 Hi everyone and welcome to the SJSU School of Information Career Colloquia session. My name is Jill Klees and I'm the iSchool's Career Center Liaison. Thank you for joining me tonight. We have the great pleasure of having two LIS professionals with us from the Congressional Research Service, which is part of the Library of Congress. And they're going to share with us all about what's new in Federal Library and Information Careers. Our first presenter tonight is Jennifer Manning, followed by Christina Bailey, so Jennifer, take it away. So I'm Jennifer Manning. I'm a librarian with the Congressional Research Service here at the Library of Congress. Christina and I are both here at the Congressional Research Service. The Congressional Research Service, or CRS, is the part of the library that works only for Congress and the vice president, not for the public. Christina and I are both librarians embedded in our government and finance division of CRS. I've been at CRS 23 years. I came here right after library school at the University of North Carolina. Here at CRS, I specialize in the members of an office operations of Congress. I also teach classes to congressional staff. I'm also very involved in the development of our new legislative website, which is called congress.gov. And now I'm going to have Christina tell us about herself. Hello everyone, my name is Christina Bailey. I am just like Jennifer, we work in the same division, government and finance, and I'm CRS, the Congressional Research Service, located at the Library of Congress. And I've been there for about three years. Some of the questions that I work on are voting related, so members vote. Also placement of members and the committees that they serve or work on or how long they've been on certain committees, and that's an interesting thing that I work on is post office names. So, other post office names, federal buildings, are named after veterans. So, I deal a lot with those, particularly issues and questions. I also was just like Jennifer said it before, I teach classes as well. Usually it's the congressional documents class. And I go over the congressional documents that you can find, such as the congressional record, how to find things in there. So, things that are major, I'll also talk about our website that we have, which is CRS.gov, which is not a public website, it's an internet website that we use for our day-to-day and transactional questions and answer periods. So, that's me and in that field. Okay. So, we just kind of want to give you all an overview of federal library jobs, because it's not on everyone's radar screen, especially if you're not in the Washington area, not everyone is aware of all the types of federal libraries that are out there. Pretty much every type of library and information center that you can think of exists somewhere in the federal government. For example, many people who don't have a military background have no idea that we have community libraries and school libraries on our military bases around the world and in the United States. These are run by civilian professional librarians working for the Department of Defense. And not just the Library of Congress, we have other national libraries like the National Library of Medicine, we have the National Agricultural Library. Of course, all of our museums have libraries. We've got medical libraries through the VA, almost every federal agency has a library. So, we have many, many federal libraries not just in D.C., but throughout the country and around the world. So, Christina, you want to talk about how we got our jobs? So, that is the million dollar question. How did we start to work at CRA? So, like I said before, I've been there for about three years. But it's very interesting when I started my job, I don't know how many of you heard about USAJobs, so we're going to talk about that a little later on in the presentation. But I actually went to the Library of Congress website and I saw a job hosting for CRS, the rest of the research service. And I started out as a grad recruit. So, at CRS, the grad recruit program was for graduates, anyone that graduated within a year after graduation, so I graduated in December of 2010 and I started my grad, my program in June. So, it was in within that year time frame and the program was actually for four months, it got extended to eight and then they licensed me, so they decided to keep me in, I became a permanent employee, so I've been there for about three years. And that's how I started out at CRS. And would Jennifer take how you started out at CRS as a grad recruit? So, like Christina, I came to CRS straight out of graduate school as part of our graduate recruit program. I came when I was 22 right after getting my master's. I had spent one undergraduate summer in the Library of a Federal Agency here in DC. That's when I first learned about the Congressional Research Service. And I see someone is asking, what is CRS? I'll mention that again. We are the part of the Library of Congress that only works for Congress and the Vice President as basically the United States Legislative Library. The rest of the Library of Congress functions as the National Library of the United States, but we're the division of the Library that only deals with members of Congress and their staff. We have a couple of sister agencies called the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office. So, we are a legislative branch agency unlike the most of the federal government that's an executive branch agency. So, as I said, I spent a summer in a Federal Agency. That's when I first learned about CRS. Also, in library school, I had worked in the Library of the North Carolina Institute of Government, which is a state version of CRS. Every