Gizmo asked me today what it was like to be a librarian. “It’s ‘all good” didn’t seem to cut it, just too general even though the sentiment captures perfectly both the optimism and acceptance of implied adversity.
I pulled a typical librarian move. I launched into a full-frontal reference interview. Answering questions with more questions seems so absurd, like bad improv without having to pretend to ring the doorbell. It really came down to what do I do as a librarian?
It got me thinking about the cool things and the lame things i’ve done over the past week.
- Found the order for the Andrew Greeley mystery series of Nuala Anne McGrail novels. Irish Gold is first.
- Introduced an ESL high school teacher to LearningExpress for help with English skills, test taking and even some basic job skills.
- Apologized to a patron after our @#$!&*%$ system deleted all the files on her USB drive.
- Recommended Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz to a mother who’s twelve year old son needed a book to read over the summer.
- Asked DOZENS of people to turn down their ringer on the cell phone or to take their call outside.
- Looked for fake barbed wire for Banned Books Week events and displays this September.
- Made an online calendar for the library events using PHP.
- Demonstrated how to find full text articles for specific titles using Serials Solutions.
- Uploaded pictures of Children’s Summer Reading Club events to the photo gallery.
- Drew the name of the lucky Teen Reader/Reviewer from the Teen Summer Reading raffle. She won a gift basket of Japanese snack foods from Mitsuwa.
- Didn’t find copies of Pride and Prejudice, Shop Girl, Book of the Dead, Candy Girl, Suite Francaise, and dozens of other titles on the shelf. Placed requests on them though.
do I like being a librarian? It’s all good.