Author: pookiebear

To your left you will note a brand spanking new, ink barely dried diploma with my name on it. And it is NOT photoshopped. One MA down, one MLIS to go. Not too shabby from someone who did not finish high school. (I obtained my GED one year after I was to have completed high school. Statistically, I do not exist, imagine that.
I haven’t been to the library in ages.
Years, even. It had been so long that the information that the downtown main branch had on me was from several moves ago (i.e. years); I had $7 dollars in outstanding fines and I had to replace my library card as my old one was outmoded. Now I have a swanky, trendy library card and a key fob card. I’m not quite sure what is wrong with me, but I’m vaguely obsessed with key fob cards, especially when they are lime green!
When I was a kid, I used to haunt the library every day during summer vacations. In Port Huron, the main branch was located near the St. Clair River so each day would begin as thus: Get up, get dressed and have breakfast. Pedal my bike the few miles to the library with a knapsack on my back filled with water, snack foods, small blanket, pen and notebooks. Get to the library, drop off read books, check out new books; head towards the river where I had found some shady coves from prior visits, lock up bike, climb down path to said secluded spots, lay down my blanket and read all day long. I would do this, weather permitting, nearly every day. I never took anyone with me, and I don’t think anyone really knew where the hell I was or what the hell I was doing with my time every day.
This was in the early ’80s Midwest when one could leave their doors unlocked, cicadas seemed to sing louder and stronger, my favorite ice cream from the ice cream man was the red/white/blue rocket ices and I biked around town on my baby blue, boys 10-speed Schwinn. When we moved to Grand Rapids in 1985, the ability to get from one place to another was not as easily accessible as it was in Port Huron, despite the abundance of public transportation that Grand Rapids has to offer. Not knowing the street layouts, locations or places, for the better part of my early years in G.R., I was more or less library-less. In high school, I did take advantage of the school library, apparently so much so that my high school librarian remembered me after 15 years and did not seem that surprised that I was working at a bookstore OR that I was a MLIS candidate.
When we would later move several years later after our first foray to the area, I was within walking distance of our neighborhood library; a library so tiny that it would fit into the first floor of our then house. (Nearly a decade later, they razed the old library building, knocked out the gas station next door and did a complete rebuild.) And the one year that I lived in Toronto, working on my final year of high school, I championed the school library so much that the librarians knew me by name and began to recommend other reads or asked me questions about the authors I was inhaling. (This was the year that I fell in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald, began to detest D.H. Lawrence and read the entire Stephen King back catalog up to whatever was the most current tome at the time.)
My library-fu was strong, but as I got older and became more interested in boys, booze and clubbing, my interest in hanging out at the library wanned. It was not that I stopped reading, no, I was still inhaling books by the pound like I did as a kid but this time around, I bought them. Why be the 23rd person on hold for a book when I could go to the bookstore and buy it? After years of using the library system for everything from movies, music and books, the concept of purchasing said things just seemed weird and downright foreign. But the lure of having a job, disposable income (when you’re a teenager, every dollar you make is disposable income) and the ability to CRACK THE SPINES OF MY BOOKS, was even greater. No worries about late fees or not getting the book back in the condition I received it and I could highlight and write in books to my little hearts content. This to me was a stupendous revelation!
And as the years went on, I spent that disposable income on books (and shoes, clothes and make-up, but mainly books) and at the start of the internets thingy, when it came to looking for information, why one could it with a few clicks of a button! What’s this call system thing? Dewey decimal who? And the first thing I went looking for on the internets in 1995, something that I don’t think one could FIND in a library, were the words to R.E.M.’s It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), using Veronica and Archie. I pretty much ditched hanging out in the libraries after that. Why wait for cranky Miss Kerfuffles’ to query my inquirer when whatever I needed and wanted as available online and could be accessed while sitting in my jammies!
And even though I brag that I have library cards from two different countries, three states, numerous cities and a sprinkling of college systems, it just isn’t the same. Or at least it didn’t use to be. Throughout my undergraduate and graduate career, whatever I wanted informationally has been available online, mostly via online editions of journals and periodicals. And if I couldn’t get it online, then I used ILL (inter-library loan), but that too was done online. I didn’t have to step foot in a physical building other than to pick up the books that I had requested, online.
Wandering around the downtown library the other day, I realized just how much I missed being there. I love the periodical room, with the long oak tables, comfy chairs and gazillion magazines and newspapers. The set up of the place, the smell of the printed paper after its been fondled a few dozens times. Just the essence of the library itself kept pulling me in. I wandered up and down the aisles, looking for reads and grabbing audio books for my trips to Detroit. I suppose it was then, that without a doubt, that I knew getting my MLIS degree was the utmost right thing to do.
I belong here, the library is my home and like a home, it will always be waiting for me no matter how long I’ve been gone or where. And no matter what happens, no matter where I may end up, I will always have my beloved books.
Now Listening: The Verve – Love is noise
Now Reading: Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Quote of the night:

I organize, preserve, index and provide access for all of human knowledge — what do YOU do?

