Recently I was contacted by a student at UIUC GSLIS to whom I’ve been assigned as a mentor for LIS578 (Technical Services Functions). (This is the “traditional” version of the class I will be teaching again this summer via UIUC GSLIS’s distance education curriculum, known as LEEP.) This role of being a mentor is something I relish and I have been fortunate enough to be asked to do this for most of the last 12 or so years.
One of the questions my mentee asked me as part of getting to know a bit more about me was to ask about the daily challenges I face in my job. I thought I’d list my responses here. My current job is business analyst at Endeavor Information Systems, Inc. To find out more about what this job entails, see my resume.
Some Positives:
- Every day, literally, I am learning something new.
- I am able to have some direct (albeit very small) influence on how software works that librarians use every day, all around the world.
- Most of the people with whom I interact on a daily basis are highly intelligent, stimulating people. By the way, everyone in my group has a Master’s degree in library and information science (not that that’s a prequalification for high intellect and so on
).
- The salary is pretty good. Most of the time in libraries I feel like we aren’t paid what we’re worth.
- I get to see more of the “big picture” particularly as it relates to the intersection of libraries and information technology, than I probably would just about anywhere else.
Some negatives:
- I don’t like writing specifications, which is a big problem since that is a primary aspect to my job!
- While I might be responsible for writing a specification for a new feature or product, in reality I have very little control over what actually gets coded and released to customers. There is a multitude of factors that go into decisions like this, and the specification is only a small part of a larger whole. That can be frustrating at times.
- Sometimes the day to day of working for hours in a Dilbert-like cubicle, staring at computer screen, can drive me truly nuts.
