What is it about librarianship that makes it the only job of over a dozen I've had since age 17 that makes me not second guess why I'm still there 20 minutes after I'm supposed to get off?
Let's be clear- I'm not salaried. I have no incentive to keep hanging in there after the bell rings. When I worked at the pizza place in high school and we got a last-minute ticket that I knew meant delivering would keep me an extra 15-20 minutes past my clockout time, I usually took it poorly. Well, unless maybe the order belonged to a cadre of females whose pants I wanted to get inside of. I approved those. Remember, too, I was 17.
There is a profound sense of duty attached to working in a library. You don't think so for the first few months of working in a public library, but after a while you become almost a community figurehead. Like a teacher or a cop or a trial lawyer maybe, your name and face are associated with more and more day-to-day interactions with various people. It gets to where a lot of patrons ask for you by name.
I don't consider it charity work, though in a way we go out of our way to ease misery using information. Today I had a pretty sharp older female patron who needed assistance with this and that. She was atypical for someone her age in that in each transaction she got it right away and her pride didn't allow us to do the work for her. She needed print-outs, she needed to get to this web site, she wanted us to look this and that up for her. No big deal at all, that's our job.
So I am to get off at 5. I'm talking with the lady, who has everything wrapped up. The time is 4:50. I am explaining to her how you can attach and e-mail files to yourself as a means of saving a hard copy of a file, especially if you aren't carrying a memory device. She tells me how she has an e-mail account through her internet service provider at home but doesn't know how to use it. I take the time to sit her back down and we got her signed up for a Yahoo! free account and I show her a few features.
Now it's about 5:15. I'm working for free at this point. But I'm not angry. Unless we have really pressing issues, librarians do this all the time. The lady was happy and when she comes back I'll have more to show her. I made a friend.
That's why we stay late.
Joe, I completely agree with you. Not happy that I just got my hours cut by 60% at IMCPL, but I am thrilled to be at a job where what I do makes a difference. I have yet to have a day where I just do busy work all day. I get to make a difference with someone every day, even if it's just suggesting an author they haven't tried before.
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