Now that my super-srs-bzns posting is over with, we here at Ye Old Blogge can see a return to the happily pointless posting of yore! With that said, I was ruminating the other day (literally; I was eating an apple and thinking at the same time) on why, exactly, I chose this profession--being that there are No Jobs--and came up with a small set of pleasing observations. Behold:
+I like research. And people tend to ask you things when you are sitting behind a reference desk or wandering around a library looking Knowledgeable. Sometimes they are not-very-interesting things ("Miss, where's the pencil sharpener?") and sometimes they are very-interesting things ("Is this book by...*checks author* Sarah Dessen any good?") and sometimes they are long-involved-but-interesting things ("I need information about America's military presence in Pakistan but I don't know how to use this database"). FUN TIMES, with no sarcasm added! I love research.
+Attendant to that, I like to feel smart. Depending on the population with which you work, your patrons may or may not be generally knowledgeable about research and library resources (and even if you work in an academic library, the students might not know shit). This provides lots of opportunities to look AND feel AND BE SMART! A woman I helped with Excel the other day was practically beside herself with how smart I was. Note: I hate Excel and am not very great with it. But I helped her with what she needed to do, and she was grateful, and I felt warm and fuzzy inside about my helpfulness and my brainmeats and the world was a bit of a better place.
+I like talking about things I like. You, as a reader of this blog, may have noted this. Most librarians love to talk about things they like, whether that is books, e-books, e-book readers, iPads and other techy things, computer coding, cataloguing, social media, or music archiving. My Thing is books, of course, and oh let me tell you how many sizes my heart grows when someone asks me about a book (it puts the Grinch's TO SHAME). The very-interesting question of Point #1 actually happened at my internship--at a high school--and I nearly exploded with YES IT IS AWESOME YES SARAH DESSEN IS AWESOME YES TELL ME IF YOU LIKE IT NEXT TIME I SEE YOU. A similar thing happened the other day with Fire by Kristin Cashore and the new Serenity graphic novel, The Shepherd's Tale. So much sqee. At my workplace, a patron asked if we had a copy of Anne of Green Gables. Since this is a tiny academic library, I had to regretfully say no...and offer to lend her my copy. Because I mean really. IT'S MOTHERFUCKING ANNE SHIRLEY PEOPLE. The answer is always yes.
+I like (re)discovering things I like. Working in a library is, of course, a primo opportunity to discover either for the first time or anew some awesome stuff. As I was doing inventory this past month at my internship, I had the distinct pleasure of going along every fiction shelf and having the internal squee upon seeing all my favorite titles in the collection. Hooray, I thought, look at all the Westerfeld! Look, three editions of Burmese Days! LOOK JO WALTON BOOKS!! I have also had the fun-times of discovering many amazing new titles and authors, including Maggie Stiefvater and Justina Chen Headley.
And that is what I have--for now. I'm sure the list will grow. It helps to remind myself, sometimes.
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