pss - librarians - over here

[nomoremagnolia]

Just wondered who you are as I have noticed in my browsing that there are a few of us around!

I'm an ex-librarian - in fact I think I'm the ex-librarian nomoremagnolias was referring to.(though I might have been called rusty then)

Yes please Think the booketarian is prob also the way to go. You will all have to come and do launch event

Yes, me, I'm a librarian (and call myself a librarian at work rather than Information Officer or whatever). I work for a law firm (of sorts)

yep, public librarian here, married to an academic one...

I am not-married to a librarian.

I'm the artist formerly known as ShowOfHands and yes, am an academic librarian. Did my training dl through Northumbria- cannot recommend highly enough. Lilymaid I think it's knowledge manager or some such twaddle nowadays. I am most definitely a librarian.

I too experience the glazing over of eyes when I declare my profession. It's a good job I think it's fascinating.

Oh and Compo, I used to be Kleggie, how odd!

But thank heavens none of us has resorted to wrinkly-stockinged hatchet-faced Nora Batty as a chat-name ...or, Timothy Lumsden
Nice to see so many of us here on a parenting website. Of my cohort at Sheffield, at least 75% have not had kids and at my last job, only one person on a team of 12 had a child.
If it weren't for us Mners, a noble profession would be in danger of extinction

Lilymaid, I'm still v. much a real librarian too, unlike dh, who piddles about with bits of HMTL code and has a "portfolio of e-resources", poor love

If you would like to see me, I'm here!

Gah, you got me!

I am more this kind of information professional

I'm a Library Manager in the NHS working in a Health Promotion resource centre(Information Officer, actually ) and work from home editing an NHS website as well.

I'm not a Librarian in the true sense of the word 'cos my job is a bit of health promotion, a bit of patient info and a bit of librarianship. I don't ever wear a tweed skirt, don't have a bun, and would never, EVER say ssshhhh

What does a librarian actually do? Am genuinely interested. And what does the 3 year degree course cover?

Well, I qualified as a librarian in 1979, but I did the postgrad course, after a History dgreee. Back then, I spent an inordinate amount of time learning indexing skils (I still have the beautiful card index I made for my literature search) only for it all to be made irrelevant a few years later by the rise of the computer...
As a librarian running a small branch in Merton in the mid 80's, I chose books for the branch, decided which books needed rebinding, replacing or chucking out, ordered periodicals, answered enquiries from readers, took reservations & found the books (either in our stock or the borough libraries, or from inter library loans, or ordered them if they were new)& notified readers when they arrived, oversaw the staff who issued & took in books & sent overdue reminders, organised various events for children & adults, ran a regular storytime for preschool children.
Most of my time was spent answering questions from readers either in person or on the phone - all the things that now get googled, we had to find out from our reference books.

In an academic setting, tinker, a librarian might do all or some of the following (depending on how big the place is)

• use professional indexing, classification and cataloguing skills to add stock to a sophisticated database

• use subject knowledge to anticipate and meet the curriculum needs of the various taught courses at the HEI, by identifying and buying print, electronic and audio resources to add to the library's stock

• use technical skills (generally in collaboration with the IT department) to make library content available electronically via intranets, Virtual Learning Environments and remote access portals such as JANET

• lurk on an enquiry point to be available to answer finding enquiries, subject queries and trouble-shoot library IT equipment, proof-read wonky CVs etc. Any librarian will tell you that their favourites are "this photocopier is bust" and "where are the toilets?"

• staff an issue desk and be responsible for making sure all issue and return transactions are done correctly, relieve people of £££ for overdues, put holds on reserve items for library users etc

• have some specific extra professional responsibility, e.g. managing the purchase of all journal subscriptions, or providing an orchestral hire/purchase service in a music college library

• a manager has the usual responsibilities for presenting reports on library activity/effectiveness/projects, managing the budgets, training and continuing professional development for staff, sometimes premises stuff, representing the library on various committees and working groups (I currently attend SIX different ones in my tiny HEI, FGS

HTH

As you can see, there's a lot going on behind the scenes. The trick is to make it all look serene and ordered
In a small place like ours I do most of the above, plus trundle round with a trolley shelving and tidying, at least once a week. Variety is the spice of life.

Oh and I forgot using a Content Management package to regularly update the library's thrilling internet pages

Hi Attila, it was you (as Rusty) I was referring to! Hope you didn't mind me passing your email address onto RT?
I do a lot of stock work (in the public library) buying books/ promoting books/ deleting books all to maintain a good (up-to-date) coverage for our library customers. I also staff the reference desk and answer queries (do you have a toilet? or can I use a computer? being the most common ) I also do a lot of work organising and running a reading group/ helping others run reading groups and I do a fair bit of training too, both for other staff and customers.

Not a librarian but an archivist. Close enough?

Thank you librarians. Ooo, it does all sound lovely. I love "researching" (ie messing about on teh internet ) stuff, and sorting stuff out.

This really must be fate.

I was tripping through the threads and found this one. I have always wanted to work in this area, but took a wrong turn and ended up as a nurse instead. The thought of schlepping to uni to retrain with one lo at home and another on the way was not very appealing, so I thought it would have to wait a few years.

Now, thanks to you lovely ladies, I have sent off for information on the distance learning course at Northumbria. I have done some OU stuff over the last few years, so I'm quite happy with distance learning. The course details are being updated on the website, so does anyone have any snippets of info to keep me going until my prospectus arrives?

Thanks for your inspiration

Feeling a bit grubby and inferior as am only a lowly library assistant - but do all the things Marina mentioned apart from managerial and subject librarian stuff.

I work in an art/academic library and it is fantastic, lovely people and so interesting. Also term time only, result.

Califrau - are your kids school age? I got my job after having been a 'volunteer mom' in my children's school library when I lived in the States - it was just enough experience to get me an interview.

Hey Compo - it was you I met a while ago then, with Cadders?

less noise here please

sorry, childish I know
keep chatting lovely lady librarians

Marina might recall the librarian action figure