Hired as cataloger right out of grad school?

I was hired as a cataloguing librarian for a government library, and
started only weeks after my last semester of the MLS program ended
(beginning of January, 2007).  My previous experience was in two
practicum positions during my LIS coursework, as well as a cataloguing
position at a non-profit organization's resource library.  I found the
relocation to the government job wasn't for me, and went back on the
job market in a few months to seek a more local job.  I was hired by a
vendor after a couple of months.

To echo Mike and Scott, vendor work is a great environment for getting
to spend a lot of time in actual cataloguing...when I was working for
the government agency, a significant amount of time was spent in
committees, negotiating with different departments and external
vendors, and working out kinks in systems.  Since starting work at a
vendor, I've been able to concentrate my attention, honing a lot of
the cataloguing and language-comprehension skills that I wasn't able
to develop as fully in work concurrent with school.  There's also a
great variety of materials -- I'm cataloguing for a number of
different academic institutions in different countries, each with
different policies and specs.  It's consistently challenging.  The
main disadvantages of working in this area are in balancing quality
and quantity -- product (records) have to be shipped out, and I can't
afford to spend three hours on a single record without a very good
justification.  But in truth, that's the case for any environment --
time is money.

That's $0.02,

Benjamin Hockenberry
MLS, University at Buffalo