grateful for my job
It isn’t quite what I thought it would be, and some days it is downright taxing, but I am grateful for my job at the library. I work with an astounding group of people who have shown me limitless generosity and sympathy. Some of the interactions with the public have been harrowing, but I enjoy helping people find information, especially when I get to learn something in the process. We have an amazing collection in a remarkable building, and we serve an incredibly diverse population. When I am not bogged down by the minutiae of management, I am awed by the intricacies of such a grand institution.
On that note, I realize it is hip now for San Franciscan yuppies to lampoon the homelessness problem as it pertains to the main branch of the public library. I truly pity those of you who do. Who do you think will suffer from the degradation of libraries and deprofessionalization of librarians, only people not privileged enough to swaddle themselves in overpaid “new media consultant” jobs? You might be able to order everything you need from Amazon now, until you realize that there is no 1-Click for consistent cultural community. When the glittering dust clears from the mashups and meetups, the library will still be here.
(This entry is part of one month of gratitude.)
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Comments
Nicely put.
Posted by: Ned | July 19th, 2008 04:35
I read your library bits with interest and understanding. Back when, probably about the time you were toddling or maybe even before you were a glimmer in your parents’ eyes, I worked for the San Jose Public Library @ Main on San Carlos Street.
Daily we had patrons who were living in halfway houses or supported housing down by State who would leave their homes after breakfast and come to the Library for shelter, for human contact, because they loved to be surrounded by books and/or because they loved the music room where they could sit in a carrel with a pair of headphones and have someone spin an LP of their choice for them.
Libraries are marvelous places, filled with information and art and, for me, pure soul-hugging bliss. Heaven, if there is one, is a library. No, make that … Heaven, if there is one, will be a bigger and better Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin.
Ten years ago, Vartan Gregorian said, “Libraries contain the heritage of humanity: the record of its triumphs and failures, its intellectual, scientific, and artistic achievements, and its collective memory. They are a source of knowledge, scholarship, and wisdom. They are an institution, withal, where the left and the right, God and the Devil, are together classified and retained, in order to teach us what to emulate and what not to repeat. Libraries are, in short, the mirror held up to the face of humankind, the diary of the human race.”
[http://www.carnegie.org/sub/about/pessay/pessay98.html]
Hang in there. Savor the bliss. Survive the misdirected bits of anger and thunder. Enjoy Main for all that it is.
Posted by: Towse | July 21st, 2008 10:09