First week of school

While visiting my family over winter break, my very dear grandpa asked me about what it is I'm going to do once I'm finally done with school. "Because to me," he said, "a librarian is the gal who stamps your book with a date and says 'Bring this back in two weeks.'"

Let me explain: Librarianship is concerned with the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information. My main interest is in the dissemination of information -- educating people, helping them find the information they need, and teaching people how information is organized so that they can be more self-sufficient researchers. Information comes in many forms, of course, including books, movies, MP3 files, electronic journals, blogs, academic periodicals in print and online, and much much more. The information universe is expanding exponentially and that's why I am optimistic about future employment -- even if I don't always work in a brick-and-mortar library there will always be people who need to find information and are not sure where to look.

Last semester I took classes on information organization, reference services, and user interfaces. I learned about how print items and electronic items are coded and stored, how to use reference sources (encyclopedias, atlases, indexes, etc.) most effectively to help users, and how to design and test online user interfaces (like search interfaces and library catalogs) to make them more user-friendly. This semester I'm taking classes on:

• libraries and society (how the economy, the publishing business, politics, and other factors affect libraries)
• sources in the social sciences (how research is conducted in social science and what sources to use to find answers to users' questions)
• searching online systems (how to conduct searches for information in subscription-based databases)
• and collection development (how to pick and choose sources that will meet your patrons' needs).

Hopefully that clears a few things up. I find that people have mixed ideas on what librarians are like and what they do. Here's one very entertaining music video example. Enjoy!