The Far Ray

It’s a question I’ve often been asked, perhaps with not such alliteration, but people have their peculiar views of librarians and the library ‘profession’. Mostly “Why?” or “Oh do you like books?”.

This came to mind today as I spoke with a former colleague who has signed up for the MLIS, now MIS (they’ve dropped the ‘L’ word ‘cos it’s like the ‘F’ word, at Victoria University. He seemed rather despondent about the course: it’s not important, not worth anything -  just the means to an end blah blah, and was surprised when I told him I thought it was great he was doing it and that he would get a lot out of it.

We spoke for a while about what I had really enjoyed and lots that I could take or leave, but with any post graduate study, you get what you put in. If you think it is a piece of shit qualification and you know everything and won’t get anything from it - your right on the ball, you won’t. Why should you. He said that at the orientation the graduates who came and spoke were rather negative and mainly went on about how good it was to get it over and done with. Very inspirational. It pissed me off.

I think studying is a privilege which only a few of us get to do. If you do it, put some energy into it and get lots out of it - why the fuck else would you bother. Sure it allowed me to apply for senior positions, but I honestly learnt a whole lot from it too.

I learnt that indexing and controlled vocabularies freakin’ rock the party. Unicode and data sharing is incredibly magic, I get the 0 1 bits, well sort of but not really, it just works and it’s so clever. There are so many ways to catalogue something - it’s a real art to do it well.  I learnt that I need to put my hands on the desk to keep them still when I interview people otherwise I look like a dick. So many other things too, but I also learnt that I love it as a job and profession, I’m proud of it and couldn’t give a toss what others think. It satisfies ME at lots of levels and that is more important than making lots of money.

You could not pay me enough money to look up someone’s rectum for cancer - I can’t stand sick people, or to compose repossession notices to be sent to someone who has defaulted on their loan (how could you sleep?), or to talk up some shit story to encourage people to invest in your scheme which goes bust and leaves them destitute (how could you keep living in your flash house with your trust funds?).

No it’s ‘Reference Librarian’ any day for me.

I don’t care what others think - never have that’s why I play the banjo and the ukulele. BUT if you are a librarian and you’ve done the course and you can’t think of anything good about it - shut the fuck up and don’t go to the new recruits orientation and put them off. If you want to be a wanker sign up for Law School or become a Banker.