I’ve been curious about this for a while. There seem to be a lot of library people on this board. So 'fess up; who works/ed in a library and what do/did you do?
Most of us just use the library, and so are familiar with the way it functions.
I did work in a library for several years.
Anything in particular you’d like to know?
(I’m afraid I can’t suggest many new books, as I’ve lost touch with the booklists of late.)
TVeblen does or did work in a library. She was the tall, bearded librarian at the reference desk.
I’ve never posted before, and I don’t work in a library, but I do work in an archive, which sort of counts. In a way. Maybe.
Sorry, no sig yet either.
I worked at the Madison Public Library in Madison, Wisconsin for two years. In fact, I had several different jobs there. I drove the Bookmobile, I worked the check-out counter, I printed, collated and stapled the brochures and I ran money to the bank and took correspondence to City Hall. It was an a great experience - everyone was super fun and cool.
Another bonus was having unlimited access to the patron database. When a cute boy would check out library books, I immediately knew where he lived and what his interests were.
Ok, I admit I stalked one particular boy with this information, but we ended up living together for three years, so I suppose it’s okay. He turned out to be my best boyfriend as of yet. Thank you, library!
I worked in the inter-library loan office at my school the whole time I was there. It was a really great place to work, actually. We all had Spice names, and took an office trip to see Spice World when it came out. One of my co-workers was a dog breeder, so frequently we’d get to play with puppies while on the clock. Oh yeah, and sometimes we exchanged books with other schools and stuff.
We were, I don’t mind saying, the coolest office in the library, hands down. (What? What’s funny about that sentence? Stop laughing!)
I do.
I volunteered as the school librarian at my son’s Catholic school 4 years ago. Actually I started as an aide, but the head librarian left an offered me the position, it paid $100 a week , but so much was spent on books and supplies that it was purely volunteer work. It was great fun, reading to kids is such a joy.
I work as the Reserves Assistant at the University of Alabama in Huntsville library. I’m in charge of handling the items instructors leave for their students to tear up.
Don’t you love that? We have lots of reserve items that are photocopies of articles. The articles are stapled inside manila folders. The students like to take them out of the folders to photocopy them. That’s not such a big deal, if they put them back in, but that doesn’t always happen. My pet peeves:
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When they don’t put the article pages in order before stapling them back into the folder.
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When they put them back into an inside-out folder, so that all of the identifying info for the article such as call#, barcode, etc, are now on the inside of the folder and I have to fix it before we can file the darn things.
These don’t sound like a big deal, except when you’re talking about 500 circ’s per shift. Grrr.
I actually had a student return a lecure video without its case. She tried to tell me I checked it out to her without the case.
Sigh - it’s not such a bad job, though.
If, as ArchiveGuy said, working in an archive counts, then me, too. It’s a division of a library.
Motorgirl wrote:
The problem is that if everybody removes the staples, they get ragged pretty quick. Plus, many of our reserves require 3/8 inch heavy-duty staples at least. If they try to restaple them with the light duty quarter-inch staples in standard staplers, it’ll just fall apart.
I have worked in the McGill University Libraries now for seven months. I’ve worked as
- a shelver in the McLennan Humanities Library;
- a shelver in the Nahum Gelber Law Library;
- a photocopy assistant in the McLennan/Redpath copy shop;
- an interlibrary loans assistant in the McLennan/Redpath ILL office.
Before then I was a library assistant in the Marianopolis College library.