[Web4lib] Seeking Advice: Switching Career Paths

[Jonathan Gorman]

---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:16:32 -0400
>From: Will Kurt <wkurt at bbn.com>  
>Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Seeking Advice: Switching Career Paths  
>To: "David Kemper" <siansleep at gmail.com>, web4lib <web4lib at webjunction.org>
>
>Although I'm not a Web Services / Web Development Librarian, I do run 
>a library job site in my spare time, so I do a fair amount of web 
>development work and also see around a thousand library job postings 
>a year.   My 2 cents are:
>
>Jon makes some good points, although I fully believe that you (and 
>everyone who's posted) can get a web librarian job if you want 
>it.  Too frequently libraries want an unreasonable number of 
>qualifications for an equally unreasonable low pay. I could rant 
>volumes about this, but needless to say I think it's a poor practice.
>

I suppose I should clarify my statement about not getting a web design position.  I think it would be nearly impossible to get a pure web design job as a full time regular position in a library.  If the graphical art side of the job is really what you enjoy and don't want to work with the programming/database type stuff, it's not likely to happen.  On the other hand, if you're willing to branch out to the web developer and database side it's much more feasible.  To even round it out more, some knowledge of usability testing and managing life-cycles would be useful to pick up.

Jon Gorman