Amy Lingafelter: Librarians

I’m afraid I won’t match the level of amazing discourse that’s been appearing here regularly, and I do have more thoughts about poems, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a minute to mention librarians.

 

I am one of them.  I know a lot of smart ones.  I live in a perpetual state of hope that they are important to the people (you) that fund them.  I hope you know a librarian or two or three.  I hope you have a positive library memory from your life when you think back on it all. I suspect many of you do.

 

More specifically, I am a school librarian.

 

I know that kids go home with school library books every day in this country.  Maybe you see them around your house right now. 

 

Every day I have to squash the thought that I am touching items that I have lent to teenagers.

 

Every day a kid asks me a computer question that I almost can’t believe exists anymore.  A lot of my job is computer questions or the most random questions you can imagine:  "Do you have a can opener?"  "When is this dance/that thing/this thing/the other thing?"  This makes me happy.  I want people to go to libraries with their random questions.

 

Every day these questions feel really important and inconsequential at the same time. The inconsequential element comes only from their age versus my age.  Consequences are never really a fair thing to judge. It all matters.

And every day at least one school student in America asks me (or my stand-in, at all the schools lucky enough to have a librarian) for a "good" book.  Most days, it’s many students asking.  "Good" means something different every time.  I have been asked specifically for a "calm" book, a "happy" book, a book with "a whole bunch of drama," a "love" book, that "blue" book, that "book with the guy and the girl in a circle on the cover," that "book where [insert plot detail here]," etc.  I have been asked specifically for a "dirty" book.   I admire that question, because while many high school students know what they want, few have the wherewithal to ask that way.  I don’t love all the books I point out.  They don’t love all the books I point out.  When I start to rattle off books, the most popular question is, "Miss, have you read every book in this whole library?"  The most popular title for random adults in many schools is "Miss" - an approach some adults hate, but I find it sweetly formal. I have not read all the books in this whole library.  I can’t.  Some of these books are not good.  And some of them are not the right fit for me as a reader.  But everyone gets to pick, and good librarians (on the public service side of things) haven’t read every book, they just know about books.  There’s a difference.  I know the books I love.

I say “on the public service side of things” because there are many different types of librarians.  Some people who get the Masters of Library Science degree are really into organizing information in all its many formats but have no head for public service.  And vice versa.  I have a good head for public service and a mediocre head for organizing things.  I hope the profession seems complex enough to allow for these idiosyncrasies.  Libraries do have their devotees.  If you're one of them, look around your library the next time you go.  Notice what the librarians and library staff do.  Ask them.  They'll tell you.  They like helping.

 

Comments

[Jeremy Masters]

What book do you recommend when they ask you for a dirty book?