USA Archivist/Librarian considering becoming an accountant

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I'm 38 years old and work as a university archivist and systems librarian. After ten years, I make 41k. I've been looking at careers where I can have a higher salary with more regular cost of living raises, and job outlook/security.

Technology has been replacing a lot of the work. As librarians retire, many of their positions are not being replaced. If a place has an archives, often the person is part-time or a volunteer.

I like my work, especially working and mentoring with work-study students, but I am concerned about my future. Some skills I see transferring are attention to detail and managing and interpreting records (non-financial). As an archivist, I collect records like meeting minutes, strategic plans, student research, photos, etc. I have worked on our university's reaccreditation, managing documents used as evidence to back up claims we make about how we meet accreditation standards. I often create excel files with information about records, where details need to be entered carefully according to a standard. Otherwise, the materials cannot be found. The systems librarian side of my job involves troubleshooting the system library staff use to do their various tasks.

My undergrad was in art (a huge mistake). I got a masters in library and information science because I happened to get a work-study job at the library in college. This is the degree needed to be a professional librarian/archivist.

I've been just feeling lost about this all. One of my work-study students is an accounting major, which inspired me to look into it. I feel like I made two mistakes with my past majors, and I just want to make sure I'm not doing it again. I appreciate any advice you can provide.
 
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kirby

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Based on what you relate about your current employment, seeking new employment in another field makes sense. You have Excel and systems skills and those are valuable in a financial field.
I suggest you take new education as evening courses in order to keep your current job in the meantime. I also suggest you look at an MBA versus an undergrad acctg degree as the MBA is quicker, just take a lot of elective acctg courses. The Masters in Acctg program is also quick and worth looking into. MAKE SURE the college you choose is not just some diploma mill. So get stats from the colleges on % of grads who get jobs soon after graduation. Do internet searches on the colleges reputation. Do your homework on making a good choice then pull the trigger and go.
 

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