state has some sort of legislative library or research service that does what we do on the federal level. So, for example, in California, you have something called the California Research Bureau in Sacramento. Like Christina, I came only knowing that I had a three-month paid internship. I did not have a permanent job yet, and it was turned into a permanent job at the end of those three months. So, Christina had mentioned USA Jobs. Almost all federal library jobs are posted on a central government jobs website called USA Jobs. It's run by the Office of Personnel Management. So, the Library of Congress posts its job openings here. Again, even though we are not an executive branch agency, we are a legislative branch agency. So, as an example, here is a job posting for our agency CRS for a library job. It closed last week. We are hiring a health librarian to work in our Domestic Social Policy Division. A few of our librarians in that area are retiring soon, and because of Obamacare, health care reform, health policy continues to be a really hot area with our congressional clients. So, these health librarians are super busy right now. A few things to notice on this job posting. Notice that our job title does not have the word librarian in it. Christina and I are both information research specialists. A lot of federal library jobs don't use that term anymore. Also, notice this posting tells you what the salary range is. I see the posting was only open for about two and a half weeks. They tell you where it's located. In our case, we're here in D.C. on Capitol Hill, and who may apply, U.S. citizens. That is pretty common in all three branches of the federal government. We can only hire U.S. citizens. Permanent residents, green card residents aren't eligible. Now, applying for a federal job is pretty complicated. You have to set up an account at USA Jobs. You have to kind of upload resumes. You have to fill out an online application, which includes some kind of written question and answer questions, short essays. You have to submit what's called a federal style resume, which is structured in a specific way. We actually have material on the Library of Congress employment website that kind of helps you through this process, not just for our jobs at the Library of Congress, but throughout the federal government. Now, this is an example of a special federal hiring program that CRS and a lot of other agencies use, and we wanted to highlight it for also a very specific reason. This is the Presidential Management Fellows Program, or PMS. It is a two-year well-paid fellowship for people just coming out of graduate school or very recent graduates. It has a lot of good training and network opportunities. At the end of the two-year program, you are almost always offered a permanent job. This is a very prestigious program. New information school graduates who are accepted into it usually end up with multiple fellowship offers from different agencies. CRS hires some of its new librarians, as well as some new analyst and attorneys through this program, but not every year. Now, the application window is only two weeks long for this PMS program, and the deadline for this fall is expected to be Wednesday, October 15th. They haven't actually announced the actual deadline yet. I just checked a couple of hours ago. But I guess we should all assume it's going to be open for applications from October 1 through October 15th. So these applications are for the fellowship class starting in summer or autumn of next year. Fellows have a little bit of latitude of when they start at their agency. People who finish their graduate degree between October 2013 and August 2015 will be eligible to apply, so it's really just for people, again, coming straight out of grad school or just graduated after October 2013. So this is an example of a federal program in which you need to apply way far in advance, and there's also a short time window in which to apply. So you kind of really have to get it together and apply for it. But this is a great program. When I was coming out of graduate school, they didn't include a library and information science people yet, but now they do. I would have totally applied. I see someone ask if you're already a federal employee. Yeah, you can still apply for this. That's not going to, they aren't going to hold that against you. What they care is that you're a new graduate. That's what's important to them. But I would definitely encourage people to look into this. Now, Kristina is going to talk about another program also that you see on USHI. I've got another program that's available on USHI, as you can see, it's called Pathways. And Pathways is, somebody, some of what Jennifer just spoke about, especially includes the Presidential Management Fellows Program, but it also includes mentorship program and recent graduate program. Of course, with the internship, you have to be an actual student and of an educational institution. And also, as a recent graduate program, or in the recent graduate program, you can apply up to two years after graduation. And these job postings, like we said, Jennifer stated before, are posted on USAJobs. Each agency can set their rules as far as when the application process will begin and will end. And Jennifer showed you an example with the PMS that was two weeks. Usually, there is a short window. I think the one of the longest I've ever seen it was about three to four weeks. So usually, it lasts no more than about a month for you to apply or put in your application for one of these programs. And the USAJobs, and the job description is spread out the same way. So it has, you know, if it has a salary attached to it, it will be stated there how long the program is scheduled to last, will be