The Questioning Librarian

When I began my tenure as a library director, one of the things that caused me the most trepidation was the thought of putting together a budget. When the time came, I did the best I could with no financial training and as much knowledge about the finances of the library as I could gather. I made sure to check the budget with anyone who might know enough to give constructive comment. Remarkably, it held up rather well in the following year, and it was far less stressful to put together the next budget. But it should never have been this way. This experience, and subsequent work with others in the field of library and information science, revealed a glaring oversight in how librarians are trained. I cannot speak for graduate programs other than my own, but the lack of training in basic finance is not only a surprising lapse but a disservice to the field as a whole. How can we be expected to effectively lead our organizations if we don't have the training we need to thrive? How ...

A few blog posts ago, I wrote about how librarians make a difference in the lives of people they serve, in myriad ways. This qualitative take on the value of libraries doesn't cover the whole picture, however. While that alone would, to my mind, be enough to justify the continued presence of libraries in our communities, the quantitative data that exists that further bolsters our case. Libraries make a difference in the lives of people we serve, and we also make a difference in the economies in which we exist. I was thinking about this more last week after having helped several people in our little library. The first was a man in his forties who was in the process of job searching. As a condition of receiving his unemployment, he visited the library every day, five days a week, to dutifully continue searching for a new job. One day he came to me for help--he needed to attach his resume to an email to send off in applying for a job and didn't know how. I showed him how...

When I went to my book club last week, I was looking forward to discussing the Anita Shreve novel that had been selected, a book that was interestingly written even if the story itself was a little dull for me. The way our book club is set up is that each of us takes a turn talking about what we thought about the book and got out of it, and with the diversity of people there, ranging from a retired German teacher, an old Presbyterian minister, to a local artist, the discussion is always interesting. But what was most striking for me this time was the response to the book from a member of the group who spoke very little about the novel itself. Instead, he talked about how when he lived in California he walked several miles to the library to take out books, how he treasured them, how a handful of books that he had taken out of the library changed his life. It really turned out to be a profound mediation on the power of books to alter a life in the most surprising ways.  Where I ...

A few days ago I had a distinct feeling of deja vu . Returning from giving a talk to a local organization, I walked towards the library where I currently work to help cover a shift in the evening. Night was coming on, and the warm yellow lights glowed from within the library piercing the oncoming dark. As I entered through the main door into the relative quiet, I felt the same feeling that I had so many times when I was still at Clarion, heading to the University Library after sunset. It's a feeling that is difficult to describe, a gentle warmth of the heart the moment you see the lights in the distance, acting as a beacon in the dark. It is the silent thrill of anticipation of what might await inside, for a good library is a magical place, a beacon in the darkness of the mind just as it is in the physical darkness. It was a moment that caused me a brief feeling of longing, of wishing that I could go back to Clarion's library not just today but as it exists in my mind, as it w...