When Good Librarians Go Bad...

I had a friend ask me the other day if I planned on staying in library work. This saddens me since I really really do like working in a library. However, my cynicism and utter disappointment with my current library seems to make people think I hate all libraries. This is not true.

I have worked in several really good, well organized libraries and some of the disappointment has come from the shock of moving into a library I assumed was the same and finding out that the organization leaves something huge to be desired. I could go on and on about everything that's wrong with this particular library system but I won't. Instead I'll tell you about the librarian who's been here the longest.

We'll call him Jeffrey.

Jeffery has been working in this same library system for 35 years. He worked his way up from a page to a librarian position. He is in charge of our Reference collection. Since I had to do an inventory of the Reference collection I can tell you what type of job he's been doing.

The average age of our reference collection is about 44 years old, so this collection was basically in place before he got here. Most of our annual budget for reference books is eaten up by standing orders, standing orders are books that we buy every year so we don't have to think about it. Meaning he has neither weeded the collection or consciously added to it in the 35 years he has been here. He freaks out when I weed (meaning throw away) things from the collection.

He also avoids the circulation desk as much as possible. On Saturdays when it's just him and me, he'll find odd jobs just to stay away from the desk. And instead of sitting at the circ. desk he's sitting at the reference desk where no one will bother him and doing who knows what. So if he's not managing the Reference Collection and he's not helping with patrons, what does he do all day?

At this minute I don't even know where he is, leaving me completely alone in the lobby to fend for myself.

I can deal with all these things. What I can't deal with is the idea that, if I stay here for any amount of time, this is what I'm going to turn into. A person who no longer gets any kind of joy out of the job, avoiding all possible responsibility, and mumbling angrily to myself. I've told people before that one thing that has really helped me stay calm at this job is to simply stop caring, if management truly thinks I'm doing the horrible job they act like I am, then they can fire me. The fact is, I'm not, I'm actually doing a pretty good job and pretty much every other staff person has said so.

I had a meeting with my supervisor the other day who asked me an odd question, "Where do you want to go?"
Excuse me? I don't know what that means? Apparently, as she explained, it means she knows this job sucks and she was wondering why I had not applied for any other branches that have come open. I told her I was not interested in those branches, but it saddens me that everyone sees how obviously unworkable this job really is. But no ones going to change it.

I am also planning on applying for some library jobs I have seen open in the area where Ben has an interview at the end of the month. He doesn't even have the job but I figured I'd apply anyway "just in case". My specialty in school was academic libraries and I'm definatly shooting to do that work again. At least patrons who come in know exactly what a library is for and are serious about using it. So yeah, I think it's also really sad that I'm applying for jobs in a state a thousand miles away on the off chance that we end up moving there. But that's what I've come to, still better than turning into Jeffrey.