they went to. So they were open like one day a week. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So we were the school library. Yeah, I can see. And after school, the library was the teen center. But that was a great opportunity. It was really the place where I sort of thrived and learned like to be a librarian. So we're all my training and everything all had gelled into one. I was able to form some great bonds with the librarians but great bonds with the teens who were there too. We formed a teen advisory group that was robust enough that I decided they needed to write a constitution. Wow. Which they wrote. We had the constitution conventions. We advertised and let all the teens in the library vote on it. We had a signing day and first elections. It was a pretty big deal. It's fun. I think I still have the original copy of the constitution and the fancy pen I bought so they could buy it. Oh. So I'm going to ask a question here. About teen advisory groups, that's a question that has come up with a couple of classes that I've taught where the question is, would teens, if there's a good relationship between, say, the teens who are using the library and the teen services librarian, do you think most teens appreciate and like the idea of having a teen advisory group so that they have more of a stake in outcomes and program decisions and things like that? That's a good question. I think there's two parts to it. I don't think a lot of the teens are thinking that hard about the process. Okay. I think there's some sort of not understanding the world to it. We're like, well, yeah, if I want a program, I could just tell the teen librarian and he'll do it regardless of the tag. Okay. But I think it's more important for the teen librarian to have because it's hard to keep your pulse on what's popular and a teen advisory group will keep you honest. They will help let you know if you're on the right track and not maybe directly but also just by their interest and by the things that they say, the things that they're interested in. If you're really clued into it, you're going to learn about, you know, TikTok before everybody starts using it. You're going to learn about the next thing that every teen's going to use so you don't feel like an idiot when you're still using Facebook and no teen uses that except talking to the grandma. You know, this would make you a very valuable friend to have for parents who could just sit you down with coffee and say, okay, tell me everything I need to know so I don't sound like an idiot to my kiddos. I mean, unfortunately, I don't get to work with teens as much. So I feel, I get, I feel old too. I think I'm one wrong comment away from being okay boomer. Well, and it would be so easy to have that happen, although it's sort of a case of if you have, at least from my experience, if you have done the work of setting up essentially a trust relationship with the group of teens that you're working with or attempting to work with, and you've made it clear to them you're making a good faith effort that okay boomer crack might be said with a smile rather than totally just rolled eyes and discussed. That's the key knowing when it's when you have to reexamine your life and when they're just giving you a hard time. Right, exactly. And teens can be so good at that. So a question about the jobs that you were applying for and the jobs that you eventually got. Were you applying to job openings online? Were you sending in applications? Or were you sort of networking into these jobs because you knew someone there? You said that that was a case for the branch branch manager at Calusa, but how about the rest of them? The rest almost all started at least started out through online applications. Okay. There were a couple jobs that I knew somebody or my parent knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody is like oh yeah this library is looking for a job and then I go and look at it's like this is an academic librarian position in the international like library of wheat or something. So good intentions but not always on target. Yeah and I mean I'll say well what I tell new librarians is networking is key because I have seen basically jobs go to people, qualified people but that that extra push was because they knew somebody. And the community of librarians in California is small. You learn these people, get to know them and they'll open doors for you that you can get if you go through the you know the application process and send 400 applications out but getting to know people helps so much and I'm so terrible at it. You know I think most of us are and this is an ongoing issue for those of us who tend not to be wild extroverts. You are so correct that building your network of professional relationships and connections is as you go through your career it gets to be the thing that opens up opportunities for you because eventually you sort of reach this tipping point and it sounds to me like you're pretty much there where instead of someone you know saying someone to you saying to you Eric you might want to know about this job opening at XYZ what eventually starts to happen when your network builds is that at Library XYZ there's a conversation going on we need to find somebody who can do this and somebody in that conversation says we need to talk to Eric Berman and those people start reaching out to you that's why from my perspective building a professional network and and having those be authentic relationships of mutual support is is just incredibly powerful. Yeah and I mean the first people who know when your dream job opens up it's the people who are working in that library. Yes I mean I just made fun of Facebook the other day or the Facebook but I see tons of opportunities being posted on people's you know personal Facebooks for the libraries they work in and you know you don't see those but like if I applied to a job and it's already got friends of mine who I know just through the library already know a little bit about the system how good a fit it can be and also sort of how to tailor my strengths to meet what they're looking forward. Right it's the sort of those insider insights that allow you to align your strengths with their need. You made a really interesting point there and that when you refer to those jobs on Facebook a lot of times people who know a lot of people in the profession end up getting what's called invisible jobs because they never get posted you know the the director or somebody else will say this is what we need and they at that job might get posted but you will hear about it first