Winning Entries of the Smart Poodle Publishing Writing Contest for Librarians

Winners of the

Smart Poodle Publishing Writing Contest

“What I Wish Everyone Knew About Librarians”

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Grand Prize Winner

Boutang, Lisbeth
Children’s Librarian
Cloquet Public Library
Cloquet, MN

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Librarians

We are courageous, in small ways. The information you request can be a potent substance. We take a risk knowing that some of it will become a part of us—for an hour, a day, maybe a lifetime. In a way, we become your eyes and ears and intuitions for a moment. We are the shadow learners in your search.

On our way to find your book, our eyes scan dozens of titles, whether we are scrolling down a computer screen or weaving through the aisles. Our noses inhale the thin layers of dust upon the shelves we disturb. Our elbows jab into unexpected corners. We crouch and stretch and squint. We sigh and bite our tongues and whisper admonishments we hope you do not hear. As scavengers of facts, we know there is more than one way to skin a cat. So we persist—through keyhole and keyboard—until the truth—the answer to your inquiry—is found.

Interruptions slow us down. We pick up pencils and tiny papers lying among the stacks. Say, “Excuse me,” if we accidentally knock against young boys reaching for Curious George, Junie B. Jones, or Horton. Other patrons, who have questions of their own, tug our shirtsleeves. Pausing briefly, we assure them that their turn will come, as soon as the current request is filled.

Just to keep sane, we acquire a few things for ourselves along the way. Surrounded by thousands of books, we can’t help but pick up a few words, here and there, as well as an image, a sensation, an emotion: the soulful eyes upon the cover of a glossy magazine, the rustle of newspapers, dried jam along the edges of a board book, the muffled cry of a child against his mother’s skirt, a warm shaft of afternoon light falling across the news tables, or the silhouette of a head bowing before a book like a monk before a psalter.

We collect these pieces of our world and store them inside us. I recall an industrious chipmunk returning over and over to a tray of sunflower seeds I had placed on an autumn porch. For hours, I watched him stuff his cheeks and scurry back to a hidden nest, only to return in a few minutes for another mouthful. We feel the same urgency when trying to fill your requests—requests that intrigue, confound and upturn the course of our days, our weeks and our years. We shift shelves and schedules, fill interlibrary loans and copiers, cut scratch paper and the flesh of our fingertips. For the most part, it’s a pursuit of perfection. We do not want to disappoint—to have to say, “I cannot help you.” Undeniably there is a joy, a quenching joy, in the moment we are able to hand over the information that is sought.

Sometimes we make a bold move, without promptings. It may be a decision to discard a treasured book that is worn and water-damaged. It may be ignoring a small fine for a loyal patron, or it may be allowing a book or two over the new-book limit if someone meets our eyes and smiles warmly. Nothing is more appreciated than the unexpected smile. It’s true. We wait for your smile as much as you might wait for ours.

In our zeal to fulfill your request, sometimes we frown. Please do not think for even a moment that frown was meant for you. It’s the frown of concentration—an almost involuntary shrug of the brow—as we read through our bifocals onto a small computer screen. For some of us, those reproaching lines are fixed, shaped by years of meticulous browsing. Even when we smile, they do not disappear. See them for what they are—proud battle scars in Her Majesty’s service! Indeed, we are true and loyal subjects of our libraries. In times of financial crunches, we have even reached into our private coffers to hold the fort, granting your wish list just this once. For our sakes, don’t let just anybody know what pushovers we can be when it comes to pleasing you.

Another thing we wish you understood is our relationship with books. Deep inside the stacks of every library in the world, a worn gray volume has gone unnoticed for years. Thin strands of binding protrude from the top of its spine like the shriveled stalks of a neglected plant. Ambiguous call numbers lie beneath a cloudy strip of adhesive. Even the title is unreadable, a faint imprint worn away by grasping fingers. The undiscerning eye easily skips across this book as if it were invisible. But we know better. I believe every librarian has at least one of these books.

