I often get asked by curious friends what my schedule is like working at a public library. I have never been able to give them a straight answer without first consulting several calendars. Unless you have a librarian in your circle of friends or family, you probably have no idea what our work days are like. You might imagine us reading all day, but this notion couldn’t be further from reality. If you could glance at our color-coded hourly schedule, it might provide a small explanation as to why I’m not 100% confident that I know what I’m doing on a given day.
While we spend hours answering a wide variety of questions or helping patrons with technology, there are also a multitude of projects and tasks that happen off of the service desks, when we are not in the public’s line of vision. Librarianship is a creative profession for which there is no typical day. The services, collections, and programming we provide are indicative of the work that goes on behind the scenes to make it all happen.
Our off-desk work ensures we offer a variety of services to benefit the community. This can look like someone creating book lists, writing a blog post, capturing content for social media, or teaching a class. It can mean doing outreach at a school or assisted living organization, or connecting individuals to local social services. It can also mean meetings. In addition to meetings with colleagues, vendors, and partners, we schedule meetings with patrons. The library offers multiple services, like Librarian by Appointment, Digitization Station appointments, and proctoring that requires one-on-one attention. All of these things can be and most often are part of one person’s job description.
If you’ve seen our events calendar, it should not surprise you that programming is a critical focus of our mission to build community. Whether we’re working with partner organizations or developing content for a storytime, book talk or book group, there are many details that need to be addressed. And, then there is the business of maintaining our thousands of electronic and physical resources, ensuring the content is available and accessible in multiple formats and languages. While we are juggling all of these tasks, there is always the possibility of an unexpected occurrence or an issue requiring more immediate attention, resulting in a complete reworking of the day’s schedule.
So, if you do have a librarian in your life and you ask what their schedule looks like, don’t be surprised if it takes them a minute – or a few – to get back to you!
Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash