Posts filed under ‘Uncategorized’
A Sincere Hug and Easter Chocolates
Memo to Self
File under: Why I Love being a Public Librarian
I have friends who sincerely question why I choose to work in a public library. They all earn far more than I do with less or equal education. One or two even point out to me on a regular basis that I could earn a better salary with less stress if I looked elsewhere for a job.
Well. this post is dedicated to all those who think I should desert public librarianship for greener pastures. In the last week I have had not 1, not 2 but 3 encounters that remind me why I love what I do and will continue to do it for the foreseeable future:
1. After a poetry reading event a young woman approached me and introduced herself. I recognized that she had been at several program lately, but did not yet know her name. She told me that she had recently moved to the area for a job and had been feeling “lost” without having any friends or family nearby. She went on to say that once she discovered our library she felt like she had found a sense of community as she is an aspiring writer and poet. I shared with her that I understood perfectly, having moved all on my own to NJ 8 years ago and leaving friends and family far away as well. She gave me a shy smile and then, quite spontaneously and very sincerely, she gave me a huge hug and thanked me for organizing events that gave her a feeling of “place and being among friends”. It was probably one of the best moments I have had in quite some time.
2. An older woman took my “Sharing Photos Online” class a few months back. She came in this week because she was so excited and just had to share with me the digital photo albums she made for her daughter’s wedding. She had done the entire album on Snapfish and ordered 2 copies — one for her and one for her daughter. Each one was slightly different and personalized with captions and a variety of layouts. It was obviously a labor of love and she was so thrilled with the final product. I felt very proud that she had learned so much and so quickly as when she first came to class she did not even know how to get the photos from her brand new digital camera on to the hard drive. She told me she is now working on a book with their vacation photos and has found a new hobby thanks to the library. She signed up to take “Fun with Flickr” next week before she left.
3. I came to work yesterday to find a lovely box of Easter chocolates from Thomas Sweet with a note thanking me for finding an article. I had done a search earlier that week that was rather time-consuming as the information given to me was vague at best, but the man requesting the article told me that it was of great sentimental importance and he really wanted a copy of the article. I was thrilled when I found it and printed it out for him, leaving message on his machine that he could pick it up. He left the chocolates with a lovely note when he picked up the article. Totally not necessary, I was just doing my job, but a wonderful gesture nonetheless.
It is anecdotes like these and many others that I relay to my friends when the quiz me on my job choice. Seriously, how many jobs are there in this world where you can get gratitude, hugs and chocolates all in one week?
I am writing this post so that I can read it on those days that I am having a bad day at work and so that I can always remember why it is that I choose to be a public librarian. I would be interested in seeing other anecdotes in the comments about those wonderful moments that you experience because you are a librarian — I will bet there are a lot when we all stop to think about how we impact the lives of those we serve daily.
Congrats to Janie and NJ’s Movers and Shakers
A hearty congratulations to Library Garden’s own Janie Hermann on her much deserved selection as an LJ Mover and Shaker:
Hermann enjoys being actively engaged with a world beyond her own library, through the blog Library Garden, the staff training and patron service communities at WebJunction, and numerous conference presentations. She says these kinds of contributions keep her “enthusiastic and excited about our profession” and help her stay ahead on new trends and technology.
Every personality inventory she’s ever taken says that Hermann is “an extroverted risk-taker.” Uprooting herself from her Canadian homeland and moving from teaching to librarianship, she’s remade her life and her library.
I’d also like to give a shout-out to a few other Garden State librarians being honored:
- Linda Devlin: Friend, former co-worker, Camden County Library’s new director, and, I hope, future LG blogger! (hint, hint… OK, your doing three jobs right now…maybe a guest piece on what it’s like to be a young new library director??)
- Trevor Dawes: Circulation Supervisor at Princeton University. Among his many accomplishments Trevor’s done a great job reviving NJLA’s mentoring program.
- Nicole Cooke: Reference Librarian, Montclair State University. In addition to starting and heading up the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (with Trevor), Nicole writes, presents and (dear to my heart) coordinates New Jersey’s Train-The-Trainer program.
Congratulations to you, and to all of the librarians honored as LJ Movers and Shakers for 2007!
