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Once upon a time, in a land far
away, I was a high school English teacher. At the ripe old age of 22 I was
convinced I had my life plan all worked out. Teach long enough to work off my
fellowship, get my MA and then my PhD in literature, teach college, and live
happily ever after in academia. I really enjoyed teaching and was lucky enough
to have student taught in a school with a great staff and administration, so
this plan seemed completely feasible.
I like to think I was a fairly
decent teacher and that I did some good in the world. But that wasn’t the whole
story. There was a teacher in my department that I did not get along with; we
will call her Ms. PITA. She had a tendency to run students out
of her class which left her with classes of 11 or 12 students while other
teachers were handling classes of 35. I was not subtle about the fact that I
thought this was complete and utter crap that placed an underserved burden on
me and my colleagues. My colleagues told me they appreciated my willingness to
say things no one else would. My principal, on the other hand, told me I wasn’t
a team player. Five years of repeatedly being told I wasn’t a team player and
that I had a bad attitude. Five years of listening to that while absolutely
nothing was done about the fact that Ms. PITA wasn’t pulling her weight and was
bullying kids out of her classes. So I left.
I moved back home and through a
series of very fortunate events I ended up in librarianship. I was excited for
a fresh start in a new career. Only this time, I was determined to be more of a
team player. And what my principal had taught me was that being a team player
meant keeping my mouth shut and my head down. So that’s what I did. I went to
work, I did my job, I didn’t volunteer for things and I didn’t want to be
involved. I was my own little island of librarianship. So I had a great new
career plan, go to work: answer reference questions, get my MLIS, and spend the
rest of my days as a librarian.
There was, however, one small snag in my plan.
One of the problems currently plaguing librarianship is that there are a whole
lot of librarians and not a whole lot of full-time positions. With many
libraries receiving less funding, full-time positions are decreasing in favor
of having multiple part-time staff. This was the situation in my library. We
had five reference librarians, one full-time and four part-time. Our full-time
librarian was a middle aged guy who had no intention of leaving anytime soon so
my chance of advancement was zero.
After I got the degree,I started
looking for full-time jobs and was very fortunate to come across the position I
now have. When I first started, I referred to myself as a “sort of” librarian.
My job involves doing a lot of training for library staff and deals exclusively
with e-books. I have zero contact with print books in my job and work in an
office building instead of a library. I had my degree and I worked with
libraries but didn’t really feel like I was a librarian and, to a certain
extent, I felt like I was trespassing when trying to find my place in the
field. But to be honest, this didn’t bother me a great deal at first because I
was happy being my own little island.
This has
changed for the better over the last two years as I inadvertently became less
and less of an island, mainly through the influence of my boss and Twitter.
I’ve met a lot of people, many not working in traditional library positions,
and became involved in a number of projects and committees. After five years of
being in the field, I finally feel like I’m a legitimate part of it. I think
this is something that many people in the field struggle with, especially those
coming to librarianship as a second career.
There is no short and simple
checklist of what makes a librarian. No one size fits all job description or
clearly marked path from start to finish. These are not bad things but they are
things that can make it difficult for people to feel like they have a place
where they belong in the field. It’s important to remember that just because
your job doesn’t look like someone else’s idea of what librarianship is,
doesn’t mean you don’t belong.
Natalie DeJonghe is the e-book trainer/coordinator for the eRead Illinois project where she enjoys smooshing her education and librarianship backgrounds together in all manner of entertaining ways. She tweets as @InkyLibrarian.
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