I suppose voters don't quite realize how working out of a nineteenth century building impacts functions of a twenty-first century library. Wiring's ancient, heating and cooling is iffy, the roof leaks (on books and more), plaster's falling off walls, and among other things, the building is just too small for staff and services. The other branches are small; some are showing strong signs of age; and some are still technologically behind. This levy could have improved all that. Maybe folks just need to know how much a good library can affect a community. [steps off soapbox] I'll get back to this later. Life must go on.
Last month I mentioned a survey I distributed to various library employees a couple months back. Here's a summary of the results:
The most enjoyable parts of library-work are first, working with people, and then, new books. Distantly-ranked were promoting the library, story-hour, computer work, and simply being available.
It's a good thing that working with people was the favorite part of library-work, since the survey-respondents ranked the patrons as the most important part of their work. Patrons were mentioned four times as much as the number two in importance, which was clerical work. Also mentioned as important aspects of library work were accounting, big-picture planning, computer-work and availability.
The least enjoyable parts of library seem to be processing overdues as number one. There was, then, a three-way tie for second place of personnel issues, nasty patrons and custodial jobs. We library-types sure can gripe. Here's a few of the other things that feel in the less-than-desireable part of the job: clerical, filing, shelving, computer maintenance when patrons mess things up, rotating books from branch to branch, dealing with donated books, withdrawn books, scheduling, saying "We Can't get that", statistics and penmanship. The last two weren't my entries, but since I wrote last month's article, I've taken on some of the inter-library-loan (ILL) tasks, and can really relate to stat's and trying to read illegible requests.
So, why do you think most of us got into library work? Nope, it wasn't to hear Gaylord machines stamping cards. It wasn't even to be able to deal with book-salesmen. Nobody got it? OK, I guess I'll have to tell you. It's for the love of books. (I supposed I'll have to give some of you credit for figuring that one out.) Love of books came up twice as often as the number-two dealing with people. Other reasons were for the crafts, proximity to home, great part-time retirement employment, and an outlet for office-skills.
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Paul Landkamer's Bibliophile topic, please visit the Discussions page.