Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog on libraries and librarianship!  I have just begun my first semester in WayneState’s masters in library and information science program.  For the last five years I’ve worked at the William Penn House, a Quaker hospitality and seminar center in DC, where I’ve learned how much I enjoy helping people find what they are looking for.  In college I worked both at a university library and in a public library during the summer.  Those jobs gave me a taste of how meaningful and fulfilling working in a library can be.  As I began to think about “what I want to be when I grow up” all of these experiences pushed me in the direction of becoming a librarian.

This blog will focus on what I am learning in my first semester of school along with my personal reflections and analysis of it.  This is a semester of exploration and growing understanding about the information profession.  The world of libraries is a diverse and changing place and I will only be able to discuss some parts of it.  Since I am interested in working at a public library in reference services, much of this blog will focus on that area of library science, though it may touch on others.

In the beginning any public writing, such as this, it is a good practice to try to explain some of the assumptions and beliefs one holds.  Hopefully, making these underlying ideas explicit is helpful both to the reader and to the writer.  This allows these ideas to be more easily dissected and engaged with, and changed as necessary.  As I am near the beginning of my journey in to being a librarian, it is very likely that some of these assumptions and beliefs will change over time.

So far a few of my assumptions about the library profession include:

1.  Librarians are public servants.  Libraries do not exist for themselves alone, but rather to serve the particular communities they are situated in, whether that is a neighborhood, a whole city, a school or a business.  Communities create and support libraries, not the other way around.

2.Librarian’s work will change depending on the community they are working in.  Because of the assumption that libraries serve others outside of itself, the things a librarian does are contingent on the needs of that community.  While a school library may need a librarian who can teach young children explicitly how to use the library, a research library may need a librarian who can preserve and conserve documents.  A rural public library may provide amenities such as a space for art exhibits and movie showings, while an urban library may choose to create space for kids after school and adult literacy programs.

3. Librarians must continue to learn in order to be effective.  A major need in many of the communities libraries serve is for support of and access to quickly changing technology.  Even the world of pleasure reading is changing quickly.  Communities also change and librarians need to be aware of the history and possible future direction of the users they serve.  These things require the librarians continue to educate themselves even after they have completed a degree.

4. Librarians provide access to information freely and openly.  This means making sure that the forms and kinds of information in libraries is easy to access and represents a wide range of views and opinions.  There should be as few barriers to using the system as possible.

5.  Librarians give guidance and assistance.  Due to the large amount of information available to the public, it is often necessary for librarians to help patrons sift through what they have found for credible sources or to introduce good ways of searching for new information.  Not every patron will have a clear idea of what they need, but good librarians will be able to help them figure that out. 

While these values may seem clear cut, they are not.  What happens when a member of the community a librarian is working in pushes for a particular item excluded from the collection, against the judgment of the librarian?  How does a librarian choose what to include, knowing there are limited resources?  How does a librarian figure out what the needs of the particular community are?  Hopefully exploring these ideas on this blog and in my studies will bring some of these questions into sharper focus and begin to answer them.