Did I mention that I'm a librarian? I've been the director of the same small public library in Union County, New Jersey for the past 13 years; with the exception of a couple of brief stints as a medical librarian, I have spent the bulk of my career in the public sector. Starting out on my first professional job more than 30 years ago (how can that possibly be?), library books were still being checked out by hand, catalogs still had cards, and only the largest and most sophisticated libraries owned even a single computer. Our library patrons approached the reference desk mostly to ask us questions that had simple fact based answers. Our patrons understood that the answers to these questions would be found in books and that, although it might take us some time to find the answers, find them we would. I was known to express the opinion that being a good reference librarian was like being a good detective. Hmmm....
I suspect that a majority of librarians of my generation, when asked, would say that the most dramatic changes to library service as we knew it came with the first wave of computers that were used to automate cataloging and circulation desk functions, followed not too long afterward by that second and larger wave of computers coming into libraries to provide direct internet access for library staff and patrons. It is an interesting paradox that the eventual ubiquity of the internet has made the nature of reference work simultaneously easier and more difficult for librarians. It is true that the internet has made it possible for me to answer an incredible array of questions without ever having to get up out of my chair or open a book. At the same time, the internet's increasing acceptance as a medium for conducting business has resulted in reference librarians everywhere being faced with an ever growing battery of requests for assistance by people - usually the elderly - who are lacking in even the most rudimentary computer skills but who have something that they must file online, be it taxes, a job application, or an unemployment claim. It should be no surprise that these same people requesting help with the internet are also likely to need assistance from the reference librarian in setting up an email account, with even more time being needed to explain the necessity of checking said email acount every few days. So today I still feel like I am doing the work of a detective, albeit one who has now taken on a second career as a social worker.
And then there's Readers Advisory, a nebulous phrase representing a service through which librarians assists patrons in their quest to find reading material to match their tastes and interests. Thirty years ago, the only tool I can remember using was Fiction Catalog, a periodically updated volume that provided brief annotations for thousands of novels while also attempting some sort of subject classification. It was only with computerization that databases like What to Read Next, Novelist and NextReads ( not to mention Amazon.com) were developed to provide both librarians and members of the general public with the ability to conduct cross referenced subject searches for reading material well beyond what is contained in their library's own catalog. What these databases only more recently have begun to address are the issues of writing style, pace, and point of view. While it is nice to have these tools at hand, the reality of the matter is that most library patrons are not interested in sitting down with the librarian, even if for only a few minutes, to have a librarian conduct a readers advisory interview in conjunction with a database search. For some reason, many of our patrons seem to have the expectation that librarians should be omnicient when it comes to suggesting books for them. For a patron who has been coming to my library for years and years, this is sometimes even possible; for someone walking through my doors for the very first time, I might as well be trying to guess their favorite flavor of ice cream.
Books I have been reading this past week: Unless, by Carol Shields (for library book discussion group); rereading of American Pastoral, by Philip Roth. Audiobooks I have been listening to this past week: The Language God Talks, by Herman Wouk ( nonfiction about reconciling science and religion) and Caught, by Harlan Coben (I'm making a good faith effort to get more into this whole mystery thing.)
