[Publib] Re: new LIS student and what it takes to be us

[John]

First of all, you have to be willing to live with a bunch of people who
beat to death questions which are, from time to time, more or less the
same, with a few variations.  Admittedly, Maricopa *is* doing something
that seems really wild (man...and groovy besides), but I suspect it does
fall under, in some way, that "nothing is new under the sun" thing that
one finds in the Book of Ecclesiastes.  Which, by the way, is in the
bible, which would put it in the 220s, but maybe I really want to be in
the 222s, also.  In a minute, I will walk myself to the 200s and show
myself what's in the 220s and all around the 220s.  This is what I do
with patrons, when I'm not sitting in my office writing about stuff like
this.

Re: LIS and librarianship, you
have...to...have...a...sense...of...HUMOR.  The weirder, the better,
because you will be working with people, many of whom are weird.  That
includes your colleagues, the ones you see skulking, slinking, sliding
along a hall in your particular library school, trying to avoid eye
contact.  (You can only hope that those particular ones WON'T be working
with people.)  It helps if you are a patient person.  You don't have to
be a raving extrovert--I am off the deep end in introversion, per
Myers-Briggs--but it is beneficial if you find all those weird people
(yourself included, as well as those colleagues) interesting, and their
problems and questions interesting.  While you will not be a social
worker, it will seem like it, sometimes, and it's all part of what
trendy folks today call customer service.  You may call it whatever you
like.  "Trendy" is big in librarianship, as it is in many vocations or
professions, and things come and go.  Sometimes Big Change really is
needed...and, it helps to be able to separate the wheat of what lasts
from the chaff of what is trendy.  (Ooooo, doesn't *that* sound poetical
and profound?!)  And I would echo what Sue Kamm--I think it was
Sue--wrote about being curious.

It also helps if you really love at least most of what you have to offer
the public, i.e., books, other materials, summer reading programs, all
that computer junque, etc.  I still think it's important for librarians
to love books...to wait, almost salivating, to open the latest box of
new books that has arrived in the mail or via UPS.  Though I can
salivate over books on CD, too--I'm flexible when it comes to things
Pavlovian.

As for the (seemingly endless) Dewey thread, Karen is right: everyone
has been generally quite civilized--as good Information Professionals
might be expected to be--and not offensive at all, though there has been
an occasional *tiny* lapse of innovation in terminology, i.e., surely we
can come up with better words than "sucks" and "assholes" to describe
us, or things that we do in the process of either serving the public
(with Dewey) or doing terrible, terrible things to the psyches of our
patrons/customers by flashing Dewey numbers at them.  But, really, what
good children we all have been.

Apropos of nothing, it *is* Friday and I will close with a variation of
the old song, "My bonnie lies over the ocean," which my mother used to
sing to me:

Last night as I lay on my pillow,
Last night as I lay on my bed,
I stuck my big feet out the window;
Next morning the neighbors were dead.

(Chorus: Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my neighbors to me, etc.)

My mother has been dead for forty years, but I can still hear her rather
touchingly screechy voice singing that particular ditty, and laughing as
only a silly child can laugh at a silly adult who has made up a silly
song.  This somewhat reinforces what I have written about humor.  An
occasional dose of genuine silliness can be beneficial for the soul.
Even if you happen to be one of those people who don't believe that
there *are* souls.

John D. Richmond, Director
Alpha Park Public Library District
3527 So. Airport Road
Bartonville, IL 61607-1799
Ph: (309) 697-3822, x. 12
Fax: 697-9681
E-mail: jrichmond at alphapark.org
________________________________________________
I especially enjoy trying out baby changing shelves, although our
grandchildren don't seem any different no matter how many times I put
them on one. -- Bernie Siegel