Posts tagged: Librarianship

And now for something completely different

I got an email today asking me what it was like to be a librarian. I like talking about my job, so that was no bother. Earlier today, though, I got another email about a possible opportunity in an entire different field from librarianship. It was one that I had briefly considered and then stopped thinking about entirely a while back, so this email was welcome and piqued my interest. I’m pursing that possibility, and I’ll see where this all leads.

Sick

I’m sick. I’m sick of trying to teach people who have no interest in learning anything, I’m sick of being nice to people who are really just jerks and have no interested of being nice to me, and I’m really just literally sick. I got a tickle in my throat after Saturday’s Mraz concert (waited outside in line for about a half hour, the temperature was in the low 60s, and I was not wearing a sweater), which stayed pretty steady as a small cough until last night, when I sat inside a freezing bar for the better part of 5 hours watching the freaking Phillies beat the Dodgers. Stupid Matt Stairs! Anyway, that meant that today I awakened with my sexy sick-voice, a runny nose, and no desire to do anything as pedestrian as go to work. But I try not to abuse my sick time, so I went in and was convinced by my coworkers that I should use some of my sick time, since I have several weeks’ worth remaining. Before I left, though, a woman came in for my basic Excel class, so I started to teach it. Big mistake. I should have gone home. She wasn’t interested in listening to explanations of things, she wanted to make charts when she couldn’t even format cells, and she then wanted to learn about all the advanced functions she’d heard about at her former job. I understand the curiosity, but why would she go to a BASIC class expecting to learn this stuff? Then she asked me if a master’s was required to do my job,and whether I had one, like “Are you a real librarian?”  I suspect she found me unqualified for my job (which is not Excel instructor, by the way), and she was thinking of applying for it. Good luck, lady.

So now I’m home and am experiencing the healing powers of microwaved tea and TiVoed Monday night television.

Scary thought

I have a confession to make: even though I’m a librarian and the first thing that people usually associate with my job is the Dewey Decimal system, I don’t KNOW it by heart. I mean, I’m good; a lot of the time, if you tell me what you’re looking for, I’ll give you the number right off the top of my head. Still, I will admit to sometimes not knowing where I can locate specific subjects. I get a silly rush of glee every time I do know something off the top of my head, but if I were back in my cataloging class and had a test on the Dewey Decimal system, I know that my score would not be perfect.

I guess my new goal is to know more of this off the top of my head, but it got me to thinking: what other professionals forget this sort of core knowledge once they’re no longer in school being tested? Doctors? Pharmacists? It’s kind of frightening; I know that if I forget where something is located, I can just look it up in our catalog. Despite what some impatient, huffy patrons think, a lack of instantaneous knowledge on my part is never a matter of life and death. If a doctor or pharmacist makes a mistake, somebody could die. I salute the medical professionals of the world for even entering that field, because I would not like to perform a job that had the potential to determine others’ lives.

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