listed there as well. And will you be working or serving the time of your internship in the graduate program, be listed there as well as also. Also, if you want to know more about it, as you can see at the very top, the URL is located above the print screen. You can go to the next slide. Okay. Next, I wanted to talk about, you can go on to the next slide. It's, thank you. The next one, next program I want to talk about is the Julius Bellows Summer Internship Program. This program is sponsored by the Library of Congress, and it lasts for about 10 weeks. And within the two weeks, you, you work in an apartment, and there's several departments that you can work in within the Library of Congress. It could be CLS, you could be placed there, if there's an opening, as well as the Office of the Librarian. You can also be placed in preservation research or cataloging, acquisition. There are many several areas where you can work in as a genius fellow. But as I said before, it is a 10-week program, and you also, you do get paid. It is a paid program. So, the stipend is $3,000, I believe that what it is for this year, it was $3,000. And that program is usually posted towards the end of the year, the application process. So, it's somewhere around December, and it may close around January. But the program is actually during the summer. But as you can see, they want you to apply early. So, getting in those applications or being prepared for some of the opportunities to roll out now is very, very vital or important. Just the program, because it is the last 10 weeks, and with the $3,000 to answer this question, and I know I've just seen this question before, you don't get it all front, so you get $300 per week, and it spreads up to $3,000. So, this is a short snippet about the Genius Fellows program. Anyone's interested? So, I'm going to talk, this is another special hiring program for new library school graduates. The National Library of Medicine, which I mentioned is another national library. It's up in Bethesda, Maryland. They have a paid fellowship program that lasts either one or two years. Again, this is also a very prestigious program. We actually have a librarian here at CRS that did this fellowship program and then was hired by us full-time. The application deadline for the 2015-2016 fellows program is going to be announced later this fall. Last year's deadline for the class of fellows that is in existence now was February. So, probably, again, in February, they'll have the applications out for this. But again, this is a really good program. They do a lot of great training. They do a lot of field trips. I would really recommend looking into this. And I say that not just because a friend of mine from library school runs the program. Now, a really good way to learn more about federal library and information science jobs is to subscribe to this listserv, Careers and Federal Libraries. It's a Google group. I subscribe to it. I actually get it as a digest. I get once a week. I get this great posting. This is run by the fabulous Nancy Fajer, who's just a whirlwind. She captures every possible job that might be of interest to people like us. Mainly, she's pulling them off the USA jobs, but she'll also get here about postings from other people that will send her notes about internships and things. When you look at this, again, notice some of these jobs don't have the word library or librarian in them. Also, notice that you see a couple of military jobs there. I mentioned those military library jobs earlier. Also, you know, you've got jobs posting here for not just in the DC area, but around the country. This is really good to get yourself familiar with federal jobs. So even before you're ready to start job hunting, this is just a great way to see these emails and get a feel for what's out there, to get really familiar with the jargon of federal job announcements, and to see what the job descriptions look like. It's a great way to kind of get an idea for all the different job titles. So you can search for those titles on USA jobs. And Christina is going to tell you about another way you might want to look into getting interested into federal librarianship. Okay, so moving on to Flatbird. I know it's like a weird name. Oh, can you hear me? Okay, good. So Flatbird, I know it sounds weird, but what it stands for is federal and armed forces library round table. And I'm pretty sure many of you have heard of ALA, of the American Library Association. So this organization or chapter is a division of the bigger ALA. And this is a great way to network to meet other librarians that are in the field of federal librarianship as well as armed forces. That's a route that you would like to travel for the direction you would like to go in. And they do have lists of, on federal openings sometimes. Because of the networking aspect of it, a lot of job postings may be known about before they actually are posted to everyone. And you get to see that during the list of, if you become a member. And you also get to network with other federal librarians that may be in a federal library that you are curious about, you want to know more about. And you can email or get in contact with them and reach out to them along the aisle. I happen to know the current president, which is, she was the past president of the DC Library Association, which is also under the American Library Association. And she has done a wonderful job with this program. And she continues to work forward with efforts to reaching out to librarians to make them sure that they have clear opportunities in mentoring shifts and partnerships with other libraries around DC or within this community. So it's a very good program. And I encourage anyone to be a part, to actually be active