[WEB4LIB] Re: "systems librarians"

[Debora Seys]

>I know several women who are systems librarians, including myself.

Ditto.  My title is "Information Solutions Specialist" - which is
equivalent to an analyst position here at HP.  I was in the library,
working as the systems administrator for our IOLS - until recently 
when I went into a consultant role on the team at HP responsible for 
further development of a company wide intranet search engine and 
portal site.  They wanted someone with information management experience
but also with systems experience.

I think many systems librarians are analysts - which I consider to be
about as close to programming original code and product as you can get 
(perl, shell, and other scripting excepted) without actually doing it.
Basically what you do is administrate, configure, manage large and 
complex applications - in the beginning that meant online library systems 
and databases - increasingly now it means web presence, electronic resources,
network management, etc.

I started out as a library assistant in serials, got my MLIS, became an
original cataloger, then a tech svcs manager who increasingly found herself
managing systems instead of people.  I taught myself dBaseII (OK, I know I'm
dating myself now...) took every chance I could to get systems experience 
and I found it all interesting enough and enough of a background to land
a horizontal career move to spend 4 yrs as a systems analyst with a
library automation co., helping to develop the product.  After having had
enough with the 'other side' decided to come back to libraries - and joined
HP to manage an IOLS for 3 yrs.  In January I said yes to this opportunity 
and have now morphed out into working on intranet content management, 
metadata standards, information architecture, and who knows ????? ... 
it's moving very fast.

I can't think of any more interesting area to be in right now.  
Good luck!
Deb
-- 
Debora Seys (dseys at hpl.hp.com)               HP Labs Research Library
Information Solutions Specialist             1501 Page Mill Road, MS 2L10 
ph 650/857-3895 fx 650/857-2066              Palo Alto, California 94304