Canadian Librarians in America

I find it very telling that the job market is overwhelmingly the main reason Canadians go south. It is so hard to get an entry level job in Canada if you want to work in a traditional library environment. There is so much opportunity in the States. Canadians like to boast about how their government is more public and community oriented as opposed to "individualistic America". If that is so why is there so much more funding for public libraries stateside (at least in large cities)? Why do the public library systems employ more librarians. I worked for three years at Queens and am always awestruck at how 1 Borough of NYC was able not only to employ more librarians but was moreover able to send in excess of 70 to far off cities for conferences. I think the main reason is that they are ahead of us in library advocacy, and not as is commonly assumed because they're bigger. They are better at getting the message out both from government and private donors to get funds to come in so that highly placed people recognize the importance of libraries. THat's my humble opinion.

========== In Reply To ========== I find it very telling that the job market is overwhelmingly the main reason Canadians go south. It is so hard to get an entry level job in Canada if you want to work in a traditional library environment. There is so much opportunity in the States. Canadians like to boast about how their government is more public and community oriented as opposed to "individualistic America". If that is so why is there so much more funding for public libraries stateside (at least in large cities)? Why do the public library systems employ more librarians. I worked for three years at Queens and am always awestruck at how 1 Borough of NYC was able not only to employ more librarians but was moreover able to send in excess of 70 to far off cities for conferences. I think the main reason is that they are ahead of us in library advocacy, and not as is commonly assumed because they're bigger. They are better at getting the message out both from government and private donors to get funds to come in so that highly placed people recognize the importance of libraries. THat's my humble opinion.

========== In Reply To ========== Grace P: I'm trying to write an article on the topic of Canadian librarians who have worked in the states. If you're still monitoring this site and are interested in being "interviewed" about this topic, please let me know!