because quite frankly you might be the perfect person for the job so when you think about networking and building a community of colleagues how do you do that do you do that through being active in professional associations or other ways? It's so hard. This is what I this is my technique and this is a technique so I don't want this to be considered writ of law. I made a couple decisions about networking and one of them was that I would get really deeply into one professional organization it's like I had the capacity for one so I got really deeply into CLA and so I've been the chair vice chair of the service interest group for a long time and that spun out into being part of the conference planning committee and now I'm the chair of the membership committee and hopefully I continue to be active in CLA and every step from there I've learned more and more people one of my best friends in the library business I met through the youth service interest group and people who I've kind of grown up with knowing or talking to countless CLA's now are now directors and CLA board members just because I've spent some time with them and one thing about CLA and professional organizations in general is they're super scary to try to join like you feel like there's this huge big barrier or there's like a click it's like oh man only Eric and his friends get into CLA all these people know each other and I'm a total stranger it turns out like I'm telling you this because I'm actively recruiting people like we want you I don't care who you are come email me when you hear this podcast I'll find a position in a committee that I know to be part of because that's what we want we want people who are passionate about it um there's no clicks in CLA that I know of it's just please join us um and and I'm going to back up Eric's pitch for students joining CLA as well because when you do a couple of things happen one is exactly what Eric has just described which is by working as a volunteer it's the easiest way in the world for introverts to make friends and build relationships because it's not awkward you're not a stranger you guys have the same thing that you're working towards so it's for those of you who consider yourself introverts and you're kind of wondering how the heck am I going to build a network join CLA and volunteer second thing is if you join CLA you will be able to see their members who all of their members are and that makes it easier to see who's got what jobs and who's working at what libraries where you may want to do an informational interview perhaps with them so there are huge benefits to belonging to a professional association and coming from me someone who does not live in california I would tell you that the california library association is nationally known you guys are amazing so that I think that's fascinating and that's exactly the same way I sort of started building my professional network was by joining an association and volunteering because I was like what Eric is saying where you feel like everyone there knows each other except for you and you're this weird outsider with like a neon flashing sign that says nerd or weird or too shy or whatever but but really Eric is spot on this is just the most valuable thing you can do for your career so seconding Eric's pitch there not just because he's a membership chair I would encourage all of you who are listening to this podcast at any point to join CLA especially if you're a student all right so next question is because you have done so many interesting things and different things as you've been going through your career when you graduated and took on it was probably the the new job of branch manager at calusa I'm thinking did anything surprise you about the work that you were doing or the work environments huh um I think the biggest thing that continues to surprise me I mean I I became a librarian well I started working in a library because I liked books and in somewhere in the back of my head for a big chunk of my library school I was like yeah like I'm going to be a team librarian for a couple years because I love comic books I want to get old I'm going to be an adult services librarian and you know thought if that's what I'm going to do but actually it's largely thanks to Anthony Bernier's youth service and youth programming class I forget the number now being a librarian especially now is about people like the books and the technology are there but it's so much and especially for your team librarian about the people that you work with the people that you're serving the teams and the partners that's really what you do um I think a lot of that has to do with how fast computers have taken away a lot of what librarians used to be used to have to be experts in I mean fascinating I know the Dewey Decimal system pretty well because I spent eight years as a page shelving books and I saw every one of the books in that library but we got Google now we got Opax the real deep dive stuff not every librarian has to be an expert in anymore you got to know how it works you got to know the systems but I took a look at a old green book that was a test book for librarians from like the 1990s and the questions were like which online or which service would you use to find geographic records and a listed four or five options and I didn't know any of them and I don't need to because I know how to go and find the information through databases now um but but that test can't tell you how to work with somebody how to work with a teen who's homeless yeah or somebody who's concerned about coming out or has questions about their gender identity um I just draw big big teen topics on you but you know those are the those are the those are our challenges now yeah and yep it's way more rewarding like I love helping somebody find the name of that book I don't know what color I don't know what it was about but the cover was blue so my favorite story about that is somebody misremembered the title of their book they were adamant that it was this one title and that it was wrong and I figured it out through some very clever clever googling and catalog searching and they were like cannot believe it it's like magic you were doing magic yeah but I think the impact I have with the teens that I work with is way more important than that and even the little things you know I think and this gets back to what you said earlier about needing to learn soft skills we I I know in in grad school we spend a lot of time talking about the reference interview and how to do that which makes sense I think it's wise to do that but to