Thanks to everyone who came out for our chat with Rex and Allan today. If you couldn’t make it (or your memory was affected by whatever delicious lunch you were eating – my chocolate cake was distracting me early on) here’s a quick recap.

Discussion ranged over a bunch of topics, most of which were about being a non-traditional librarian. Both Rex and Allan have jobs that aren’t exactly the things that put them in the majority at library conferences, which is something most of our attendees seemed interested in. They talked about funky titles librarians in other academic systems have and how that actually makes a difference in how you’re perceived outside of the library field. Both of them talked about the importance of marketing ourselves as information problem solvers before being librarians. We’re the humanizers of the computer science tools, which is a role that needs filling.

The other thing was how little our schoolwork matters in professional life and how we should be diversifying our experiences to be good infopros, constantly upgrading. This is something I’ve heard from a bunch of visiting professionals in my year here at SLAIS, and is a good reason for coming out to our ASIS&T@UBC events! (I’m sorry for the gratuitous plug, but really, getting involved is a good thing to do.)

That’s the main gist of how the talk went. My (very) rough notes are online if you want to take a look. They’ll be giving a talk on the New Age of Librarianship in April at the BCLA conference in Victoria (their talk is scheduled for Friday morning).

Thanks very much for taking time out of your schedules, it was a well-spent hour.

The Twitter Talent Network is a good place to start. Powered by jobscore‘s super-proprietary resume service and job recommendation engine thingy, you can post your resume and, as a bonus, link your account to your LinkedIn profile. (You do have a LinkedIn profile, don’t you? No? Well, go get one!)

Just found out about this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/ays, which Amazon calls Your Media Library. Looks an awful lot, at first blush, like a LibraryThing clone:

“Your Media Library on Amazon.com provides you with tools to catalog your media collection, share information, ratings and comments with other Amazon.com users, and discover what other people are reading, listening to, and viewing. You also have easy download access your digital purchases, such as Amazon Unbox videos, eDocs, Amazon Upgrade books, and Amazon Shorts. With quick links to IMDB, Amazon’s extensive media catalog, and our library of song samples, you have all the information you need about movies, books, and music all in one place. Organize, share, and discover!”

They’re also hiring software engineers. Interestingly, the job description calls Your Media Library a “standalone website”, so they may be considering spinning it off.

They are hiring an Interaction Designer at the Seattle/Kirkland location:
http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=23691

Especially interested in those with an academic background in human computer interaction.

Jennifer