[Publib] re: jobs and people

[Alana Abbott]

>
> I've had the same experience with clerks at big box stores. i was looking
> for the book brooklyn noir and the clerk didn't have any idea what the word
> "noir" meant or how to spell it. maybe i'm being a snob, but I was a little
> baffled. maybe the person was new, who knows? I've also known highly
> educated people who worked in bookstores, but I haven't had the fortune to
> run into them when I needed help at the bookstore.
>
>
It is unfortunate that not all bookstores can have the good fortune of
having really educated, interesting, literate staff members. When I was a
bookseller, I had the good luck of working at three stores where all the
staff members were readers, many of them interested in things far more
literary than is to my taste (I'm an SFF and YA reader, predominantly, and I
leave Joyce to those who enjoy him). In at least two of the stores, we had
retired professors on staff. Working at the bookstore was a way to connect
with books and ideas that they could do part time after leaving a university
setting. (In one we had people who were still university employed, part
time.) While not every member of the staff may have known about every
section, we all knew who we could send a person to for the best
recommendations.

As far as Readers' Advisory goes (and only that far -- I'm not getting into
the big bookstore training vs. MLS discussion this time around), I'll try to
do much the same -- I know our head of circulation reads a lot of
foreign-written mysteries, one of our reference staff loves thrillers,
another reference member is big into travel books and travel memoirs, etc.
If we get someone who comes in to Reference looking for readers advisory for
a teen, I'll usually get sent over to the YA section to help, because doing
Readers' Advisory in the teen section is one of my absolute favorite things
to do.

Sadly, I've visited both bookstores and libraries where the staff isn't very
good at Readers' Advisory, and I've been left to fend for myself. (In one
very large library I used to frequent to access their reference books, I was
always given the attitude of "we keep the knowledge back here, and you have
to be shown worth before we give it to you." While I continued to go there
to access what I needed -- and they often ordered articles from back issues
of periodicals for me through either their regional hold system or ILL, I
don't recall -- I wouldn't have dreamed of going there to pick up books to
read for fun. The gateway to knowledge was far too guarded for me to feel
comfortable taking any SFF out of their front doors!)

So, it's true, literate booksellers aren't a guarantee -- but when you find
a big box store with a manager who tends to hire people who really love
books, you're likely to find a well versed staff.

That's just my two cents.

-Alana
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