your point more and more of what we're doing in libraries is being on the front lines of huge social change yeah and in order to be able to do that effectively and empathetically it's not so much that you you know all the tools as that you are willing to listen and and put yourself in that other person's shoes and think what does this person need how how can I help and that's so different than just to your point pulling a book out the shelf and or saying here there's a great book on that let me go get that for you and giving them a book so how have you learned to develop your soft skills just trial and error and and learning what worked and what didn't so I think there are a couple of things so one is I have this passion for library services and helping me and it's definitely the iSchools fault it's it's Anthony Bernier's fault who really turned me into a bit of an iconic class about the importance of teen services and the importance of us serving things to teens so that that helps that actually helps me a lot getting over my incredible amount of introversion myself um I took like a non-profit marketing class and in iSchool which was I have two books on my shelf from the library library school and one of the the only actual textbook that I have is the strategic marketing for non-profit organizations textbook that I bought for that class um and learned so many of those soft skills and those people things like how do you approach and talk to people and how do you promote your stuff to people um and also working in small groups I mean when I was in library school I was like all right I know I have to prove I have small group experience for my portfolio but like why does every class have a group project and then I graduated and 80% of my job is working in small groups um for for those of you who are still students in the iSchool program Eric I'm guessing that you didn't have him for a teacher but one of the adjunct faculty members at the iSchool is Scott Brown and I remember him telling me when I was talking about group projects that his favorite quote is that life is a group project that's true although you know I think they're easier when they're face to face rather than as a student and you have to put work into them too um I did pretty good at in library school because again I cared I cared about it um but one of my very first group projects my whole group got together and like we're all smart people we can do this let's divide the work and we'll come back in three weeks telling you that didn't work and my best project was one where I sat them down it was like right after that I was like listen last time I tried this it totally screwed up so here's the dates this is our rotation these are our responsibilities it's gonna rotate in this way we're gonna have two check-in meetings a week we're gonna have this work done in these days and I think we were the top of the class that is really smart yeah it was it was really good um and both of those people by the way who were in that ended up being hired and working at San Jose when I was there oh that is so cool that was a lot of fun that is cool so it sounds like you are let's say I wouldn't I would say two things one you are good at you're adept at and two you are accepting of the need to keep growing professionally and and keep developing new skills to meet new requirements as your job evolves absolutely and you have to like uh as librarians we're gonna have to keep on evolving there's big revelations in how our service is gonna change coming up anyway um I think VR technology like augmented reality google glasses that actually don't look awful that's gonna transform everybody's lives and that's gonna transform everybody's lives in our lifetime um makerspaces that's the new hot thing I didn't know anything about makerspace I didn't know what the 3d printer was and I have now built two makerspaces oh my gosh um the first one was a very interesting experience we call it learning experiences yeah I learned a lot but also helped with the second one and um we were able to improve a lot and get a lot closer to what am I ideal would be um but also just where does our role fit in the social environment of of the country where do libraries fit into that um no there's a lot of needs that are being unfulfilled and libraries have fit to meet those needs but when does that mean that we stop doing our core service of bringing information to people or does that mean that or is that just do we sort of redefine ourselves again that's all coming up yep I think those are really really great points because that need isn't going away anytime soon and so libraries need to decide do we prioritize one type of service to a certain type of constituency and let go of something else that we're doing so what's the lost opportunity cost or do we try to somehow grow our bandwidth so that we can respond to what are clearly very strong needs within our communities it's not from my perspective that's if you're working in libraries or if you're teaching in a grad school on libraries that's kind of the big question that everybody's struggling with is the nature and role of public libraries now that we're sort of starting to realize that our positive impact is could be so large if we had that kind of bandwidth that where do we draw the boundaries where we don't go what we don't do and I'll add in that I think academic libraries are facing a very similar role there's a lot of talk about turning academic libraries into third spaces oh interesting and I mean third space that came from academic libraries and academic like research though I think it's really important for teen libraries real quickly a third space if you're not familiar this is the idea that you have a home life and a home identity and a work or school life and school identity and you have to inform to certain things in each of those and a third space is a place where you can be yourself where there's none of the home or work expectations somebody once described third spaces to me as think of British pubs yeah people just go hang out yeah interesting um but they're transforming I know San Jose state um actually after we built our maker space the the library state library or the university library there talked to us and ended up building some of the same technology that we had in for their maker space and their resources interesting interesting which is sort of another thing that's a trend is this sort of overlapping um we're starting to sort of lose boundaries that this is academic this is public this is school and we're losing boundaries that you