Opportunity for Creativity in Services
I have a few people on my Twitter list who are in the library field (librarians, employees, etc) and some fellow MLIS students (some of whom are working in the libraries). They definitely are an underutilized resource for me, though I’ve gotten some valuable things here and there from them. Cultivating a relationship with these online people has opened up opportunities to get help and encouragement in this field I’m getting started in. Dan, a librarian in Dakota City, Nebraska, recently has given me some very helpful tweets in response to a response I had to his link about some libraries closing in Omaha. As someone in the great state of California, hearing of cutting down of public services elsewhere resonates with me because many of our public services , including libraries, are constantly threatened due to insufficient funds in the government coffers. It made me feel like I picked quite a scary time to pursue an MLIS. Dan in response offered this*:
While there are challenges to libraries and librarians, this is an opportunity for librarians to be more creative in their services. The challenge is for the library to make itself an essential part of the community. We bring to our community their concerts through www.houseconcerts.com. Many of the artists will play for a place to stay, a donation and chance to sell (CDs). We also try to keep up on government programs, because we help people sign up for unemployment, Social Security etc. We offer noncredit classes, work with the local community college to do provide ESL, GED and other classes. Make yourself essential as a librarian and make your library essential to the community, advocate for the library and you will have a job. Mainly I wanted to give encouragement. It is easy to read the literature and get discouraged, but librarianship is a great career.
Great advice, Dan. In fact, it goes very well with the NYPL’s campaign to support their public library, only the message can go further than the New York metropolitan area. Libraries all over the country need support and advocating for them is something to keep in mind. I’ll also keep the closing statement in mind – librarianship is a great career. Isn’t that what I signed up for? Isn’t this what I expect when done with the MLIS? Absolutely.
Here’s the NYPL video to get people to support their public library. Yes, I embedded it in a previous post, but the message is worth repeating and needs to adopted nation-wide.
* I have formatted Dan’s tweets into a paragraph. It naturally flows this way.
