Friday, July 20, 2007

This is what librarianship is all about...

Sometimes we all have crisis of profession. As we drive to work we wonder why, with all the politics and personalities, exactly we chose our given fields. For some of us it's that one colleague, who knows how to perfectly display indifference to all things wonderful, that pushes us to the edge -- for others -- it's the patron whose snide aside during a reference interview causes us to run to our offices and want to light a match to our cheaply framed Masters degree on the wall.

Working in a field that is seen as a glorified service industry can wear on us all -- regardless of our type of librarianship. In library school they don't warn you about the extreme situations or the entrenched personalities -- and once you have a degree in hand and begin the job search it's too late to turn back.

But we all know not all days are perfect and instead we look for moments of the day to help get us through the rest of the 24 hours. I had two such moments today.

One such moment was being part of a process to get the pictured items ready to go to the public. I know that even with all the spoilers out there -- there are still adults and children who have a passion for reading and an active imagination who will be gitty to get one of these beauties in hand. And it makes me happy to be a part of it (and I'm super proud I didn't even sneak a peak at the inside either).

My other moment came when I did my Podcasting for Teens presentation in Newcastle. I walked in to see a room with 8 teens -- all girls waiting to participate in a technology related program. And even though the fine folks at Onenet let me down in regards to internet access -- we recorded a few items (using Audacity) on my laptop (which I posted to podomatic this evening). These young ladies had fun with the technology - they asked great tech related questions - and even wrote down the url of the wiki my notes are posted on so they could see it all at home. So I got to assist these young ladies in thumbing their noses at the stereotype that girls don't care about tech.

So yeah - have a great weekend.

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