Final Thoughts

In just this first semester as a graduate student in the LIS program at Wayne State, I have learned more about the profession than I could have possibly hoped.  Because I so frequently went to the libraries in my hometown, community college, and university, I thought I had a good grasp on what kind of things a library represented and provided.  Little did I know, I had a lot of misconceptions about all of it.  My library back home was so small but since I had only ever been there for eighteen years of my life, I had nothing else to compare it to.  Coming to Mount Pleasant and being hired at the public library here made me realize how many more programs, technology, and even books that are offered at a library with a bigger district size and more money.  I learned that there is now an electronic library that has no physical books and while that would have terrified me a few months ago, now I understand that that kind of library would fit better in some communities than others.  We live in a world where technology is in almost every aspect of our every day lives and it would be silly and impossible to try and lag behind just because we are afraid of books or our jobs becoming obsolete.

Being of the generation that has grown up with a love of books along with technology, I feel that my fellow LIS students and I will have a good grasp on bringing a balance between the two to whichever libraries we choose to work at.  I hope that by doing this, we will be able to squash all of the rumors out there that libraries are becoming irrelevant or dying out.  I remember one of the most inspiring things was said to me this semester when I went to interview the Dean of Libraries at Central Michigan University.  The Dean asked me how I defined what a library was.  What did that word mean to me.  He told me that it was up to me and my generation of up and coming librarians to define it how we want and be thoughtful, creative, and innovative in our workplaces.  I think that's the main thing that has really changed for me throughout this semester.  The understanding of what a library is.  It used to just be a place for me to go and get books.  A quiet place where my sisters and brothers couldn't bother me because libraries were meant for being quiet and reading.  Now I know they encompass so much more than that.   Libraries really are the livelihood of some communities and contribute so many important resources to the surrounding people.  I think I am even more excited now than I was before to work in a library since I have a better understanding of how much I will truly be able to help people.

I think now that I have gone over and read through all of my blog posts leading up to this, and realizing how much I have already learned, I am very satisfied with how my first semester of this program went.  I met some really amazing people through group projects in both classes I was taking and I really hope that our relationships will grow as we take more classes together and do more projects.  I am excited to have gone through the process of recording my thoughts throughout this semester as I love going back and seeing how I have grown over time in my writing as well as my thought about school and the profession of being a library itself.  I plan on continuing to write in this blog so that someday after I have completed my schooling and work full time in a librarian position, I can look back and remember how passionate I was when I started this journey.

Revisiting Previous Assumptions

"My first assertion might surprise people--Books and libraries really are cool.
My second assertion is that not all librarians are old, cranky women.
The third assertion, and maybe the most important is that books and libraries will not become obsolete."

These three assertions can be seen in the very first entry of this journal.  Looking back I can tell just from these three statements that I have learned so much more about libraries and librarians that I really hadn't had previous knowledge on.  While I still will hold fast to the first two, my thoughts on the third assertion has changed quite a bit.  Do I think books will become obsolete? No, I don't think they will entirely, especially not in my lifetime.  I do realize though that when I said that libraries wouldn't become obsolete, I was thinking of them as a physical place filled with physical books.  This post was before I learned about the new electronic library in Texas or even before I could wrap my head around the huge amount of e-books, journals, etc. that can be found in online databases.  I think the reason for this is that I was too stubborn to accept that fact that physical books aren't always going to be the main resource in all libraries anymore.  It has been about four months that I have been working at my local public library in conjunction with going to school and learning about LIS as a discipline and a profession and I have already learned so much.

I almost wish that while taking LIS classes that you could spend a certain amount of time working in each of the different libraries so that you can truly know what each of them are like.  I know I went into this program set on working in a public library in young adult services.  Part of me still does want to do this but now I am truly aware of how much a people person you need to be when working in a public library.  I have had plenty of experience in customer service as I have previously worked as a cashier for five years but that doesn't mean that I always like dealing with impatient customers that get angry when life happens and blame whoever is in front of them trying to help. On top of that, teens and young adults can tend to get pretty rowdy in big groups so I would have to learn what the best way would be to manage them at programs and listen to all they had to say about school, class, boyfriends and girlfriends, etc.  I honestly love young adult literature though, and reading was always so important to me as a young person so even though it would probably be a challenge, I still really want to inspire young people to read and show them that libraries are cool places to hang out.

Overall I have learned so much more about libraries that I hadn't previously known.  I have learned about how important ethics are in this profession, that we are the ultimate service profession, that you really need to love people to work in a public library, and that the term library can mean so much more than a building with books in it.

Librarian Bloggers

Before this assignment, I can honestly say that I wasn't aware of the huge presence of librarians in social media.  I have recently become a part of Tumblr and found that there is actually a whole huge group called "Tumblarians," which is just like it sounds; a group of librarians that are very active on Tumblr.  I ended up following a wide variety of them because I found that they have a lot of interesting things to say and issues that they brought up.

Since I really became interested in this new found group on Tumblr, I decided to pick one blog from there in particular to really study what the blogger thought was important to share to the wide world of Tumblr.  One that caught my eye was The Life Guard Librarian (http://thelifeguardlibrarian.tumblr.com/).  Her name is Kate Tkacik and she works as a business librarian for the Bank of Montreal Business Research Group.  This immediately interested me because I really have no knowledge of business librarians and figured that I was surely to find out through her insight.  Tkacik's posts are regularly current and she posts on a wide variety of topics such as college research and how it isn't up to par even with the extensive amount of research they should be doing as well as recent conferences she has been to and what went on during them.  She also mentions things about her day-to-day work at the office like how she recently had to learn Westlaw, which I learned was a huge online legal research database.  

One aspect that I really liked about this blog was that she seemed very passionate about gathering librarians to join the "Tumblarian" list so that librarians all over Tumblr could connect with one another to share thoughts, concerns, etc.  Having just started schooling for becoming a librarian, I feel that I am still in the dark when it comes to important issues within the profession and I feel like joining this group on Tumblr will keep me updated with current issues as well as allowing me to make connections with fellow librarians from all over the world!

The second blog that I followed over the past few weeks was called Annoyed Librarian which seemed to be closely affiliated with the Library Journal.  Although the About Me tab doesn't give a name, it mentions she is a woman and a blurb that I found to be most amusing read, "She has no other interest than to bring her wit and wisdom to the huddled librarian masses yearning to breathe free."  As the name suggests, her posts have a more serious tone than that of the Life Guard Librarian.  Within the last week she has been posting a lot about what has been going on with ALA.  She talked about how she didn't know why the ALA was "shocked" when Representative Paul Ryan recommended eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services and then also about the upcoming ALA conference and how they need to address things that actually have to do with libraries.  Never having gone to an ALA conference myself, I would have figured issues about libraries should be the biggest concern.  It was interesting to find out they can get off track and issues such as blaming prison libraries for the low literacy rates of prisoners, even though they came into the prisons already at a low reading level.  

When you first think of how the blog is dubbed "Annoyed Librarian" some could assume that the posts would just long rants about everything this particular hates about being a librarian or what the profession holds.  Instead she offers up valid arguments and things that do get under her skin and then takes the time to explain why.  It's one thing to just make a list of things you hate but another to take the next step further and talk about why the issues annoy you and perhaps even give insightful suggestions on how to change things.

http:///lj.libraryjournal.com/blogs/annoyedlibrarian/

Overall I found these two blogs to be very eye opening into the world of librarianship.  I am glad to have stumbled onto the Tumblarian group and hope that these librarians will continually posting about relevant issues in the field so that I can be kept up to date and will begin to start thinking to my own future career and how I want to stay relevant and innovative.