Why Do We Need Libraries? Go!

Feral Librarian has a quartet of handy answers should you have to quickly respond to the challenge, "in the age of the Internet, why do we need libraries?" Hat tip to Jenna for the link.

Advice for Would-Be Librarians

Erin, the Library Scenester, likes talking to prospective librarians about the profession - one that she's fairly recently joined herself. She says this about her job:

I see my place as helping students on their educational journey. I want to help them become better, more educated and experiences citizens who can achieve their goals. I want their experience with the library to be a positive and beneficial one so that they will become library champions, utilizing their public libraries in the future and with their children, appreciating literature and reading, using technology to interact with the global community and being knowledgeable about the viewpoints of humanity. These are some of the things I hope to achieve.

The librarians at Gustavus are happy to answer your questions - even if we might not be quite so profound. Feel free to ask us anything you want to know about the field. We have experience in many different kinds of libraries and some of us graduated fairly recently. (Some of us . . . well, cataloging those clay tablets was done differently in my day, and when papyrus came along . . . )

Bradbury on Libraries

Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and many other imaginative books is a great library supporter, as profiled in The New York Times:

“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

He's helping California libraries, hit hard by plummeting property tax revenues, stay open. His opinion of the Internet is just about as favorable as it was toward television in Farenheit 451. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

Another Radicalizing Experience

First, an introduction. I've had permission to post to this blog for quite awhile but have been a hesitant blogger - a combination of innate shyness and a tendency to take forever to craft a paragraph. (For example, I started this post at eleven this morning. Granted, I've stopped for a leisurely lunch and a couple of meetings, but still.) The breezy spring air and a severe lack of sleep (thanks to a new, amazing baby) have lowered my defenses. I've been a librarian for a couple years and, after a few trips through the public and community college library spheres, am happily employed at an academic library. My job duties and responsibilities are so diverse that I can only talk in terms of a typical month, not day, but by then it's all a blur. My main interests are information literacy and new issues in library automation (really).

This article came through one of the listservs this morning: Best Careers 2009: Librarian

Well, obviously, I thought when I saw it. I love being a librarian for many reasons, although I'll wax poetic about it during another post. What intrigues me are the number of reader comments discussing average salaries for librarians. They are, typically, low. It's a touchy subject. While I didn't go in to librarianship for the money, and while there are a number of rewards far greater than the salary, I suspect there are many reasons why our salaries are on the low end, not the least of which is the profession's history (and present) as being a female dominated profession. I'm the daughter of a nurse, after all. This is nothing new to me.

In today's economy, I'm thankful I have not only a job, but one I love. I try not to stay up nights engaging in "worst case scenario" thinking (this means going against my nature, but I'm working on it). But when the salary discussion comes up, I find myself thinking about my sister. She's a church musician in geographical location that doesn't have a huge demand for musicians with graduate degrees. She interviewed for a job at a church and they offered her a rate that was about half what she (and her professional organization) charges for her talents. In a move that made me even more proud of her than I was before, she told them she could not in good conscience take the job for less than what she would normally charge. "One of my jobs as a teacher of other musicians is to advocate for our profession - that we are taken seriously and paid a fair wage," she told me. "I can't tell one thing to my students and then take a job that pays me far less than I'm worth." Amen, sister!

I'm not faulting our profession, and those who have gone before, for not advocating enough for librarians. And I know first-hand that sometimes you need to take the low paying job. Or that the funds just aren't there, even if the powers that be want to pay you more. But my sister's experience made me wake up to the fact that I have a responsibility to the profession and to future librarians. I need to advocate for fair wages for librarians in my community and beyond, if the opportunities present themselves. And maybe I need to seek out those opportunities more. (This probably will be more effective than my previous plan of becoming Bruce Springsteen's personal librarian.)

They say that motherhood is a radicalizing experience. It's been that way for me, so far. (Look for future posts on why the heck there's no day care at my institution.) For me, librarianship is too.

Happy (End of) National Library Week

Perhaps a little late to the party, but here are some pop-culture references to librarians courtesy of Entertainment Weekly.

Or on a more scholarly note, you might enjoy reading this article - or this one - though neither appears to be freely available online. Guess you'll have to get them through your library.

Movers, Shakers, Shovers, Bakers . . .

The Library Society of the World (which exists in multiple Web 2.0 locations here and there - and everywhere!) has a tongue-in-cheek approach to librariana and has decided to create an alternative to Library Journal's Movers and Shakers -and you can be one, too. The beauty of the Shovers and Makers award is that you nominate yourself. This is totally consistent with the non-organization's values which include "humor and a sense of playfulness and creativity about our work and upcoming challenges" as well as "crazy's okay."

It's fun to browse through the profiles of Shovers and Makers - and see how many ways librarians enact their playfulness and creativity.

Sad News

I read the latest issue of American Libraries Direct with great sadness:

• Hundreds or thousands of school media specialists will be laid off in California.
• A community college librarian lost his or her job and is asking for advice.
• Philadelphia will be closing 11 branch libraries.
• The Pennsylvania State Library is facing a budget cut of 50%.

If these kinds of cuts continue, who will provide access to information to a citizenry that needs to be more informed than ever before? Who will provide instruction to students needing assistance in navigating the sea of information available to them? Who will continue to champion access and literacy?

Call me a worry wart if you must, but this news makes my stomach hurt.