in an organization or association because it can do so much more than just looking on the internet for a job, which is fine. You know, that is part of the job search, but a lot of the search, too, involves networking, knowing people, getting to know the job. It may be something that may look like, oh, wow, I found the outside. But then as you get into it, you really get to see what are the inner workings of it. And being a part of an association like that first will help you do that. Okay. I know this slide is kind of hard to see, but it's not just that our jobs are interesting and secure and we have good benefits and a lot of paid holidays like Columbus Day and Veterans Day. We also have really good salaries and that's one reason to think about federal librarianships. We are the highest paid type of librarians in the United States. So you see the median salary of all librarians. And below that, the salary of federal librarians. And Christine and I make above the median and neither of us are supervisors. So that's kind of a nice thing. Now, maybe Jill can tell you about a CRS report that might be of use to you guys, but Christine and I, for complicated reasons, are not allowed to tell you about it. So, or Jill, are you going to send that to them later? Actually, the report that Jennifer is referring to is on the abstract, the promotion and marketing material that was sent out referencing this particular colloquia session. So there was a link to the fellowship program and then there was a link to the report that Jennifer is referring to. So you can certainly find it that way if for some reason you can't, you can email me and I will send you that link out. But it's a great report that can you say Jennifer what it summarizes or you can't say anything about it at all? I think we can say what it summarizes. So it's about internship and fellowship programs in the federal government. It's not specifically about library and internship programs, but I think one thing to remember is just because a program does not, you know, have the word library written all over it doesn't mean that it isn't open to library or information science people. You know, the presidential management fellows program, no librarians participated in the first couple of decades of its existence and then finally a couple of library schools said, hey, you know, we should be in this too. And agencies said, yeah, that'd be a great way to hire librarians and now librarians always are. So I would say don't be deterred by a fellowship program just because it doesn't, you know, say library or information science in the short description. Same way with internship programs. Sometimes, you know, they recruit people and they have finalists and they look at who they have in the program and then they go out and find appropriate jobs for them. So, you know, don't just limit your search to things that just specifically say librarian, especially when you're looking at federal or like minority group internship programs. So this is our contact information. We might go straight to questions because I hope you guys have a lot of questions or Christina, do you have anything else you want to point out before we go to questions? No, we can go to questions. That pretty much sums it up. So any of the questions, I guess just to remind them they can type it in the chat box located, I guess it's to you guys right, the questions that you may have for me and Jennifer. So this is Jill. Wow, people are thinking about some questions. I have some for you right off the top. Two of them actually. So one is you've mentioned a couple of times that a number of the job titles do not have librarian in them so in that case, if a student is going to a recent grad is going to search for these jobs in USA jobs for example, what might they search with or what words would you recommend? How would they find some of those jobs that are appropriate for them? Well, as I mentioned earlier, a great way is to use that careers in federal libraries, Google group and just, you know, scoop up a lot of those titles because Nancy really casts the net really broadly and she kind of pulls in jobs that, you know, have to do with research and outreach and teaching. So I think that's one of the best ways to do it. I think you can search kind of by broad job type but it's still, it's pretty broad. If you also look at some job postings, you'll see that sometimes they have kind of specific job classification series assigned to them. A lot of library jobs are in what is called the 1410 series. Our jobs are here at Sierra and some other agencies. So sometimes you can use that classification number. Also I see Danica ask about GS levels, can you apply for? That's all going to depend on the specific job. I think the, for example, Presidential Management Foundation, Management Fellows Program, I think that's mainly bringing people in at a GS9. But it varies and sometimes an agency will post a job and they might hire you at one level or another kind of depending on your qualification. So they might hire you at a 11 or they might hire you at a 12, so it varies. So it's not hard and fast rule that, you know, master's degree equals this GS level but it usually equals a GS9. And just to piggyback off of what Jennifer said, when I started the Graduate Recruit Program, I started off as a GS9. In the description, too, is one of those things you kind of have to look really closely at the very beginning, this is at the earlier slide where we kind of showed an example of a job posting in USA Jobs, but it'll also show the promotional track. So currently I'm in a promotional track and that means that even though I started out as a GS9, I can go up to a GS10. And so you can start off at one grade and end up at a totally