Here we have taken another small but daring stand. Unable to weed the orphaned books, we keep them for our own reasons. The following story is mine alone, something I wish everyone knew about this librarian. For more than five years I have kept an eye on one particular book, returning to it, from time to time, and checking to see if anyone has disturbed the dust along its head. On these occasions, I have taken the volume down and read a paragraph or two. Its hinge is awfully weak and the frontispiece is torn away. Perhaps it held an attractive engraving, long-ago pinched and placed inside a tiny frame.

Lately I have been composing brief poems and writing them down in the margins of the book. A vandal of verse, that’s what I’ve become, jotting down odd images—humble haikus for the most part—along the borders of the book’s forgotten type. So now, two lives go unnoticed: the foundling novel and my own secret child. Still I take comfort in keeping company with the lonely book. We have become allies of sort, conspiring as a book within a book—waiting for the reader who never shows. But that’s the thrill as well. Who says he or she will not show? What I wish everyone knew about librarians is our courage to imagine. Between the tired reference sets and the sassy new playaways, that imagination burns wildly. After all, we work in a forest of facts, in a time of stories, and a river of mysteries runs through it. Would you expect anything less from the guardians of both fiction and nonfiction?

This particular evening a harsh wind chases the fallen leaves around the library. They rise like sparks, descending in ragged spirals against the dark brick of the building. Winter is coming …

“… and the library is closing,” announces a page from the Circulation Desk. I can ignore her herald for I am far away, tucked inside the stacks with my secret journal. I pen still another entry that will or will not be read. This one seems almost fitting:

“Pressed inside a book
a forgotten flower
remains beautiful.”

Second Place Winner
Talley, Brenda
Adult Services Supervisor
North Richland Hills Public Library
North Richland Hills, TX

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Librarians

I wish people knew how many hats we wear, how often we change them and how we sometimes stack them in ridiculous ways to accommodate varied job duties.  Choice of hat varies greatly from one librarian to the next.

Some of us wear the detail-oriented cataloging hat and lie awake worrying about authority records that will link Mark Twain to Samuel L. Clemens so the public can find all works by and about an author with multiple names.

Some wear the adult public services hat, one that is sensible and approachable, yet radiates a degree of gravitas.  This hat comes with earflaps that can be raised or lowered to help filter ambient sound, a gasmask attachment for severe cases of halitosis, and even a veil to hide an escaped smirk as people say the darndest things.

We wear hats of story-tellers and enliven children’s books with extroverted exuberance and appropriate sound effects, all the while remaining unfazed as our small-in-stature audience wanders aimlessly with fingers up their noses or wail incessantly because oblivious parents forgot it was naptime.

A rare breed of librarian caters to teens and has to adjust the headdress to what is currently least nerdy, whether it is a cap with bill pointing forward, sideways, or back, a silky black do-rag, or non-gang-colored bandana.  This head covering must convey support, respect, street smarts, acceptance, forgiveness and limitless mirth.

We don ringmaster hats and manage a plethora of programs for ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages, from the undereducated to the erudite.

At the check-out desk we keep a stack of hats: traffic cop to direct people to what they need, bank teller when collecting fines, paper hats when people treat us like fast food employees, and funereal hats as patrons, unable to contain personal grief, share with us, near strangers, the loss of loved ones, the diagnoses of dread diseases or the news of recently lost jobs.

We sometimes remove all hats, wipe our brows and pull out calculators to manage budgets and creatively figure ways to eke out one more month’s worth of bestsellers from a shrinking pot, then quickly cram a cowboy hat, over a hardhat, and top that with a conical Pope hat to play the role of manager of human beings.  We can only wish for a soldier’s tough helmet and night vision goggles as we ease our way carefully through the landmines of personalities and the invisible lines of territorial boundaries that exist under one roof.

Regardless of headgear, we sometimes find ourselves wielding a plunger to deal with contrary bathroom fixtures, or lining up plastic trash cans to catch ubiquitous drips from mysterious leaks that only occur on weekends and cannot be duplicated come Monday morning.  We set mouse traps, extinguish small grassfires and tie tiny shoes for those who have not yet discovered Velcro.

