Cataloger or Head of Reference

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I subscribe to several newsfeeds that provide job postings for librarians. One job posting in particularl caught my eye last week. I kid you not, this is what it said: “Cataloger or Head of Reference, depending on experience.” I had a good laugh about that. It is sort of an inside joke for librarians but the point is, you could hardly ask for a less likely combination of background and temperament in a job candidate!

  • http://walt.lishost.org <![CDATA[walt crawford]]>

    Oh, I don’t know. When my wife was head of cataloging for a public library, back a few years ago, she also signed up for a few hours of reference desk work each week–and loved it. (On the other hand, she never got a reference librarian to take up the other half of the bet, to work in cataloging a couple of hours a week.) When she became a small academic library director, she made a point of doing front-desk work on a regular basis. So some people do mix the two temperaments.

  • <![CDATA[Emily]]>

    Are you really serious? I don’t think I can name a librarian cataloger in our large library consortium who doesn’t at least occasionally serve reference duty. I myself was a cataloger who did reference shifts… around these parts the two jobs are considered as going hand-in hand. How can you do one job without having at least some understanding of the other?