Comments on: Librarian: by the Numbers

By: Bobby

Bobby — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 01:00:33 +0000

North Dakota also has the best economy/job market in the country right now, hands down. That’s a big inducement to some folks, when they can’t find a job where they’re from. And some folks just like that prairie stuff. And cold wind that blows like crazy. Too each their own.

By: The Librarienne

The Librarienne — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:24:42 +0000

@Will, as Joe gleefully pointed out, it’s cold–and flat. That seems to be all people know about North Dakota, if they know anything about North Dakota at all. Perhaps ND doesn’t talk itself up enough, or perhaps cheap real estate and plentiful jobs isn’t a very sexy lure. Since the recession began though, people have been moving to ND in droves.

By: The Librarienne

The Librarienne — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:05:40 +0000

@Joe, what do you have against flatness? For a state that’s frozen most of the year, the flatness of the terrain saves lives!

By: pt frawley

pt frawley — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:42:04 +0000

I’m glad others have had some of the same wacky-patron experiences. Dealing with the public is a challenge. After a while, though, I stopped trying to change the corny stereotypes about shush-happy librarians and settled down to helping people find what they really came in for. In poor neighborhoods it takes an effort to do something positive. At one point I blurted out to another staff member that we were doing “God’s work” helping folks with job resumes. I still believe it. Problem patrons can be found in affluent settings, too.

By: Joneser

Joneser — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:32:32 +0000

My patrons are great. It’s management that drives me crazy.

By: Joneser

Joneser — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:31:05 +0000

And Arizona is such a GREAT place to live.

By: Solo Boy

Solo Boy — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:30:03 +0000

As a solo librarian, I get the best of both worlds: surf the web & read magazines all day long, buy books with other people’s money, smile and say I don’t have time to look up an answer right now, have my very own library server that I can tinker with, and especially, take long lunches.

The only stress is when someone higher up wants to look at the budget!

By: Overworked Librarian

Overworked Librarian — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:31:25 +0000

I can also attest to the stress in public libraries. I have experienced the following incidents in one library in the past three years:
gunfire: a domestic dispute between a husband, a wife and her lover and the couple’s teenage daughters. The husband fired his gun in the air from just in front of the entrance to the library… they had just exited the library and had been arguing in front of the circulation desk for 20 mins.
a bomb threat: in the end it was just an empty styrofoam box strategically placed to freak us out. The barefoot patron who sat under a tree across from my truck dared me to open it… The bomb squad was called and with the dogs and in full bomb squad get-up carefully removed the box.

a man entered the library and went directly up to another patron hit him hard enough to spew blood.

I could go on and I don’t have time…

By: Oleg K.

Oleg K. — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:27:45 +0000

The stress at my public library is mitigated by patrons thoughtful enough to warn us that our alien overlords are coming. Having been quite anxious about not knowing the whereabouts of aforementioned overlords, I can now rest easy. That said, I wish the patrons were more specific; I need to know how long I have to finish the novel I’ve been working on at the reference desk.

By: me

me — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:08:12 +0000

I’m a public librarian so it would be easy for me to agree with you Joe. However, while in graduate school I interned at an academic library. They had a heck of a time getting respect from faculty. They couldn’t even get the departments they liaised with to let them sit in on department meetings or collect syllabi for collection development purposes.