The most puzzling hat is a simple piece of paper.  This is the basis for the constantly changing origami headpiece of the public servant who is supposed to support the municipality, magnanimously accept all guff and gratitude from citizens, remain poker-faced when people ask if you need a college education to work here, remain unruffled when receiving condescension, and not take personally very personal comments.

Under any hat is a close-fitting knit cap with a question mark embroidered on it, for the unknown is at the root of all we do.  Budgets can change in a heartbeat, patrons may be off their meds, ditto for coworkers, buildings may fall apart, weather wreak havoc, technology abruptly stop but the question mark reigns supreme.

Yet at the end of the day, when hats are set aside and weary fingers run through tangled hair or smoothed over shiny scalps, public librarians are dedicated, disgruntled, humble, egomaniacal, compassionate, heartless, antagonistic, shrinking violets with saber-toothed tempers, commanders of common sense and frivolity.  We serve the public, we are the public.  We are just like you.

Third Place Winner Kowalski, Sue
School Librarian
Pine Grove Middle School Library
East Syracuse, NY

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Librarians

I have come to the conclusion that each and every librarian I’ve met is a product of many past lives. You may disagree with the concept, yet closer examination of those librarians you admire will likely get you to consider it.

There’s no doubt in my mind that every librarian was, at some point, a kind and nurturing grandmother (yes, even the men). Imagine that grandmother figure you’ve admired, your own or another’s. Can’t you see her–plaid housedress, apron, towel on the shoulder moving at a pace that would make some young ones shudder? Her main mission was to make everyone’s day a little better—maybe with cookies, maybe with a hug, maybe with cup of cocoa, or maybe just a rock on the porch swing. But whatever she did, she was fueled by the need to make your day just a little less crazy. And, you know what, that’s what librarians want to do, too. We might not bake you a pie or squeeze your cheek, but in our heart of hearts, we just want to make your day a tad brighter.

Carnegie Hall? Broadway? Yes, I’m guessing every good librarian you know has been there, done that in another life. Have you seen us in action? We’ll turn the most mundane of stories or lessons into a puppet show or live theatrical performance. Costumes, hats, and wigs fill a small part of our storage areas. Sing, play guitar, fake almost any instrument, attempt stand up comedy? Of course we will, because like every Broadway star, we want to connect to our audience and create a memory like no other . If we can’t find a script we like, we’ll write one. If the outfit we NEED for the story isn’t there, we’ll create one. We’ll stop at nothing to get positive reviews from the critics.

We must have all had a stint as some sort of emergency response team member. Maybe we dabbled as an EMT, or an ambulance driver, or a Red Cross agent. It is likely we’ll go into “rescue mode” on an hourly basis. We might be diving for lost documents, wrestling with an obstinate printer, following an Amber alert for a missing title, or even hooking up equipment with the finesse of a stand-out nurse connecting a lifeline. We know panic well and are trained to keep our patients calm while we do our very best to rescue the moment for all. We dread the rare moments when we have to deliver the “I’m sorry, we did all we could do, but…”

How could we do what we do if somewhere in our past we didn’t spend time with those blessed with creative talent? Maybe it was Martha Stewart or MacGyver or Chef on a Shoestring, but somewhere along the way we learned how to turn trash into treasure. No empty cart goes unused in our world. It’s seldom that a box, bucket, tub, or shelving unit doesn’t win a spot in our libraries. We can find 25 uses for old video cases, reuse index cards until they’re warn thin, and with some laminate and fancy scissors we can make most anything old new again! We’ll create a museum ready display with some old yarn, five binder clips, used postcards, and some origami paper we found on clearance. We know the value of a dollar and can stretch money like a mother of six growing up in the Depression.

I do believe that part of every one of us spent some extra time as an 8 year old. We are like sponges and every day we find something new that excites us. We look wide-eyed at a new circ system that does just what we only dreamed one could do. We are giddy when a box of new books arrives—ahhh, the smell, the feel, and those shiny covers—does that ever get old? We get excited when we make a connection, and with each happy customer come the same satisfaction of the best birthday ever! Learning something new doesn’t scare us; once the training wheels come off, there’s no stopping us!

