Why being a librarian isn't as cool as it sounds

Not long ago I read that, according to a survey, one in two Britons wants to be a librarian and that this profession is the second most desired, only behind that of a writer. As a librarian I asked myself that question that was asked so many times when I worked in Beijing and I said what I do: Really?

I never understood the tone of that question, and I definitely don't know how to take the data from that survey. What I can say is that the librarian job is not as cool as you think.

Someone will think after reading this lead that I got up in the spirit of grinch, but seeing the border with my classmates leads me to think about what was going through the minds of all of us in that photo the day we enrolled in Documentation.

Being a librarian is practicing a profession that was defined by the Mesopotamians, so we usually have a while, this being a source of pride. Of course, we did not know this data when we started.

But let's get to the heart of the matter that, as always, I'm going around the bush. There are two reasons why a person says they want to be a librarian: a) it is a quiet job; b) working with books.

It's a quiet job

Well, it is relatively quiet. If you compare it to an ER doctor, of course. But if someone expects to stay at the counter quietly reading (more than extended image of the librarian) without being disturbed by anyone, getting up from time to time to order some books, they are wrong.

At the counter you are at the foot of the canyon and users arrive, loved and feared according to their nature. So, whatever they are, the librarian does not sit quietly reading and watching, he has to deploy his social and managerial skills to serve them.

It can be found with users who ask for easy things, which are also pleasant and friendly. But there are also unbearable and pedantic ones that embitter the working day for the most patient of professionals.

A real case to illustrate the latter: a user comes to the counter and says to the librarian: «King Alfonso XIII offered a dinner in Seville for a troupe of actors in 1928. I want to know the dinner menu ».

I don't remember if that was the date, but that was the request. The menu for that dinner. The librarian to whom this happened searched, until finally she kindly asked him to go to a file where, if they had not been lost, they would have data on that event.

Do not think the user was friendly, he called her incompetent among many other things.

You work with books

And with books we think of literature and works of thought: History, Philosophy, Philology ... and it is here that those of us who go through the trance of studying Library Science (an ugly word that is no longer used), we smile with a certain arrogance at philologists, historians or philosophers who decide to jump onto our terrain.

In a library there is everything and when faced with certain inquiries it is useless to know even the most unknown author of the Generation of 50 or to know the endless sequence of wars and revolutions in XNUMXth century Spain.

To illustrate this I give you another real case: in my town there is a librarian who, after closing the municipal institution where he worked, they relocated him to the library because the man writes very well and knows a lot about literature. He is currently the most unmotivated person anyone can find in a job and he spends half the year on sick leave due to depression.

The job of a librarian is to manage an institution that has to ensure citizens' access to knowledge and culture, from literature, through mathematics, engineering, philosophy or law.

So the librarian job, for those who want to do it because they think in one of these ways, no, it's not so cool.