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[judyj]

I was asked to post this by another librarian at a different institution:

Each year, Fortune publishes a list of Best Companies to Work For. Just wondering if anyone knows any list on Best Libraries to Work for, especially for catalogers?

Or other areas

[janitorx]

I've never heard of such a thing.  I'd be interested to know as well.  I do know of several insitutions with bad reputations.  I don't want to list them here. 

[daurousseau]

The best libraries are those which have or had unions. In Michigan, Oakland University and Schoolcraft College are both wonderful places to work. Good people, working conditions that most people only dream of.

[rattusdomesticus]

Just a side note... if you get a chance to work at a university library in a rural area about and hour and a half north of a large city in the Pacific Northwest, turn it down. My older sister runs it and she is absolutely psychotic. Sorry. It's true. She drives everyone crazy.

Well, I'd better go back and post in the faculty area. It's obvious that I'm in over my head here.

[magimax]

Just a side note... if you get a chance to work at a university library in a rural area about and hour and a half north of a large city in the Pacific Northwest, turn it down. My older sister runs it and she is absolutely psychotic. Sorry. It's true. She drives everyone crazy.

Well, I'd better go back and post in the faculty area. It's obvious that I'm in over my head here.

Rattus, you are a riot!  :D 

[gesualdo]

The best libraries are those which have or had unions. In Michigan, Oakland University and Schoolcraft College are both wonderful places to work. Good people, working conditions that most people only dream of.

I would beg to differ with this opinion.  Unionization does not always make for the best employers.  The conditions might be better and the pay might be better, but the boss and the fellow employees may be completely miserable and bent on making everyone else miserable too.  There isn't enough pay in the universe for me to put up with a boss who yells at me. 

[daurousseau]

I would beg to differ with this opinion.  Unionization does not always make for the best employers.  The conditions might be better and the pay might be better, but the boss and the fellow employees may be completely miserable and bent on making everyone else miserable too.  There isn't enough pay in the universe for me to put up with a boss who yells at me. 

The question was about the best libraries to work for. Bosses and fellow employees come and go. Unions have nothing to do with creating better bosses; unions are they because the default condition of bosses is negative. Without a union, you are at the mercy of the boss and the boss's boss.

But basically, I'm talking about places where as a full member of the faculty you work 8 months a year for a year's pay and spend only a third of your time on the reference desk. You can have a life like that with a bad boss or you can work 50 weeks a year with no job security and still have a bad boss. And then there's the money.

[helpful]

I would beg to differ with this opinion.  Unionization does not always make for the best employers.  The conditions might be better and the pay might be better, but the boss and the fellow employees may be completely miserable and bent on making everyone else miserable too.  There isn't enough pay in the universe for me to put up with a boss who yells at me.

But basically, I'm talking about places where as a full member of the faculty you work 8 months a year for a year's pay and spend only a third of your time on the reference desk.

Are you saying working at the reference desk is great or bad? Not clear what you mean.

[daurousseau]

Librarians differ on their attitude to reference desk work. I love it, others are glad to have months at a time without having to sit there. They write books, team on complex projects with faculty researchers, etc. Most librarians with tenure have the same obligations as other faculty. And scholarly work is just not something you can carry on with at the reference desk. Desultory research, yes. Extended thinking, no.

The reference desk is like faculty office hours, except your office is a lot easier to find, your are there when you say you will be, and students from Art to Zoology stop by, not to mention ordinary citizens.