I’m guessing we were trained with some of the masters. Our natural desire to teach is unmatched. We don’t like to be the keepers of the information; we want to teach others how to find it. We don’t want you to feel stupid; but empower you instead. We feel your frustration and will do whatever we can to pave a smoother road for you. Like all the great ones, we crave the moment when the light goes off; that “a-ha” moment for you warms our heart and inspires us to keep teaching. We know we can’t do it alone and are constantly on a mission to find cohorts who make us better at what we do. With the partnership of amazing support staff, inspiring colleagues, and open-minded teachers, we see living proof that two heads are better than one.

And finally, in the heart and soul of each and everyone of is the unique being we are. We each bring to the table varied passions, experience, skills, and talents. We collectively become a stronger team of professionals who share a vision with individual perspectives. Individually we nurture, entertain, help, create, learn, and teach. Collectively, we impact the world.
Honorable Mentions
(in Alphabetical Order)

Littell, Missy
Children’s Reference
Tuscarawas County Public Library
New Philadelphia, OH

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Librarians

I started working in a library at age 16. I shelved books. In my final year of high school I took a career aptitude test that said I would make a good librarian. I thought, yeah right. Let’s face it: while I liked my job, I felt sure I was meant for more adventurous things. I continued working at the library through college as I got a degree in music. After 2 years of paging I worked in Youth Services, then Circulation. I was really starting to fall in love with library work. Here I am, 10 years later, still working for the library. And I can tell you a lot about librarians.

Are librarians under-appreciated? Whose job isn’t? Teachers, janitors, ministers, nurses, mothers: I’m certain none of these people get the credit they deserve for the things they do every day. So I won’t blather on about that. But what I WILL blather on about is how we are misunderstood.

Here are just a few examples of things people actually say to me on a regular basis:

“I would love to work at a library, it’s so quiet and peaceful here.” We had a Harry Potter Party that once drew a crowd of 500 people. Our Halloween Party brings in about 300. Summer Reading is so crazy that I have nightmares that entire season. I once dreamed I was pregnant and gave birth to 2 cakes instead of a baby. When I asked where my baby was, the nurse replied, “There was no baby, just some cakes. We put them in the refrigerator for you.” I’m still looking for someone to tell me what that one meant.

“It must be nice to read books all day.” Why yes, that would be nice. Me? In the last 3 years in the children’s department I have cleaned up pee, poop, and vomit off the floor. I find lost moms. I help children with homework that was due yesterday. I break up fights, I fix computers, I clean nasty dangly things off the books and try not to gag in the process. Once the kids in Homeschooler’s Club locked me in the boiler room—on purpose. Another time I had to coax a hysterical boy into our hurricane shelter because he was too frightened to get there on his own. I and several other unfortunate patrons were stuck in the meeting room with no power for over an hour with this hysterical 10-year-old as we waited for the storm to pass. He was still crying when his parents came to pick him up. I never could get him to stop, poor guy.

“You look too young to be a librarian.” When I was pregnant with my first baby (a boy, not 2 cakes), a patron gave me a strange look as I walked back through the doors after a break. Her eyes actually popped when I rounded the desk with my big old belly and she said “You work here?” I said yes. She said, “Oh, honey, I thought you were a pregnant teenager.” I was 26, married, and I had a degree. People still have the idea that librarians should be shabby old women with buns in our hair and a due date stamp in our hand. (No offense to those wonderful women who fit that description.) The fact is, sometimes we’re loud, or young, or very stylish or downright hot. Or, as in the case of this story, very pregnant. We come in all shapes and sizes.

And what about our fellow librarians who have been at this a while? Who decided they were “old” and “boring”? At my first library job there was a lady named Mary who had long gray hair and always wore high heels. She said she used to dance tables, ride motorcycles, and wear leather. Cheryl, who I work with now, has the most interesting and off-the-wall real-life stories I’ve ever heard. So give these ladies some respect, because their lives were probably more exciting than yours will ever be.

“Twenty cents in fines? What was THAT for? I don’t remember checking that out. You can’t expect me to pay for that. This is crazy…” Sir, I will pay you twenty cents to SHUT UP.

