Career Spotlight: What I Do as a Librarian

It takes more than a creaky book cart and reading glasses to become a librarian. Rather, librarians often have a substantial education in their field, which itself is full of variety. From academia to public libraries and archives, being a librarian entails much more than shelving and shushing.

The logistics of running a library cover everything from organizing the books themselves to being an informed resource to library patrons, as well as acting as a community organizer to utilize the library as a public venue. So what does a typical career path look like for your average librarian? We spoke with Kathryn Bergeron, who works at a mid-sized public library, to learn more. Let's have Kathryn introduce herself:

Kathryn Bergeron: I am the Associate Director of the Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham, MI. Birmingham is a suburb of Detroit and our library serves several other local communities. I have worked at Baldwin since 2009, where I started as an Adult Services Librarian, then became the Systems Librarian, and have been Associate Director for over a year. I received my MSI (Masters of Science in Information) from the University of Michigan in 2008. I've also presented locally and on a state-wide basis primarily on electronic resources, and also on outreach to young adults, electronic resources for picking books for patrons, and the importance of failure.

What drove you to choose your career path?

My friend helped me get a job in the Interlibrary Loan Department of my undergraduate library. It was always a challenge. I felt like Indiana Jones, and one librarian was the most Indiana Jones-like of them all: her name was Monica, and she was sweet and kind but could find anything, no matter how obscure. I wanted to be like her.

How did you go about getting your job? What kind of education and experience did you need?

Most librarians have a Masters degree from an American Library Association accredited school. It might be an MSI, MLIS, or MLS (insert Masters, Library, Science, and Information as appropriate). From there you apply for jobs in the fields you like, from public or school libraries to law or business libraries to art museums or music libraries.

Did you need any licenses or certifications?

Certifications differ across the country, but in Michigan, librarians are certified by the state. There are different certification levels, the lowest level requiring training and a high school diploma (Level 4) and the highest level requiring a Masters Degree and four years of full-time professional experience (Level 1). Depending upon the size of your library's service population, you are required to have a certain number of certified individuals on staff.

What sorts of things do you do beyond what the average person might expect?

Librarians do things like order the books that get to the shelves, weed out the old books to make room for new ones, make sure that the books are in the right section of the library, work on complicated reference questions for businesses, government, and patrons, teach new technologies, arrange programming, perform customer service ALL DAY LONG, and are generally all around awesome.

What misconceptions do people often have about your job?

I do not get paid to read books. I wish that I did. I do it on my own time. I do it because I love books… and movies, TV shows, graphic novels, CDs, and all kinds of other things that my library has available for check out.

What are your average work hours?

Most librarians work 40 hours per week, often including days, nights, and weekends. Librarians in management often work more than that, but it differs per library.

What personal tips and shortcuts have made your job easier?

The internet is both the librarian's best friend and the librarian's worst enemy. I took Google's Power Searching class; it was excellent. I already knew a lot of the tips, but it helped me think in entirely different ways. That being said, the number of people who tell me that libraries are dying out because of Google and ebooks is overwhelming. Of course, not everything on the Internet is true—this is part of the reason that you need libraries. Also, your local public library likely offers ebooks for your to check out for free.

I actually find Google and ebooks to be great for libraries because it gives us a chance to lose some of the physical books and play with our space in a new way. We can have more collaborative space, offer more technology, teach people to create, and generally become a place to learn, connect, and discover (I stole that last part from my library's strategic plan).

What do you do differently from your coworkers or peers in the same profession?

Because of the internet and ebooks, libraries are changing. So, there's no right or wrong way to work in a library. Some libraries are bookless. Some libraries are transforming space. Libraries are designed for their communities, and that means that they can be anything.

The two places where I try to distinguish myself are customer service and a desire to innovate. Customer service is always my number one goal, as it is for many librarians; we're here for our community. My personal spin on my work world is that I want to innovate and encourage others to innovate in ways that benefit my community and sometimes that means embracing failure and learning from it.

