Which is the CORRECT understanding of a librarian’s life and work?

M: Next Sunday begins the National Library Week. I love libraries and I thought that in celebration of the occasion it would be great to interview a librarian in a public library. Hi, Jessica. How’re you doing?
W: Great. Good to see you.
M: My first question is what kind of training did you need to qualify for the position?
W: In most places, you need to have a Master of Library Information Science in order to be a librarian.
M: Would you please describe a typical day at work?
W: In a public library, that can vary widely from day to day. Most days, I spend a lot of time helping people use the public-access computers, and I help patrons locate the books they need. I help students find resources for papers, I help people find new fiction to read, I make displays, teach computer classes, buy the young adult books, do programming, post to the blogs, and I answer strange questions. And there are some days where all I do is refill the paper in the printer, explain that no, I will not unblock that porn site, and hand over the latest Consumer Reports.
M: What are the biggest misconceptions about librarians?
W: That we’re stodgy, boring, formal. New librarians are just as likely to have tattoos. Many people don’t know that being a librarian requires a graduate degree, and most people don’t know that today’s librarians are very tech-savvy.
M: Did you always want to be a librarian?
W: No. In my generation, there were not a lot of choices for women. It opened up to me to work in a library while I was getting my teaching credential. I really liked it much better than the teaching, because you have a wider grade range, but it’s not a glamour profession. You have to really love it, to do it.
M: What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?
W: I’d own a bakery or cafe; I love to bake, and almost went to culinary school.
M: How much have libraries changed over the years? When did you enjoy it more, now or back then?
W: The work of a librarian today is more technocratic because of the greater availability of information and also because computers takes a bigger part of the librarian’s work. Personally, I enjoyed more the kind of work we did back then in the old days.
M: What do you think is the most important part in the work of librarians?
W: Good contact with the people who come to the library, which I think encourages reading, knowledge, you have to stay up to date with the latest books, and of course to read, read and read.
M: What do you like most and what do you like less in your work?
W: I like to read books and recommend those that I liked. I don’t like to lend DVDs and see that they get more and more popular at the expense of books.
M: What specific kinds of books did you enjoy reading when you were young?
W: I seldom borrowed the classics because we had to read them in school during the regular year. I’ve always loved murder mysteries, a lot of poetry from World War I. We just read about anything we could get our hands on, and I was lucky to have parents that didn’t restrict what we read.
M: Among children’s books, are there some older classics that continue to be popular today?
W: Anything Disney made a movie of. That gave a lot of publicity to some good books. The Tom Sawyer, adventure-type things; Agatha Christie for some of the sixth graders. Of course, families that read together often pick Heidi, Treasure Island—just good children’s books. Interestingly, with the advent of TV, they don’t have to put those long descriptions of some fantastic place in books anymore because the kids have already seen it on TV. So in one of these old classics, like Robinson Crusoe, the author may go on and on and on about the trees and the beach and the way the waves came in. They don’t need to do that anymore, because the kids know what a jungle looks like. That’s changed some children’s literature. They’re not as long and much more action-oriented. Not a lot of philosophizing. A much faster pace is expected of those books.
M: How do libraries fit in the 21st century digital world?
W: We will see more computerization of libraries that will influence many processes—registration, ordering books, the online connection between libraries that allows to ’import’ a book from another library when you don’t have it in your own, etc. We already see more and more libraries with their own websites and online catalogs, which for example enable readers to check out at home what new books arrived at the library.
M: Thanks, Jessica, and greetings to all the librarians that will celebrate the National Library Week next week.