Meanwhile, on the job front

Bad news and good news. On the one hand, the local public library has informed me that I'm not quite good enough to be one of their part-time substitute librarians. On the other hand, I've had a couple of telephone interviews lately, one for a director's position in a public library back up in da U.P., and one for a state university library job in a city which is also home to the world's premiere collection of J.R.R. Tolkien's personal papers, historical records of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad (better known as the Milwaukee Road), and an incredible treasure-trove of Great Lakes shipping records. (I wish the public libraries I've dealt with had such a constructive attitude toward historical materials.)

As an added lagniappe, a place I'll call Adirondack State University -- a liberal arts state university in far upstate New York -- has called to arrange a telephone interview next week. Wish me luck. It's becoming easier and easier to be cynical and frustrated about the library job market, especially when I look at these figures from the ALA's annual conferences for the past couple of decades. It looks like last year's Toronto conference was the most dismal in history, and the trend of declining numbers indicates that it wasn't just because of SARSophobia.