Job Responsibilities
Before attending graduate school I worked in a national library
as a senior editor. My primary task was to develop and add
entries to Estonian General Thesauri (used for indexing books).
It was a part-time job for me then as I studied in a university
at the same time. I think I spent about 20 hours per week on
that job.
|
Job Requirements
At least high school diploma was required for that position. Jet
uncompleted BA degree was OK, too. Information scientists, i.e
librarians to be were preferred, but also specialists of another
fields were OK - sometimes you had to index books from different
fields and knowledges of those would be quite useful. I can say
that not only librarians are valued specialists in libraries.
|
Uppers
I think one of the best parts of my job was the flexible schedule. It enabled me
to study. And I even had some time for leisure: visiting friends, night clubs,
cultural events etc.
If you are a type of independent worker and your boss allows it: you could even
work from home on that kind of profession. It only requires access to the
Internet and to your database.
|
Downers
Lots of time to spend near the computer: not good for shoulders
and back (tenses) and eyes. Some self-discipline was needed to
take short breaks for rest.
It??s not in the nature of the job, though, but most of my
colleagues were women (so am I). It was sometimes quite annoying
because of chit-chat, gossips etc. It was quite hard to work as
ladies next to you discussed on cheap prizes of fish market or
tested new cheap parfumes.
|
Lifestyle
For my position there was no business travel. We only celebrated birthdays in my
dept, and Christmas. And in our company as a whole, only Christmas was
celebrated. The dress code was quite casual (if you didn??t have to deal with
customers). Even my boss (a woman), wore T-shirt and jeans quite often;)
|
Compensation
The salary was low as in other libraries in Estonia (less than
500 USD per month - for a FULL-TIME job). Let??s not talk about
it much. It seems that the patrons of libraries assume that all
librarians here work for pleasure because they all have husbands
who earn a lot of money. That??s not true. No bonuses. There was
a benefit: a discount in Statoil (a gas-station) - a few USD
cents off a gasoline litre. How ironic: I??m still a pedestrian
and couldn??t still use that benefit.
|
Advice to Jobseekers
A newcomer should consider that he/she will find out much
interesting on the most different subjects, people, geographical
place names etc. It??s an educating job, that??s true. It develops
a person??s skill to see things hierarchically (u know, narrower
terms, broader terms, SEE ALSOs & SEEs). For an example: you
will finally learn: what is narrower term in fauna - a family, a
species etc. The job proposes some challenges as the
administration districts in some countries sometimes change - a
lot of mess, I must admit. That job requires the "objective
thinking". You can??t value or give your personal opinion during
your job on special subjects (like UFOs, rassism, feminism,
different religious groups). And you certainly must be able
to "try walking in information seeker??s shoes". As indexing
books - you can??t give them bizarre indexes, you should rather
think as your customer, the reader who seeks information in the
database you??ve been working on. Good luck!
|
