Selecting courses and beyond...

I picked my courses for the Winter 2007 term. Damn, 2007. I can remember when 2000 felt like a million years in the future.

But I digress. So, course selection. Here is what I selected:

-- 762: Enterprise Content Management
-- 530: Managing IT in Libraries
-- 672: Financial Management
-- 675: Collection Development
-- 570: Instructional Strategies
-- 742: Managing Vendor Relations

(This list is in no particular order, as I have yet to figure out how I am going to rank these course; oh yes, liberry skool has created a course selection system intended for us second-guessing types :)

So, it's not all geek courses. I've mixed it up and will be learning me some traditional library curriculum. However, the said "traditional library" courses were selected for purely pragmatic reasons. As the Winter 2007 term will be my final term in liberry school, I have begun to look at job postings. It seems like a lot of library jobs are looking for candidates with experience in collection development and library instruction.

I guess I'm just confused as to what my future career direction will be. My course selection reflects this confusion. Two of my courses are technical. These are courses I want to take. I want to continue to develop my technical skill set. The other courses are focused on what I believe I need to take in order to get a job (most likely in a library). I don't necessarily want to take them, but I feel that I should take them in order to increase my employablilty

But the thing is, I don't even know if I want to work in a library. I have thoroughly enjoyed my co-op experience at the medical library and it has piqued my interest in special librarianship. I guess it's all related to the fact that I don't know what I want to do after I finish the program.

I find it funny though that if you ask library school students why they are enrolled, the majority of answers will be that they want to work in a library. Also, most of them will probably bring up a librarian from their past who inspired them to become a librarian. This wasn't my experience. Thinking back, the reason I wanted to get my MLIS was that I found the degree to have struck a balance between the not-so-technical and the too-technical.

I did believe at one time that if I was going to work in a library, I was going to be a Systems Librarian. However, after looking at a lot of postings for that type of position, a lot of libraries require that the candidate have a degree in computer science. I don't have that. I have a good understanding of technology and how it works. But when a job opening asks that a candidate have experience in programming, I have to move on down the job posting list.

I feel my strengths are in web design, user needs, and documentation. I also dabble a little in marketing and promotion. This is why I think an MLIS is a good fit for me. It gives you the technical understanding (not at the level of programming applications yourself, but so that you can understand a technical audience) and balances that with giving students the ability to communicate this technical understanding to a non-technical audience.

Is there a library job out there like this? I guess I'll just have to keep looking.