Part of what inspired me to make this website was to get into what it’s like to be a newish librarian. It’s January 2nd, and this marks the anniversary of my search for sustained, and god willing, permanent library-type work.

I live in Ottawa and for a few tangible, personal reasons I’ve been looking for in that city (and a few other cities, too). Living in the nation’s capital means trying to get a public sector job. Frankly, like everywhere this particular job market is not  bullish.

A recent Ottawa Citizen article brought this into focus:

A growing list of jobless public servants, coupled with spending cuts and a shrinking pool of jobs, signals a staffing squeeze in the federal government not seen since the massive downsizing of the 1990s.

Maria Barrados, president of the Public Service Commission, says the number of workers on the government’s priority list for jobs is climbing and she’s braced for that list to grow as spending restraints kick in and more workers are laid off or declared surplus.

The latest twist is the commission isn’t placing as many of these workers in new jobs now that the growth in the size of the public service for much of the decade has all but stopped in its tracks.” (full article here.)

News like this doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism, but  the situation clear: a shrinking number of jobs and more people looking. Hardly a novel situation these days.

The frankly cheery employment prospects I heard about while doing my MLIS have not materialized. The 2007 study “The Future of Human Resources in Canadian Libraries” by the The 8Rs Research Team, suggests quite explicitly that demand for librarians should exceed the HR pool by 2% in 2009 and by 12% in 2014 (pg 170). It’s 2011 now, so presumably the demand should be somewhere between 2% and 12%.

This should sound like good enough news, but it doesn’t factor in several complicating issues that couldn’t be predicted in 2007, such as intense budget tightening (as the Feds are doing right now), delayed retirements, and technological impacts. The study does go so far as to suggest that restructuring and budget constraints will account for some positions disappearing. Overall, they’re keen to suggest that there will not be enough librarians to fill all the librarian jobs.

Predictions and reality have not met up perfectly with my experiences. That’s not cause for throwing in the towel. After a year of applying and waiting, interviews and near misses, etc. etc., I’m not sure how rosy my job search glasses are. That might be a good thing.

The entrepreneurial side of me always drives me to rethinks things, to make what hasn’t worked yet work, and/or move on. That’s a process I’m going through right now.

What does that mean? How will these new efforts manifest themselves? I’m not exactly sure, yet. Figuring that out will be one of the themes Drop the Reference Bomb will be exploring. Neat, right?