Welcome to Open Cover Letters!
Posted: June 20, 2011 Filed under: Academic, Archives & Museums, Corporate, Federal, Health Sciences, International, Law, Public, School 5 CommentsAre you currently applying for jobs in libraries or archives? This website hopes to open up the mysterious world of hiring by making real cover letters open to the public, with personal information redacted.
A big special Thank You to all the early cover letter contributors! You are responsible for helping to get this website off the ground.
If you currently have a job and would like to submit a cover letter that got an interview to this website, please email steve@opencoverletters.com. I and many other people will be very thankful.
Don’t forget to follow @opencoverletter on Twitter for updates.
Open Cover Letters 
By all means, encourage the profession to become even more vanilla cookie cutter than hiring authorities already think we are. And, what HR manager or Library Board is going to be impressed when they get three of ten applications that ALL have the same cover letter – just “redacted” with individual applicant information. If I’m hiring I want the person who can write their own letter that is passionate, creative and succinctly aimed at issues that impact my library.
Steve,
I apologize for not immediately approving your comment. I’m working on turning off comment moderating and will get that done soon. My hope is that these successful cover letters serve as an inspiration for current job seekers. For example, @DigitalCarrie recently tweeted after visiting this website that “…I feel good about the letters I’ve been writing, but I will definitely be making some changes.” This is no different from a job seeker meeting with a trusted advisor or mentor who suggests changes to a cover letter. I made this website for people like @DigitalCarrie, not for those that would be so foolish as to plagiarize someone else’s work.
No apology necessary, except possibly by me. I was too quick to jump to a conclusion that people who are looking for jobs and need help writing a cover letter would use these successful examples as easy verbiage for their own. In today’s job market any advantage is likely to be seized out of desperation. Over the past year I have been a reference for a colleague who has finally been hired as a director, and was feeling her desperation.
Thank you for putting this project together. I’m a library student who has worked in corporate Marketing for 8 years, and I’m starting to try to get a job in the field. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked for a job at all, and I have been wondering all along if I’m presenting myself the right way in my cover letters for the library audience since it is new to me. This is arguably the MOST challenging part of applying to jobs, and this is an amazing resource. Dr. Matthews – I of course don’t plan to plagiarize these cover letters. But seeing the themes that have proven successful, it will help me brainstorm better ways to accurately represent my own experience and passion as I’m applying for library jobs for the first time in my life. I greatly appreciate your desire to hire passionate and creative professionals in your own library!
Thank you for providing this forum. It provides a great point of reference when judging the quality of my own cover letters. If one of mine gets me hired I’ll definitely pass it along :)