How I find out about jobs

I subscribe to a bunch of listservs and RSS feeds. Actually, I started subscribing in my first or second term of library school. Back then it was only one or two lists. Subscribe to a couple a few months before you're ready to start applying to get a sense of what's out there, what regions are hiring more heavily, what types of jobs come up more often, what qualifications employers are looking for, and salaries. You'll notice that some libraries constantly have openings, and you might start to wonder about their high turnover. You also get to see what kinds of jobs have to repost or extend the deadline.

There's the old standby, the IFLA jobs mailing list. But don't forget to cast the net far and wide...

Library school job listservs

You don't have to be enrolled in a particular school to subscribe to its jobs listserv. (At least, nobody's given me the boot yet.) Most of them get national postings, but of course there will be some regional focus. Pick schools in places you'd like to live. Here are the ones I watch:

UT Austin iSchool JobWeb National listings. Nice daily digest with links to full listings. If you only subscribe to one or two listservs, include this one. They get the job categories wrong sometimes, so sign up for a bunch.

iProJobs Univ of Washington Some national, but heavy on the Pacific Northwest. Lots of special library/techie jobs.

UNC Chapel Hill SILS-jobs National listings, with some southern focus.

San Jose State slis-job National, with lots of California.

Regional library associations

If you're interested in jobs in a particular state, the state library association listserv will have job postings, and it's a good way to get a feel for what's going on with libraries in that region.

I subscribe to the California Library Association (CALIX), the Oregon Library Association Hotline, and the Pacific Northwest Library Association listservs. The Mountain Plains Library Association stopped posting jobs to its listserv and the Washington Library Association is members only. Bummer.

There's also the New York Metropolitan Area Chapter/Association of College and Research Libraries list. Mostly New York, but some national. Not just academic jobs.

RSS feeds

lisjobs.com This one's great. National listings. Again, if you only monitor one or two sources, be sure to include this one.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has feeds for library jobs. National listings, academic only. They have three or four categories for libraries with a lot of redundancy, I forget which one gets the most traffic.

Metro Magnet (NY) New York metro area. You also get emails about workshops on this one.

So you want to become a Canadian...

Don't forget there are 6 schools in Canada, and provincial library associations to boot. The SLAIS jobs listserv is mostly BC and lower mainland stuff, but quite a few national listings.

Admittedly, this means I get a LOT of email (I'd guess in excess of 100 a day), and quite a few duplicates. But I'm pretty satisfied that I know about almost every job that I'd be interested in.