What's the worst part of the job and how do you deal with it?

Part of me wants to say bodily fluids, which librarians do not get trained for. (Note: If you're sick or your child is sick, don't come to the library. Stay home and drink some Vernors.) Unfortunately, that's not it. Librarians, for better or worse, have to enforce the library rules. Often, this is a perfectly normal task. "Please put your shoes on, sir." "You can't sleep in the library. Yes, you were snoring."

The worst confrontations are actually people talking on their cell phones. I promise that I do my best to be nice about, and I always give people 2-3 minutes to take a quick call in case it's an emergency. Still, the number of times that I have heard someone say "this librarian here is kicking me out" or any number of varieties of librarian-shaming (including expletives) is incredibly disheartening. You know that, as the enforcer, you're a hero to everyone in the room who did not want to hear that patron's conversation about his or her pus-filled whatever, but it's hard to focus on that when you've just been sworn at for doing your job. I normally throw myself into whatever I was doing until another patron approaches and I can re-direct my energy in a positive way.

Do you have any advice for people who need to enlist your services?

1. Ask me what you want. If you're looking for a specific title, don't say, "where is the philosophy section?" Ask, "where can I find the Dialogues of Plato?" The book you're looking for might not be where you expect, but we will find it.


2. Don't be embarrassed. We take patron privacy very seriously, and we have almost always seen, heard, and answered more embarrassing questions than whatever you might ask. Also, you are probably the fourth person today to ask me for Fifty Shades of Grey.


3. Ask us for book recommendations. We love it. We call it "Reader's Advisory," and for many of us it's one of our favorite things to do. You tell us what you've liked and we help you find other things that you might like. The more times that you ask, the better we'll get at it. Books, movies, TV shows, music, video games, we can do it all.


4. I don't care that you have library fines. In general there should be no shame attached to them. My friends and family sometimes feel it necessary to confess their library fines to me, but unless you're arguing with me about whether or not you should be charged when your dog tears out the last 50 pages of Wuthering Heights, I really don't care. Even I sometimes have to pay fines or pay for lost items.

What kind of money can one expect to make at your job?

I'm going to reference the Bureau of Labor Statistics and say that median wage for librarians in May 2012 was $55,370. They list a range of about $33,000 to $85,000 per year.

How do you move up in your field?

I work in a public library, so we have a normal progression: start as a general librarian, become department head, become upper management, and then become director. For larger libraries, there are more intermediate steps like "branch head." Still, it's different for different libraries. If you work in a library at a law firm, you might have no chance for advancement except to go to a different firm. If you're a media specialist (school librarian), you would follow a teacher's path for advancement. If you want to know about a specific type of library, just ask; librarians love to answer questions.

What do your patrons under/over value?

Customers undervalue librarian's expertise. We are generalists. I can confidently talk about both the demotion of Pluto and the latest episode of Serial . We're not just there to help you find books. We can help you find out business competitor data in the tri-county area. We can help you research doctors for your new diagnosis. We can help you pick out a video game gift for your youngest nephew. We are here to help with everything.

What advice would you give to those aspiring to join your profession?

Even in the almost-six-years that I have been a librarian I have seen drastic changes in the industry. Now, many public library jobs start at part-time and librarians work multiple jobs until they can find a full-time position. Library funding amounts have changed, and library philosophy has changed. This is part of the fun of working in libraries today; you get to change the future of libraries. But this is also part of the challenge of libraries in contemporary society—we don't know what libraries will look like in five years year.

Best advice? Get a job in library as soon as possible (even as a library page/shelver) to see what it's really like, and don't be afraid to innovate and change.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

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Career Spotlight is a new interview series on Lifehacker that focuses on regular people and the jobs you might not hear much about—from doctors to plumbers to aerospace engineers and everything in between. If you'd like to share your career, email us at submissions+career@lifehacker.com.

Image by photogl (Shutterstock).

from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/career-spotlight-what-i-do-as-a-librarian-1676098016

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