learn at the stage of your life you work at the stage of your life you retire at the stage of your life so there's much more of a flow which is wonderful but again it's a shift in what the expectations are of public libraries and how we respond to those expectations so clearly Eric I could keep you on this interview for the next three hours this is fascinating to me hearing what your viewpoints are but I will ask you one last question because I think you are uniquely suited to provide insight on this what advice would you give students still in grad school in terms of positioning themselves for jobs when they graduate and that could be should they join associations should they do an internship uh what classes should they take just anything that you think would be helpful for them to sort of be thinking about sure um I think the very first thing to do is I encourage you all to take weird classes focus and take some stuff outside of your focus area I kind of knew that I wanted to be a teen service librarian and do some management work so that was almost all my classes but I really regret not taking more cataloging classes and classes that were sort of outside that public library area do them more well rounded you are the better chances you have of finding your ideal job I think if you could start working or volunteering in a library as a student your life is going to be so much easier you're going to be able to apply things you've learned and see the actual applications to the things that you're learning it's like oh well this is how a reference interview works because I did one yesterday um be game for anything because we're changing what things look like we're changing what libraries look like um I'll tell you one thing like I've been obviously teen librarians are going to do a bunch of weird stuff you know virtual reality candy sushi making contests movies but children's librarians are doing that too some of our children's librarians are now running the lunch at the library program which means they have serve safe food certifications and making sandwiches for people oh tons of outreach work and being in different places doing library services in jails and parks and community centers like be game for that and be ready and prepared um and then also when you get your first job just uh I don't know how to describe this but so many so many libraries will have a ton of part time work and um be careful about that because if you want a full-time job there might not be an option they might have to work part time and um it's I've seen a lot of librarians who they'll leave a position after a couple months because they can't afford to live on that part time work so I guess I guess my original thought was to be a stronger call to just be cognizant of that but just just uh know that there's different types of positions that people are hiring for and um you want to make sure you're doing something that you can do in the long run and and so I'm going to ask you a pretty specific question here Eric um would you say that for a student who's looking for that first foot in the door job they would be wiser to not take a part-time job or perhaps to go ahead and take that part-time job but keep looking for a full-time job I think on the assumption that that part-time job probably isn't going to turn into on its own a full-time job yeah I think maybe that's more of what I was getting toward um yeah I would say a part-time job rarely parlays straight to a full-time position I don't think I've seen it happen more than a handful of times in all the libraries that I've worked in um you if you take a part-time job know that it's going to stay that way until you find another position so um I think that's really good advice and I I would add to that another thing that happens if it does convert from a part-time job into a full-time job is that the salary is going to be sort of based on what you were making as a part-time person whereas if you keep looking for that full-time job you're probably likelier to find a better salary if you're coming in as a full-time position yeah and the other thing um and now we're getting into the end of discussion at Eric ranting position um if you work 50 hours a week on your 40 hour or 20 hour job if you if you're buying like orios through your teen program because there's no money in the budget for orios for your teen program like that's not going to help you advance that's just going to help you burn out faster um there's one of the things like teacher culture the library culture has is you know oh you know just put a little extra effort you know let's go buy some orios because it's easier than going through our finance department but that doesn't help you in your career it's bad for your mental health it's bad for um like your your profession in the library it might get you into trouble uh so don't do that I think that's great advice because you what you do when you do that with as you say with the best of intentions is you set an expectation that you do work 55 hours instead of 40 for no extra pay that they don't need to hire a second person because you'll just keep taking on all of these other um responsibilities it's a difficult situation but I'm really really glad that you brought it up um there's a term I know you're familiar with it called vocational awe aw and and for the students who are listening um I would say and clearly Eric is saying that you know being a public librarian in the right role for you is like the coolest job in the world but there is also a thing that we buy into very understandably a mindset and an emotional engagement that we because we can help people we should help people and it's a vocation and calling for us to do that rather than a career or a job or a professional choice it's important to love what we do but it is also important not to let that be used against us in terms of our own professional respect what we get paid what we're willing to do and not willing to do to Eric's point I couldn't agree with you more Eric it's important to set those boundaries yeah maybe that's the whole point of that just know that you should set boundaries and that you can set boundaries it's a really good point well Eric thank you more than I can say for chatting with us today and I have like 5 000 other questions but I'm I'm going to let you go back to work now thank you for sharing your insights with us and on behalf of the iSchool students thank you so much and we all look forward to staying in touch with you I had a great time thank you so much for having me here all right take care bye bye goodbye