different another grade or a grade higher than where you started from. Okay, welcome. So I see, Danica, sorry. I'll go ahead, Jennifer, I'm sorry. So how competitive, I'd say it's really competitive and a lot of it has to do with the salary and the security. So it's not uncommon for agencies to get hundreds of applications. I think that we tend to get hundreds of applications for jobs here at the Congressional Research Service. Another thing to remember is the job application process tends to be pretty slow in the federal government, so it often takes longer for an agency to pick someone than a private sector or even a university job would take. So, you know, if it's January or February and you're graduating in May, don't feel like it's too early for you to start applying for jobs in the federal government that it's going to take months. It might take months before you hear anything about your application. And Danica, I guess the follow-up question was GS, she's currently a GS5 and would like to apply for a fellowship position. And I believe you still can. You can apply for a fellowship position even with a particular grade. I believe so. Jennifer, did you have any additional information to add to that? Yeah, my understanding with these fellowship programs is what makes you eligible is the fact that you're a new graduate from graduate school and that's what counts. It's not, they aren't going to look at what your GS level is now. So, they really don't care about what job you're coming out of. They care that what they care about is that you're coming out of graduate school. But what's nice in your case because you are a federal employee, of course, you know, you are already getting benefits and, you know, federal service. And so these fellowships do count towards your retirement federal service. You get the same benefits as a regular employee, you know, sick leave and health insurance and all of that. The next question that was stated, is there a specific major that MLS students need to sign up for? I'll say in my case, before I started my job here at CRS, I worked or did an internship at CNN's library and during the time the one I was going on, so I did a lot of military issues. And the grant recruit program at the time was posted in the foreign defense and trade division. And that helped to me to convert into this position that I'm in now at CRS. So, I also took, while I was in my program, I took some government courses or government skillset courses where it shows you how to search different government databases. So, a lot of the databases such as Eric is what we use a lot to find information and of course the Library of Congress and similar government agencies, GPO, which is the government training office to find answers to questions in our classes. So, those are really helpful. And in fact, in my application packet, I put that on there. So, they said that actually stood out as far as experience go. And I would chime in that it really has differs with the specific job. So, for example, if you look at our job posting for the health librarian, I mean they want someone with an MLS, but of course they also want some sort of education or experience in health or medicine. So, you know, someone who has an undergrad in biology or has worked in the health field would have an edge. In my case, my undergraduate is actually in political science. I also had taken government documents courses, I think for many federal librarian jobs, any experience with government documents or also with legal materials is very helpful because many of our jobs have to do with working with government documents, especially legislative and legal documents. Anytime you can demonstrate, you know, a familiarity with civics with, you know, just U.S. government with the legislative process, how things work in the government, that's really going to give you an edge because you, whatever our library job is, we're doing it within the context of the federal government. Of course, if you were applying for a military library job, it would be great to have a military background even if it just means you grew up in a military family because, you know, that means you know the client base of the library. So, Karen asked about library jobs on military bases. Yeah, all those jobs are posted in USA Jobs. The one exception would be maybe if some of those bases use contractors, but I don't think it's that common, but yeah, you're going to see those military base jobs on USA Jobs and you can search by geography in USA Jobs so you can look for jobs in just a specific part of the country. I think the next question is there a requirement to have expensive library experience before applying for the fellowship? You know, Jennifer, to piggyback off of what Jennifer was saying, a lot of an experience that comes in with internships, that's where my experience came in. So, I did two internships before I started the graduate recruit program and the internships or volunteer efforts that you may participate in can transfer to those experiences and my internships lasted one lasted eight months and the other lasted a year. So, that's kind of like the time frame, about the time that I was in my graduate program for about two years, so that helped me also to get real log experience, or hands-on experience before I entered into this job. And I would just add that also the internships and things are great, but some of these fellowship programs like PMF, they really are designed, truly are designed for new graduates, so they do not expect you to have a lot of extensive experience. And I, you know, I came to CRS in the graduate group program when I was 22, so I did not have much full-time library experience at all other than just work in the summer between school