Farewell to the Public Library

The library is my favorite gym, I can exercise my imagination there.

In the Beginning, Library God created the stacks and cataloging and the Graphic Novel section was without form and void and barren shelves were upon the face of the aisle. At least, that’s how I imagine it happened. The real library guy in the U.S. would have been Andrew Carnegie (melvil dewey eat your heart out). He donated a bunch of money to build like a 1600 libraries across the United States in the olden days. This had lasting impacts on access to information for the common person regardless of socioeconomic status. Barriers smashed! Right? Still, many of the Carnegie Libraries were segregated although there were some Carnegie Libraries for African Americans in the South. Here’s a picture of ol’ deep pockets himself.

(Andrew Carnegie. , None. [United states, between 1865 and 1880] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017657457/.)

I think about how that first year in the public library went for me. Was I living up to the original vision that Carnegie had when he set out to populate the world with libraries? My days were long but I felt that I wasn’t really changing the world. But they say when you change your perspective that’s when miracles happen. It seemed as my responsibilities grew, so did the newfound sense of myself as a librarian making a difference. The good thing about the public library is that there are so many different functions and resources, all I had to do was ask about something and I would be put on a team. There’s an endless amount of work and not enough people to do it. Some of you reading this may be library students trying to decide what track to go down in graduate school. I think there’s enough variation in the rigors of your degree program that you can always pivot to a new sector of information science. My first year I was strictly a children’s librarian. That meant minding the desk, shelving, pulling holds, performing reader advisory. That first year I felt like I was aimless until I started seeking out opportunities for growth.

coming soon to a theatre near you,

Librarian Year Two: This time its personal!

My second year was a rough start. I had been dealing with impostor syndrome the last few months of the previous year wondering if I was really cut out for this industry. But I shook it off as my responsibilities grew even more and I began to fill my time during the day. Heres quick rundown of what you can expect with impostor syndrome:

• Feelings of Self Doubt
• Perfectionism

The thing about impostor syndrome is that its a lie. YOU deserve to be in that position. YOU deserve your pay. YOU deserve all the compliments, accolades, and recognition that you receive. It took weeks to come to that conclusion for me.

So yes, Year two was the season of growth. I started cold calling community organizations to see if they would be interested in a partnership of the library. (Do this often, don’t charge for it, and it looks great on you) This created an opportunity me to visit some schools and city-wide events. My greatest outreach success story is one of the last places I called. It was a preschool centered in a church. I offered to conduct a story time to the littles once a week. I was a little awkward at first and so were they but once we weren’t strangers anymore the kids and administration loved having me read. They would tell their parents about story time and parents would see me out and about and say “Are you Mr. Librarian? So-and-So loves story time! Its their favorite part of the day!” I was a veritable Levar Burton a la Reading Rainbow (and that made me feel great). That outreach lasted once a week for an entire year and I was so well known to that organization that there was a standing invitation to come back, or if I ever needed any letters of recommendation to just ask.

I built relationships in Year two. I would go to different departments and inquire about positions just to get the conversation flowing. I volunteered with Archives, Job seeking, and Homeless Engagement. Now I was finally feeling like I was doing something. I became very busy.

Toward the end of Year two, I began to feel as if I had learned as much as I could in that position. I entertained the idea of going to a different department or changing branches, but I wanted to see what was out there. So I started applying and landed a position at a college (I’ll have more about the Job Hunt in a later post).

So to conclude, we’ve made the shift from Public Librarian/Information Professional to Academic Librarian/Information Professional. So that’s that. You can’t see it but I’m dusting off my hands metaphorically and walking into the sunset. Also I left the public library without burning any bridges. LIS is a very interconnected world once you explore and you never know who knows who, so keep it classy.

I hope this little update kept you entertained. We have lots more to experience in Libraries and beyond, so keep coming back!

best,