Books that Would be Awesome Band Names
2 Great Posts on DRM
I was doing a reference question and in the course of finding the answer I found 2 great posts on DRM:
- What web 2.0 could teach Warner Music’s Eric Bronfman posted by Alan Graham on Tales from the Web 2.0 Frontier
- Good Job Jobs posted by Collin Douma on Radical Trust
I will be reading both these posts again more carefully tonight or tomorrow as I only had time to quickly scan them while on the desk. Here are a few highlights that made me know in an instant that they are bookmark worthy:
Graham states at the outset of his post:
In the Web 2.0 world everything makes or breaks on interoperability…or sharing. Sharing of thoughts, ideas, media, code, and work. If any point that openness is constricted, the whole system breaks down. Without this environment there would be no mashups, and many of the online services we rely on today would not exist.
Just imagine if all that open interoperability went away and we were back to the old days of closed APIs and closed systems. That’s what DRM does.
Then just before his call for action, asks a crucial question:
Steve Jobs claims he wants to eliminate DRM. The music executives claim to want what’s best for the consumer and their bottom line. These two things are not mutually exclusive. How about trusting your customers instead of assuming that every one of us is a criminal?
Douma, along the same lines, opens his post with this:
Let’s be frank for a moment. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is antitrust and anti-radical trust. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the iTunes music store because of its DRM. Why should you pay $1 for a track loaded with DRM when you can download it for free from a torrent with no restrictions at all? Why should anyone pay to be restricted?
And concludes with this:
This week’s call from Steve Jobs is long overdue. I hope that more visionaries like this guy can convince the world that there is more money to be made in trusting people than there is in restricting them.
Why Librarians and Libraries are Important
Here we go, someone who get it! As many times as I have heard my friends ask me why I chose a “dying profession,” I have never worried about my job security. Personally, my reason for this was because of the old saying:
If people, in general, thought rationally there would never be a need for librarians. Since history has proven this not to be the case, librarians’ job will always be secure.
My friend sent me this article on the Library profession which gives 33 Reasons Why Librarians and Libraries are Important. Yes, many of the reasons are arguments against the Internet. For the rationale thinkers out there, who are picky about who and where they get their information from, this is not really a surprise but for the other 46% of Americans who consider Wikipedia a reliable source of information, it might give them something to think about and, who knows… perhaps even get a library card.
Overdue Books Affecting Credit Score
I am sitting here watching the local evening news when a story comes on about the fact that if a library reports your overdue fines to a collection agency you can lose anywhere from 50 to 100 points from your credit score. Wow, that is a lot of points for overdue books!
I only caught a portion of the story (Mommy duties intervened), but what I did catch was an interview with a library director stating something to the effect that in times of budget cuts it is essential that libraries make it know that overdue materials affect the bottom line.
I went searching for some reference to this story, and found an article published today on Kiplinger.com called Boost Your Score that starts with this tidbit:
Pop quiz: Which affects your credit score more, getting married or having overdue library books?
Surprise answer: A library fine that goes to collection can shave 100 points off your credit score — and boost your annual interest payments by hundreds of dollars. But getting married doesn’t affect your score at all unless you co- sign for a loan with your new spouse.
I am not entirely convinced that library fines are even needed in the first place, so my gut reaction to having someone’s credit score ruined by late library books doesn’t sit well with me at all. I might be more sensitive to this as I protect my credit score with a passion ever since I had to work so hard to build it from scratch when I first moved to the USA 9 years ago. None of your credit history follows you across the border (so I discovered, much to my dismay) and I could not get a credit card, car loan or any other other loan to save my soul for several years. A few points off your credit score can make a big difference in loan rate and I am sure that the average citizen watching this news segment did not get a warm fuzzy feeling about libraries learning that we could be the ones to impact their future mortgage rate.
Free Viewing of Air Gear
Testing 1-2-3
Ever since we moved to the “new” blogger I have had a problem with my posts disappearing never to be found again. Just want to see if blogger is going to play nice with me today and finally let me post list for the 5 things meme since I have now been tagged twice. Nothing more to see for now… but hopefully more later today.
Edited to Add:
It worked!!!
Library Garden 