Librarians are Smart. We Read Books.

So I’ve noticed something really interesting about people and library school. Whenever I mention that I’m in library school I get two responses- 1) “Really? You have to go to school for that?” or 2) “That’s great!”. The latter being from people who are generally more educated. So I’m here to clear up a few things. Librarian is a legitimate career. We find things for people. We help people select books. We select books for our libraries. We support school curriculum, we educate people of all ages, we fight for the money to keep you informed with dictionaries, encyclopedias and databases.

There is no constitutional right to the Public Library. The Public Library is there because it was started hundreds of years ago, because it turned out that people liked borrowing books for FREE and because people had questions that they could not answer on their own. The library is here today because even our government realized that to an extent libraries are a wonderful part of culture. How would you feel without a library if you had no money to buy your books at Borders or Barnes and Nobles, if you had no computer in your own home, if you had no way of answering questions about voter registration, or taxes, or SATs. Then you would miss the library.

As far as what I will be doing, I will be helping people find the information that they want. I imagine that on my own i will continue to collect random facts (and use them at Trivia night!) but I will also try to answer any and every question that comes my way. Sometimes at the reference desk I feel like people expect me to already know the answer to their questions. And the truth is, that isn’t what we are there for. We are there to help you find the answer to your questions. That is something to think about.