Fun Little Story from Dartmouth College where they say as far as campus jobs go, working at Baker-Berry Library is the employment equivalent of an all-expenses-paid vacation: cushy and much sought-after.
Student workers at the library escape many of the stereotypes of other campus jobs, such as those associated with positions in DDS. Abraham said that DDS student-workers might face some degree of pity or condescension from other students because their jobs are “not fun and have long hours.”
“Who wouldn’t want to get paid 20 bucks to sit for three hours and study? That’s how I perceive my job,” said Abraham, who works about eight hours a week at the library’s information and circulation desks.“
Makes me feel valuable.
Do you suppose that stories like this have anything to do with the public perception that we don’t do much, and consequently aren’t worth much?
Re:Makes me feel valuable.
I think there may be some truth in that, Karl.
Some people do seem to think library work is cushy work and that hasn’t been my experience.
I am at a small library now, but when I worked at a large university library I supervised our department’s students. We always tried to keep them busy with stuff-that-needs-to-get-done work and not just “busy work”. If they were slacking, they hid it pretty well. I hate to seem like I’m criticizing our colleagues there, but I’m kind of wondering if maybe they aren’t being assigned enough work.
I also have to admit though that compared to food service, library work is pretty nice!
-Amy, brand new to this list so I hope I’m not out of line 🙂
Cushy?
The real problem is that our profession has very poor PR. Maybe ALA should concern itself with this problem instead of world politics. At any rate the public doesn’t realize that they can avail themselves of resources because of the library organization and appropriate purchasing.
They also do not realize that all this is done with extremely tight budgets and very dedicated professionals. The library is also a service industry. User satisfaction would probably debunk many of these myths. Another problem is the use of the library as a political soap box as we have seen in the past. We need to address ways as a profession to demonstrate to the public our role in their seacrh for needed infromation.