Just stamping books all day

[ladyofastolat]

I have just got home from another day of heaving huge boxes of books, demolishing shelves, carrying ginormous metal shelf uprights around, building shelves again, moving more boxes of books etc. etc. I am hot, filthy and exhausted. I can hardly stand. I can't walk without groaning. I can't bend down. I have blisters on my hands and feet, and scratches and bruises everywhere.



Librarians have an awful public image, perhaps even worse than Morris dancers. Librarians are dull, wear grey, have grey hair in a bun, and go "shh!" all the time. When you tell someone you're a librarian, you tend to get one of these reactions:

"Oh, how lovely. I love books. I'd love a job when you can just sit down and read all day."

"Doesn't it get boring just stamping books all day?"

"Ooh, how nice and peaceful that must be!"

Not long ago, some survey found that librarianship was a more stressful job than firefighting. It got a lot of very derisive and amused coverage in the press, because of course "everyone" knows that librarians work in the least stressful job in existence. However...

1. You work with the public. Any job working with the public is stressful, since they are many and varied. Some are lovely. Most are okay. A few are awful. "The public" includes gangs of a dozen drunken teenagers who need to be dealt with (because libraries, unlike large shops, don't have security guards.) It includes pushy old people who want you to bow to their every whim. It includes people objecting to fines, or complaining about this that and the other.

2. In public libraries, you work in public service. Some of the public never let you forget that they pay for this service in taxes. If they can't get exactly what they want, now, they start bringing up the subject of Council tax, and "disgraceful" and "complain to the Council" etc. When you're a public funded service, people think they own you, and it makes them very quick to complain if anything isn't to their liking.

This also means that you're constantly working with no money, and not enough staff. Most British public libraries have half the staff they had twenty years ago, but doing twice as much, thanks to the People's Network etc.

3. The government is constantly getting involved, setting standards and targets. You're constantly having to do new things to meet new targets, and spend half your time writing reports demonstrating that you're doing it. You get inspected and rated. You can "fail".

4. Librianship is not about putting books on shelves and sitting back and waiting for people to find them. You have to go out and constantly find new ways to encourage people to love reading. You're an educator. You're a marketeer (because libraries can never afford to pay for marketing, so you have to do all your own promotions and posters and display work.) You're a teacher. You're a public speaker. You're a facilitator for reading groups. You're a detective, expected to track down any piece of information that exists in the world, and bring it out now, or I'll complain, because I pay my taxes, you know.


Of course, I am not for one moment arguing that librarians have a worse time than any other jobs. I firmly believe that most people's jobs are undervalued by the outsider, with people thinking, "three years training for that? You could learn it in a day!"

But I do get annoyed when people assume that being a librarian is quiet and peaceful and easy. Not in this world it isn't.

Comments

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I've never thought about it really, even when pellegrina was doing her MA in it. I just go in and borrow a book to read when I wish or need to. I find it very odd the way some libraries have so many dvds/videos (Carlisle) or such good internet set ups (Wolves) but I've put that down to the funding and imperatives of the councils.

But your points made me understand why so many librarians look stressed or tired and why my simple "please"s and "thank you"s always went down so well.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

The internet comes from the government. A few years ago, they gave all library services a lot of lottery money to buy computers and train staff, so all libraries could be part of this wonderful "People's Network." Trouble is, they didn't give money for extra staff to deal with all the extra users and enquiries generated by this, and the money only lasted for two years, so now we are all committed to keeping the PN going, without any extra money to maintain the computers, pay for the communications etc. Maybe your local authority coughed up the money to maintain it well.

Videos and DVDs are to raise money. Well, they're also to give the public what they want and try to attract people, such as teenagers, to whom the promise of books is not a draw, but principally they're done because they raise money and supplement the ever-decreasing funding we get.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Sing it, sister!

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Interesting to read. I have very little idea what librarians do to be honest! Even though I quite often go to our local one now, as it has a kiddy area and it's somewhere different for Katy to play on the two evenings a week it's open late.

I would never say that someone's job is untaxing, as it's very obvious that everyone thinks their own job is uniquely demanding. Just so long as they enjoy it -- otherwise they should go and do something else.

Libraries are useful for lots of things, but not books, really. They don't tend to have many of them. E.g. - just yesterday I was thinking "Oh, and while I'm here I can check out a copy of 'The Selfish Gene'" I didn't doubt they'd have it as it's such a classic popular science book. But the "sciences" section was about 3 shelves and largely consisted of titles like "Lifesmart" by Carole Caplin and "How to harness crystal energy for success!" Still, I don't mind, because the library has tons of local information, leaflets, posters and a good play area. And it does have lots of children's books. And the staff are nice and friendly and showed me where they keep scrap paper for Katy to scribble on.

- Neuromancer (really tired at the moment, so this may not make much sense).

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It seems to be some sort of law that the book you want is never in the library. I find the best way is to wander blindly taking things randomly from the shelves. That way you quite often stumble on good stuff through the power of serendipity...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Blame the government for the science section consisting of only 3 shelves of popular titles. There are all sorts of standards and targets now, and one of them is on stock turnover - i.e. the average number of times a book goes out every year. This means that libraries are forced to fill their shelves with populist stuff. An excellent book that serves a minority interest perfectly might only go out once or twice a year, and this pulls the average down, and so must be got rid of.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Interesting. That's exactly the sort of thing I didn't know. (Slightly tragic that I had to do a double-take -- at first I thought "What does she mean, Selfish Gene IS popular science, that's exactly my point".... but yeah, I can see that it is unlikely to be quite as popular as Carole Caplin...)

Oh and Bunn -- my days of wandering quietly through libraries are over (well, for the next few years) -- I go through the shelves in ultra-fast rapid scan, hoping that Katy won't have destroyed anything in the 30s I am allowing myself to take my eyes off her!!!)

- Neuromancer

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

The other thing that will reduce your choice is that the library service will have done a community profile of the area around each branch library, analysing it in terms of demographic etc. As a result of this, each library will probably be banded. A large central library will be Band A, meaning that its stock will be broader and will cater for more minority interests. A small branch library in a residential area will probably have been banded Band C, or something like that, and will have a stock profile drawn up that has a high proportion of fiction, and non-fiction mostly being popular subjects like gardening, cookery, and health.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You don't get people expecting you to be an orangutan, at all...?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I can do a passable orangutan. I'm best at lions, crocodile, cows, pigs and chickens. I can't do elephants at all, and am not good at horses or sheep.

Children's librarianship: the only job where you're paid to do animal impressions.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Three years? Ha! Five years on top of my degree, I'll have you know!

(Sorry, there should probably be a :-) somewhere in there - I'm not really ranting!)