Then there are the patrons who seem to think we divide up the fine money at the end of the day like a coffee can full of tips and use it to go shopping or get an ice cream. Let me clear this up once and for all: that money goes straight back into the library. I do not use it to get a massage at the end of the day, no matter how much I need one.

Oh, but there’s so much more that people don’t know about our jobs. They know we must love books, but we love our library users too. Take, for example, the time the 10 year-old girl read all summer long earning raffle tickets in our Summer Reading Program because she really wanted to win my new baby boy a board book. She could have won anything for herself, because she read A LOT. But at the end of that summer when her name was finally drawn for a prize, she proudly presented me with a beautiful board book for my baby. I will always cherish that board book. Thanks, Jennie.

Or they don’t know how much we look forward to the boy-bookworm who comes in every week to tell us about his new favorite title.

Or about how much we love seeing our storytime regulars walk through the doors every week and how we love watching those children grow.

Or just the simple things, like the smell of books. I have been caught with my nose stuck in a brand new book not because I was reading it, but because I was inhaling its smell. (Does anyone else do this?) If they made a cologne that smelled like that, I would make my husband wear it.

We love our books, but we also love our people. And we love being librarians. Not the boring creaky old ladies who shush everyone; but the adventurous, plucky women (and men) who use their ingenuity and resourcefulness every day to stretch the taxpayers dollars, find you the right book and create exciting new programs that will make life-long readers and library-lovers out of your family. These are just a few things you may not know about us.

Rubin, Andrea
Assistant Librarian
Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass
San Francisco, CA

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Librarians

Joke: a grasshopper walks into a law firm library….

This really happened, or maybe the grasshopper didn’t walk, but flew or hopped instead…how am I supposed to know how he got there, since I didn’t see it happen, and it’s not the sort of thing I could find in a book? How am I supposed to know whether the grasshopper is a he or a she, or maybe grasshoppers are male and female at the same time the way earthworms are (this last doesn’t seem likely but how would I know, unless I look it up or ask the grasshopper)?

One might think that librarians know a lot, but what I love most about being a librarian is that we figure out how to locate information about things we often don’t know ourselves, based on our understanding of the library user’s question, and our understanding of the network or universe of available information sources…

A litigation attorney walks into my office (no, he doesn’t fly or hop) and crooks his finger without saying a word, like I’m supposed to come with him. I think there must be some problem with a book in our library, and so I hop up from my chair and follow him quickly….

Regarding knowing things, I’m not trying to say librarians are not smart, or that we don’t know things…but being a librarian means a different relationship to information, more like if you were a chef or a waiter in a restaurant and someone asked you what to choose on the menu, you’d understand you couldn’t just say “have the pancakes, they’re the best,” because everyone’s taste is different, and everyone’s taste is not your taste, and some people have food allergies…

The attorney leads me to the corporate law aisle in the library and points towards the end of the aisle…”File that,” he instructs. I walk down the aisle to see what he is pointing at. I am curious since he is a litigation attorney – is he involved in some kind of corporate litigation? … suddenly a grasshopper flies up in my face…I scream….

Librarians stand at the center of a triangle, and the equidistant corners are the library user’s desire for information, the resources in the collection, and the information itself. As a librarian I feel daily that I am standing in the center of this triangle, wanting to maximize my own knowledge and capability by reading a lot, maximize the library users’ satisfaction by clearly understanding their questions and maintaining a sense of their ongoing needs over time, and wanting ensure that our resources are as complete and accessible as possible.

“I think you scared him…” the attorney points out, master of the understated ironic observation….

In “The Library of Babel,” Jorge Luis Borges describes an imaginary library, “which some call the universe,” composed of an infinite number of hexagons. Wherever you happen to be standing is the center of the library. In this fantastic space, people wander for a lifetime searching for their “vindication.” The books in the library are deceptive; the title page of a book has nothing to do with its contents.

As a librarian, I see the library of Babel as a parody of our tendency to believe that information is a static, objective thing. Borges highlights how we lose sight of the spin our own perspective and that of information authors places on the so-called facts. The more I think about all of this, the more I experience a sense of the infinity that permeates the Library of Babel.