years. Danica asked about special materials with application materials. I, you're probably referring to something having to do with deafness. I would, I think probably in USA Jobs, yes, there is a special place to submit those, those special materials. I know that there are special places for like veterans preference, so I think there actually is a specific place where they actually ask you for those materials in the application process. And the next, are the library positions available all over the United States, or just mainly in DC. So there's a lot of positions, federal positions in DC, but throughout the United States, there are also positions as well. And as you can see, we still have the USA Jobs posting on that site. So a lot of times, they're, they're federal agencies in other cities. So if you put in the keyword in the first keyword box, you want to say, just throughout the library, instead of library, and sometimes that may not always give the desired results. And then the next box over, you can put in the city or state, if you have a particular one in mind, and it'll also generate other places in the US where there's a federal job or a federal opportunity, or even internships, that's in a lot of internships and federal programs, not only in DC, but across the US. So I agree with Christina, probably the bulk of federal library jobs are in DC, but there are federal agencies across the country, and again, not just the military bases, but agencies do have divisions. I mean, for example, the Federal Reserve Banks, there's a big Federal Reserve Board Library here in DC serving our central bank, but there are Federal Reserve Banks across the country, like there's one in San Francisco and one in Denver. All of those Federal Reserve Banks have libraries. There are even National Park Service libraries at different national parks. For example, Yellowstone has a library. I think maybe Yosemite has a library as well. VA hospitals sometimes have libraries. And again, we do have the military bases with libraries. Even the Library of Congress has a couple of overseas offices, and the State Department has libraries in some embassies. So the jobs are mainly here in DC, but not all of them. So Karen, ask about the NPH school. I'm not sure. This is how about the NPH school. There's a lot of acronyms in the federal school. I wasn't sure NPH is located in Monterey, California. Maybe postgraduate school. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they do have a library, actually. I think all of the military graduate schools have libraries attached to them. I'm sorry. I know they have a library. I've actually been in it before. You said that the Navy schools, you said, were a slightly different hiring process. And I was wondering if that applied to the Navy postgraduate school or not. I don't have any specific knowledge about whether the hiring process for the Navy in Monterey is different. I thought that most of their postings went through USA jobs, but I could be wrong on that. Most agencies also do have their own job posting page. So for example, all the Library of Congress jobs are posted on USA jobs, but they also do post them on our own Library of Congress employment page for the public. So I will look to see if they've got an open job page on their website. And the next thing, what types of courses would you recommend for someone looking to increase their hire ability within the government system? So like Jennifer was saying, it really depends on what you want to do. So there, I know when I was in my program, there were courses you could take if you wanted to be a cataloger. Those, of course, will be vital if you do want to do cataloging to take courses that are geared to cataloging. Another thing, like I mentioned before, are government sources. If you want to look in federal government, government classes are called government documents when I was taking it. And that really helped me navigate a lot of government sites to kind of get familiar with where the information was placed, what they looked like. Because some government sites can be a little uniquely structured. So it takes a little bit more effort and a little more time to kind of search through them, especially as a researcher to find out or research some things that may not be right there in front of you. So to navigate a site is a really good course, or a government document course to take to learn how to navigate the source correctly or more efficiently. I would just piggyback on Christina. I mean, government documents classes always good. And then I think any classes having to do with legal materials are really useful for a lot of federal government jobs. Michelle asked about foreign service positions. I do know a little bit about that, because I have a number of friends in these positions. So the State Department has a library at its headquarters, but they do have a special track of foreign service officers called information resource officers. What they mainly do is they kind of oversee little embassy libraries and also little outposts in foreign countries where the US, for example, partner with a local university. And the US will provide some materials for that university's library. And these are called American Corners. So a lot of the information resource officers oversee these installations in sometimes several countries at once. Often they are based in the US, and they fly out to the countries that they supervise once or twice a month. So these people do actually have to take the foreign service exam, just like other people, applying to be diplomats. But once they take the exam and pass it, it is a specific track that they're in. The foreign service tends to hire people kind of in batches for these positions. So instead