ladyofastolat | Just stamping books all day

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.