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But I Want To Hold It In My Hand! Print Resources
Evans, G. Edward & Patricia Layzell Ward. Beyond the Basics: The Management Guide for Library and Information Professionals. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2003. ISBN 1-55570-476-X. pap. $59.95. Purchase from Amazon.com.
Building on the success of their Management Basics for Information Professionals (Neal-Schuman, 2000), authors Edwards and Ward offer solidly-researched skills and strategies for navigating the climb up the career ladder.
Each section of this book focus on a different aspect of management. Part one stresses the need to understand “context.” They examine how external societal, political, economic and technological changes affect the delivery of information services, as well as the impact of the internal culture of the organization. Part two addresses a broad range of managerial responsibilities, including supervision, communication skills, fiscal matters, and accountability. Part three looks at the people factors; including diversity, service to users, and working with colleagues.
The entire text is very user-friendly, with boxed tips, examples, exercises, and chapter summaries, plus extensive bibliographies. The authors also provide updated references and additional readings on topics such as Women in Management, Cultural Diversity, and Career Development at http://neal-schuman.com/managementbasics.html.
Alice H. Yucht, aka *Alice in InfoLand*, Library Management/Information Skills Consultant: http://www.aliceinfo.org.
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Pantry, Sheila and Peter Griffiths. Your Essential Guide to Career Success, 2nd ed. London: Facet Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1856044912. $55.00. Purchase from Amazon.com.
As with an education, you get out of a book, newsgroup, journal, or web page what you put into it. I, quite honestly, got tired of putting anything into this text by page 22, partially due to an unfortunate layout that included nothing to draw the eye to a main point. (I suppose that I have been reading too many of those Dummies or Idiots books!) However, I persevered.
The book did include a well-organized table of contents, with useful chapters such as "Scene Setting: The Challenges of Today's Employment Market" and "Your Master Career Plan, or, Do you have to Kiss a lot of Frogs to find a Prince or Princess?" U.S. readers be prepared: this book is written for the UK market. You will find case studies of people in London, sentences such as "How to apply for a post," and currency in pounds. There are, however, many aspects of the job search that are similar to the United States. (It's hard - I've been out on the job market, and it's frustrating.) I also learned a word that I will use in my workplace: "outbedded." This is a term used to describe librarians who are connected or integrated with their ultimate end users. I've been searching for a term to describe this organizational phenomenon, and was glad to learn it.
What disappointed me the most were the appendixes. They contained a wealth of job and career guidance information, but it wasn't always relevant to the library and information fields. It would have also been nice to see better examples of resumes or cover letters; don't expect to find anything but a couple of pages of CV examples.
For the right person, this book will be useful. There are brief introductions to various fields of librarianship, including law, financial management, and government, that readers might have forgotten from school. The most important way to find a job and to develop your career is to be active in networking circles, however, and this topic was only peripheral in this text.
Ami C. Chitwood has recently been promoted to Senior Research Analyst in the newly formed BBN Commercial Group at BBN Technologies. She gradated from Simmons School of Library & Information Science in 2002.