When I began researching library schools a number of years ago, I couldn’t quite get over the concept of why someone would need a degree in googling and bookshelving. But the more research I did on the programs and the sheer amount of flexibility that library programs gave to future careers, I was ready to be seduced in getting my masters in googling and bookshelving. And I couldn’t help thinking, as time progressed and I started pre-class research and book reading, that perhaps I was a tad righteous in my thinking.
And I love to be proven wrong.
Last nights class, Intro to Library Profession (or baby class 101 as I like to refer to it), dispelled many of mine, and apparently others, myths on the profession. Readings over the summer helped expand my knowledge on technology and librarianship, primarily that it was librarians that helped fund and start the first computer databases as a way of organizing and easily accessing knowledge. Yet, at the same time, there is the myth that as electronic cataloging of material grows the fate of the decline of physical libraries keeps growing larger.
Not true said the prof, as who else could manage, collate, collect, organize, and index all that electronic information but a librarian. Thus the job market is expanding at an astounding rate as more and more companies and individuals look for someone or something to help keep all of this information in control. The number of people who apply and go to lib school grows as the job market grows and as the job market grows so does the skill sets that lib school provides and teaches.
My prof went on to list what librarians do and what the skill sets are required and as she went through the list, she then demanded us to tell her exactly what company would not love to hire someone who had these specific skills. No one could provide an answer because what it boiled down to was that ANY company would love to hire someone who can provide this incredibly long and flexible skill base.
And it is not just in public, academic or even in a traditional library setting — companies are expanding to start their own catalogs, archives, special collections to name a few and who better to organize, index, and give access to this information other than someone with an MLIS degree?
In short: a librarian.
But the image problem comes in, namely, that while librarians were the first on the ball back in the dark ages with working with computers and electronic databases for organizing information, the profession has turned its collective backs to the onslaught of new media (which is slowly being changed as new technologies, classes, workshops and the like are provided to keep skill set fresh). The other problem is the image of the librarian — because when you say you are a librarians, the first thing that comes to mind is a Miss Kerfuffle, 60 years old with her hair in a bun, glasses perched on her noses, constantly telling you to shush in the library. And all Miss Kerfuffle wants to do is read her trashy romance and keep her books in line on the shelves. My prof talked about a study that was done some time ago (I forget exactly how long) in which a non-biased poll was taken on how Americans viewed themselves. 90% registered themselves as extroverts while 10% registered themselves as introverts. When the same poll was applied to librarians, the opposite was true — 10% were extroverts and 90% were introverts. Again, the problem of PR and marketing is holding true — librarians are constantly getting a bad rap on who and what they do.
What is needed, my prof said, was balance. It may be fine and dandy that you love to read and are into doing whatever but this job is a service job and we are here to provide a service to the public. You need, she intoned, to realise that you are providing a public service regardless of the capacity. The other image issue is the new fangled titling of librarians — information analysts, information architects, information managers and corporate information officers. But what it boiled down to was that at heart, they were librarians underneath the fancy titles. She told us a story of a friend of hers who was at the forefront of information architecture during the dot com boom rage. Her friend made a killing in the area and she joked that if his client base knew he was really a librarian, his pay rate would decrease alarmingly. Because clearly, being an information architect is MUCH sexier than saying one is a librarian.
Another interesting note is that she discussed about Michigan having two library schools when some states did not have even one. She talked about the differences between Wayne and UMich, expanding on why she was ecstatic that we choose Wayne over UMich. She discussed how she often guest lectures at UMich and told us an antidote about a professor at UMich who mentioned to her in passing that when that prof needs employees or students for projects, she comes up to Wayne to recruit, not necessarily within her own school. My prof said that was interesting and asked why that was so, to be told that UMich doesn’t necessarily teach the necessary skills for day to day work, rather, the students are more involved in research and development and are being groomed for professor tracks in academia.
Having gone over UMich’s website with a fine tooth comb, I can see why this would be true. Apparently, UMich doesn’t teach cataloging anymore, one of the foundational courses that almost every lib school teaches, and of which something you can’t learn on the job. Hence why the UMich prof recruits via Wayne.
Interestingly enough, I’ve heard this time and time again from students AND professors about the friendly rivalry between Wayne and UMich. Some of my classmates have joked that they are going to a high paying technical skills college in order to get jobs. Me? I don’t quite see it that way but the disparity between the two colleges does give me more food for thought as I battle on whether or not I should apply to UMich or not.
But that is a story for another time.