Borges alters the library so that it is not a representation of the universe, but the universe itself, highlighting for us the way a book is not just information, but a container for information. Reminiscent of studies on neurological framing by linguist George Lakoff and others, the hexagon where we stand is our own perspective, and the possible information sources that radiate around our question gradually blur outward into the edges of other hexagons, like those new mind-mapping search engines that present results in a series of overlapping circles.

But there are different kinds of information searches. There is the search for a fact. There is the search for a half-remembered article, read seven or eight years ago, written by a man whose name begins with G. There is the search for an exception to a point of law. There is a search for musical scores by George Gershwin. Autobiographies of Gershwin. Lawsuits directed at Gershwin. Foundations started by Gershwin. Mergers and acquisitions of companies initiated by Gershwin. The art of composition.

I manage to catch the grasshopper using a glass and a paper towel after it careens a few times around the head of the woman who is replacing outdated pages in our library loose-leaf books with current information…

You may think that my distinction between knowing the answer and the representation of that answer in an information source is irrelevant, and of course, it is not that important for simple questions at the level of how to spell a word. If someone asks me how to spell the word “sybarite,” even if I never use that word, even if I object to the derogatory generalization about people from Sybarus that the word implies, but I know the word, I can easily tell that person, human to human, how to spell it…but as a librarian I need to lead the person to a dictionary….

And what about the time when a co-worker asked me to find information about abortion, because his 15- year-old daughter was giving a presentation on abortion for a class in school?

I carry the grasshopper outside and hold out my hand, palm upward, lifting the glass.

I sent a number of abortion website links to my co-worker and urged him to have his daughter consider how the inclinations of these websites’ creators affected their presentation of the information. Like other people, I have my personal opinions about abortion. But as a professional librarian, I am concerned with the evaluation of information sources, and uncovering all of the slants embedded in the presentation and representation of information, pro or con.

The grasshopper stands still a minute on the paper towel on my hand, looking around, startled to be outside. It then leaps from my hand into the air, and soars out over the San Francisco Bay, towards the Bay Bridge.

The grasshopper in the library really has nothing to do with my daily work, which involves helping to manage the collection and online resources at a law firm, performing legal and general research, finding background about people and companies for business development, managing subscriptions, cataloging books, and more. I can’t say my days in the law firm library have brought anything else nearly as strange and irrelevant from a billable-hour perspective as that grasshopper, but I learned something about librarianship that day.

In a footnote to “The Library of Babel,” Borges writes: “…no book is also a staircase, though there are no doubt books that discuss and deny and prove that possibility, and others whose structure corresponds to that of a staircase” (117).

Following the reasoning of Borges, I can say that a library is not litigation.

But both litigation and librarianship have in common that they are concerned with the presentation and representation of information, and the framing of information.

The litigation attorney was playfully taking advantage of my unexamined assumption that if he crooked his finger in the doorway of my office, I would assume he was looking for a book or requiring some other kind of assistance with the information in the library. When I screamed, he pointed out that from the grasshopper’s point of view I scared the grasshopper, although from my point of view the grasshopper scared me.

As library users become more and more independent, using Google and other web-based resources for their own information searches, and they are in a great hurry like people who eat fast food, they are not thinking so carefully about who collects and presents their information.

I think librarians are important as part of a slow information movement, as gatherers and evaluators of resources, so that library users can continue to receive their information fast and accurate.

Have you noticed the ingredients on the label of your information lately? Maybe we can’t reach total objectivity, but we can at least try to notice the slant in the information we choose and use.

I wish that grasshopper all the best in his travels and endeavors. And if he returns to our library because his impulsive travel plan didn’t work out, I’ll be sure to provide some street maps, a current wind speed contour map, some autobiographies of grasshoppers in transition, some entomological treatises outlining various grasshopper societies, and, of course, the links to GoogleMaps and MapQuest, in case the two websites provide differing views of the terrain. I can also train him on the library catalog.

Works Cited and Consulted

Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Library of Babel.” Collected Fictions: Jorge Luis Borges. Trans.Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin Group, 1998. 112-118.