of just posting one job at a time, they'll kind of wait until they have a whole handful of positions and post. The application process takes a really long time. You might pass the foreign service exam, but they may not have any jobs for you right then. And then maybe a year later, they might invite you to apply for a job. But so the short answer is yes, there are basically diplomat librarians, but it is an arduous process to get a job there. There are actually quite a few Library of Congress librarians who have retired from the Library of Congress and then they spend five or 10 years as foreign service librarians traveling because maybe their kids are grown and they aren't tied to Washington anymore. So I had a friend who recently retired and she did this for them for about 10 years and she spent many years flying to Central Africa about once a month to supervise our libraries in about four or five different countries in equatorial Africa. Besides the job security and pay, what else is the best thing about your job? So that's a good question. One of the things I really enjoy about my job is the research aspect and the deadline. So my first internship was at CNN Library and they had a lot of deadlines. In fact, a lot of hours last because we were always working through a commercial break. So I look at commercials totally different. But this job I have now too also has deadlines. So I may receive a question from a member's office and they may have a deadline attached to it. The deadline can be anywhere from an hour to a couple of days to a couple of hours. So it's kind of like a race against the clock to kind of find the response that's needed or the answer that the office is looking for. So I do enjoy that. I enjoy, I also enjoy talking with the different offices and answering their questions. I get to learn more about the legislative process which is great in the voting process. So I can honestly say from when I first started up until now I know way more than I did before I actually started about the legislative process and the change of a congress and how it all works. I would say that I really enjoy being on Capitol Hill and being very close to the political process but not in it. And I'm having the security to kind of observe Congress very closely but not worry about my boss getting defeated for reelection. It's still a thrill for me to walk past the Capitol every morning and afternoon when I go to and from work. Like Christina, I enjoy working for my clients. It's just kind of fun to be part of the federal government. Danica asked about keywords. In addition to course library and librarian, I think probably information and research are the two that stand out for me. I mean, those are the two words in our job titles but I think you're gonna see a lot of jobs that use one or both of those. And like I said, the foreign service officers that are the information resource specialist. Sorry, information resource officers. So research, information, resources, library, librarian are the keywords that come to mind for me first. I know Kate was asking, do you have a link to the government doc site? And we have for one of the sites that we had showing or I wasn't sure. Okay, the government printing office. Yeah, is that the one you mean? Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, Christina was referring to the government docs classes and I wondered if there's any information available online where we could check out that information or is that something you only have access to once you have a government job? Oh, she might have been talking about the classes that we teach to congressional staff on government docs and so those are not available to the, those are just classes we teach for congressional staff here within the legislative branch. But, along with just the figure I spoke to just, my program, they had a class of course where it's focused on navigating digital government websites and it was called, ironically it was called government doc, or government document and ironically I do teach the class called government doc. But it was a class designed so we would have, it's kind of like a treasure hunt. So our assignment every week during the course, they would give us a list of things to find and then we had to use the government source to find things. So a lot of things with GPO and the government printing with Jennifer Tyson, the chat room box, the government printing office, some things that are found there are the congressional record and so we may have, a question may have been what happened on this particular day in the congressional record at the beginning of the day. So that was kind of like the curriculum that we had during that course. I kind of answered your question. Are you welcome? And Jennifer just posted an update down below. So our law library here at the Library of Congress offers public webinars actually on legal research and they teach webinars about the new, the legislative website congress.gov, which is the official website for legislative information. Are there any other questions about federal opportunities? Yes, yes, okay. All right. Yeah, that sounds like a course. I would have to go to North Carolina, but I went to the University of North Texas. I guess that should stay today. Hi, this is Jill. I do have another question for you guys. You mentioned that and we know that applying for jobs through the government often takes a long time that the process can be a little slow. So if a job description requires somebody with their MLIS but a person hasn't graduated yet and they're anticipating how long the process might take, would it make sense for them to apply, I don't know, three months before they're going to graduate because the process is slow or would they