I’ve been asked by many people, including members of my extended family, just what does a librarian do? This page is an effort to have a handy, if lengthy, answer.
- Snapshot of what I do (Archive of my participation of Library Day in the Life Round 5)
- Snapshot of what other librarians do (Library Day in the Life, all rounds)
- General Description of what librarians do (Occupational Outlook Handbook 2010-11) – Includes salary ranges
I don’t want to read the above, don’t you have a Twitter summary of what librarians do?
I do. Sort of. It would fit in a Facebook Status:
The essence of librarianship as stated by British Blogger Katie Birkwood (emphasis in original):
Any collection (be it books, papers, objects, images, webpages or anything else) is no good to anyone unless 1) someone knows what’s in it, and 2) people can access to it. These, to my mind, are the fundamental principals of librarianship: catalogue (i.e. work out what you’ve got) and make available (i.e. let people at it!).
Source: Day in the Life: broad-brush approach
Girl in the Moon Blog, July 29, 2010
http://maedchenimmond.blogspot.com/2010/07/day-in-life-broad-brush-approach.html
Page Created 7/31/2010.
To Ms. Birkwood’s succinct summary, I would add that, for any curated or “deliberate” collection (the Web is not one of these, but our book, e-book, and article database holdings are), “select and acquire” come first.
Point well taken.Thanks for stopping by.