When talking to students who were interested in going to library school, I would usually share two pieces of advice:
1) Do everything you can to limit the costs of your education (scholarships, grants, assistantships, whatever) because people don’t go into this field for the money and the less debt you have the better.
2) Don’t get too hung up on the library where you want to work (either in terms of type or location), focus on the kind of librarian you want to be and be open to how that can be expressed in a variety of places (with or without the official “librarian” title).
If I were talking to a student today, I still stand by my first piece of advice (although I am thankful to see so much unionizing and solidarity in the library field these days, which I hope will lead to better wages and overall working conditions for my fellow librarians in the years ahead). I would also still tell students that how they do the work of a librarian is indeed infinitely more important than where they do it. In fact, I think that advice would be more authentic from myself today versus years ago, because right now I am NOT employed by any kind of library, although I have worked in four very cool and distinct libraries earlier in my career.
One of my favorite leaders in librarianship is David Lankes, who has continued to emphasize librarians vs libraries in the evolution and focus of our field. One of my favorite quotes from him:
“I have long contended that a room full of books is simply a closet, but that an empty room with a librarian in it is a library.”
If you’re intrigued, I highly recommend listening to the presentation The Librarian, The Closet, and the Empty Room where Lankes argues “Librarianship needs a radical change – a focus from libraries as places and institutions to librarians as radical positive change agents.”
In December 2020, I quit my job as a librarian employed by a library; but I never stopped being a librarian. I was really honored the other day when a friend and former colleague described me as a “force for good” and I hope everyday I can continue to strive to be a radical positive change agent. Right now my brand of free-range, untethered librarianship involves advocating for small businesses and the entrepreneurs who create them as well as researching the history of the AIDS epidemic in Minnesota, making that information accessible, and teaching people how to do archival research.
Curious how I’m making that all work? Me too. Stay tuned to this blog and I’ll be sharing my experiences along the way as I listen and learn.
Recommended Reading: The New Librarianship Field Guide by R. David Lankes