automatically get kicked out and I would make it through the process because they don't actually have the MLIS at the time they applied for the position? I would say apply anyway. I mean, you don't have anything to lose. Actually, if you look at some postings, it's not uncommon to see that it says MLS preferred or people with MLS is encouraged to apply. If you actually look at the job posting from our agency, that's the way it's worded. They are not saying an MLS is required, although certainly whoever is hired will have one. But I would say apply anyway because in this, for example, in this case, the computers that are reading the applications when they first come in are going to let that person through even if they don't have the MLS yet. So, yeah, I mean, if you're three or four months out, I would say definitely apply anyway. And with the job, just to take you back off to Jennifer Luke before I forget, one of the things when I applied three years ago, reading the job announcement is very, very important, very carefully. One of the things I requested was for me to have a transcript of my courses, of the courses that I took. And so when they, I just thought since I got my graduate degree at MLS, they just used the graduate transcript. They also wanted the undergrad transcript. So they did notify me because I was one of the final candidates. So that's what they needed. But if I wasn't notified, they had the opportunity to not accept my application just because I didn't provide everything that they asked for. So even though they're kinda, the announcements are lengthy on the website, but they are very detailed and what they require for you to have. Oh, and then two, I would say one of the things that helped me when I was looking to work into the federal government or find a federal opportunity. So I went to my local bookstore and where is local library? And I found a book on federal resumes because there's a lot of terminology before and I was, this is my first federal job. I was working in private sector. And there's a lot of different terminology, a lot of acronyms that are on the job description. Even though a lot of times the acronyms are spelled out, but there's a lot of things that I didn't quite understand. It's like grades and theories. And the book helped me to understand what those terminologies meant and what the job announcement was asking for. Thanks, Christina. That was a good suggestion about the federal resume. And I'm wondering, I mean, more recently, I have heard about students needing to create a federal style resume for jobs. But has that always been true or is that something that's relatively new? Cause I've just recently started hearing about that. I think it's a fairly new development where they want the resume in a very specific format. But I guess the nice thing is once you've created it, you can load it up to USA Jobs and then it's done. I don't think you have to keep loading it up for every application. You load it up once and it's done. Thanks, that's good to know. And I guess if you have a question, I don't know if they do it as much now. Sometimes I see it every now and again in the job announcement, so when I applied for the program, I had a couple of questions about some of the things that were mentioned to the right of the print screen where you see agency contact info. It doesn't have it for this announcement, but a lot of announcements have a particular name and a number. So I had a couple of questions that I was unsure about and I actually called the number and an actual live person picked up. So I was very grateful and it also gives some of your questions answered too in a timely fashion for the announcement closing. So Kate, which fellowship are you asking about? That's a good question because I've, because each agent, I mean, agencies are picking individual fellows from the pool and hiring them and I know that kind of the fair where all of the finalists are brought to DC and the agencies kind of pick them is of course in DC, but I guess theoretically an agency outside of DC could ask for a fellow and one part of the fellows program is that as part of the two year assignment in the agency, you get to do a rotation at another agency as part of kind of cross training and networking and I have heard of fellows being sent outside of DC to like another branch of the agency to do their rotation. So I think in theory that they could have fellows permanently posted outside of DC. So if you, doing a fellowship in DC is not going to limit you and mean that you have to stay in DC forever, you could possibly get a permanent job elsewhere. There you go Felicia, there's the site. Thanks Kate for putting that up too and on the marketing promotion materials for this particular session, there's also a link to all this information as well. So we have one minute left. I guess we'll see if there's one last question and then if not, we will wrap it up but I'll see if we have one more question coming through. All right, it doesn't look like anyone's typing anything away. So I would like to thank our presenters very much. This was highly informative. You were able to give so much great information about the hiring process and different resources and avenues that students can use to get into the federal government. I found myself being very motivated about even like wanting to work for the government who are like, wow, this is really exciting. So thank you for inspiring us and motivating us. I really appreciate it. Thank you to all the participants who are on tonight. Have a great evening, everyone and the link to the recording in case you'd like to review some information again, we'll be up on the Cloak Lea page probably in about a week or so. Thanks so much and good night. Good night.