Lakeoff, George, and Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Underdown, Christi
Assistant Cataloger
Center for Popular Music
Murfreesboro, TN

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Librarians

It took me seven years to decide to become a librarian. In that time, I began working in some of my local public and academic libraries, starting my education before I even entered graduate school. See, it’s not just about books. It’s about books and DVDs and CDs and sheet music and computer programs and maps and the Internet and all sorts of stuff. Being a librarian is about information and showing people how to tame and use it to their advantage.

Librarians are superheroes, saving their patrons from the waves of data streaming around them. Did you know Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, was originally a librarian? We are just following in her footsteps, teaching people how to make sense of the world.

There are lots of kinds of librarians. Most people think of us as people who are women, who wear buns, cardigans, and sensible shoes and keep lots of cats and say “Ssh!” a lot. Also, we are portrayed at work as reading a lot, answering bunches of questions and checking out books. That might be true, but it is really a bit more complicated than that. Almost half of the librarians with whom I have worked have been men. Some of my fellow classmates have worked in the past as computer engineers, parents, violinists, and schoolteachers. They have interests in biking, working for human rights, and gourmet cooking. All of us are very different individuals and can work in lots of different capacities within the same place.

To name just a few, there are reference librarians, circulation clerks, and user instructors. Then there is a whole slew of people in technical services, like me, who are responsible, generally speaking, for selecting new items to be brought into the library and preparing them for use, by putting their records in the on-line catalog, labeling the books with a unique call number and fixing them when they get broken. We can work in public libraries, schools (elementary through university), archives, museums, banks, law firms, and all sorts of places. Librarians really can be anywhere, even your local newspaper.

One might think since we are so spread out, we do not talk to one another. Contrary to that idea, the American Library Association and other professional organizations discourage isolation. We are constantly networking at conferences, talking on listservs, and publishing articles about various subjects, not just information sciences. By talking to one another, we can work together on projects for our institutions and patrons. For example, the Center for Popular Music, where I work, can send copies of unique pieces of music or transferred CDs of the first Thomas Edison wax cylinder recordings to a researcher across the country. Recently, we even contributed scans of Civil War sheet music to the Volunteer Voices project, which digitalized items from all over the state of Tennessee, so elementary school kids could see them on-line.

To become a modern librarian, a person is required to go to graduate school and earn a Master’s degree. But one’s learning doesn’t stop there. Libraries are changing all the time. We do not use card catalogs anymore and there are some libraries, which only have Internet collections. Their items do not have a physical form to put on a shelf. Because of cases like this, librarians have to know about the most current and best technology for their patrons and how to teach them how to use it.

The Center is a music archive. In addition to serving people who ask reference questions in the Reading Room, it has begun coordinating exhibits with the local historical societies and giving tours of the collection’s rare documents. It also has hosted conferences, which have brought together the people who study music academically and the people who like to play and sing it.

The state of Tennessee does sponsor the Center’s funding and the government’s budget cuts this year made us nervous about our resources and our jobs. Luckily, our institution is over 20 years old and we were able to defend not only keeping our collection, which holds over 275,000 items, but our jobs as well. It was a great relief, when our financial board warned us to just be careful about our spending and to not travel too much. They understood the value of having a place to hold history and encourage learning for the future.

I spend a lot of time helping people understand what I do for a living. Most people are happy with the general answer of “Librarian.” Sometimes I can delve deeper though and explain that I am a “Cataloger” or someone who creates and enters records which represent the items, for which people search. I contribute to the road map of the library. Luckily, my friends and family understand that, after years of hearing it. Interestingly, they still send me reference questions, not only about music and my own literary interests, but, as recently requested by my lawyer friend Elizabeth, how to obtain a copy of a photo of a particular Congresswoman from the National Archives. I, of course, happily supplied the Archives’ contact information and hints about formally requesting materials from them.

This is not just my job, but who I am. I am an educator. I am a clarifier. I am a mediator. I am a keeper of stories. I am a librarian. I am Batgirl’s little sister, swooping down to save the day.