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Top 5 Things I’ve Learned From Librarians/Library School
1. It’s never too late to learn!
Some of my classmates have established careers and want a career change later in life. I also went down the retail route before I pivoted back to library work. And being a librarian seems like a commitment to lifelong learning. I love learning and growing as I progress towards becoming an information professional.
2. If you’re working as a patron-facing librarian, it’s more important to love people rather than books.
If you have an undying love for books and reading, archival or cataloging work may be a better fit for you. There’s a stereotype that librarians just love books and want to be around them all the time, but honestly from what I’ve seen, maybe 60–80% of their work has to do with the community, be it scholarly or general. The books are a plus, but that’s not all we’re about. Librarianship is more about connecting people to information in all forms.
3. The duties/demands associated with librarianship vary a lot from job to job.
And sometimes librarians get burnt out. As one speaker at the NCLA conference I went to said, it can help to ask yourself, “Who can I…
