If I’m writing this post, it must mean I survived my first day on the reference desk.
Making the shift from usability/user experience to life as a public librarian was more complicated than I thought it would be. It isn’t so much that I expected to instantly adapt to my new surroundings with a minimum of effort, but I didn’t realize how far removed from the fundamental tenets of librarianship I’d become in the last four years. Library school taught me how to organize information, how to classify content, and how to study people. I learned how to listen to customers (patrons) as they asked questions, and I learned to take their language and match it to the subject headings that would result in a successful reference interview.
Library school never prepared me for an in-depth conversation with a parent about the movies Howl’s Moving Castle and The Princess Bride and whether they were suitable for her two wonderfully precocious sons, each of whom asked a reference question that very nearly stumped me.
Library school never prepared me to deal with a little girl who is in such desperate need to use the girls’ washroom (which was closed for cleaning) that I ended up giving her the key to the boys’ room* and, after seeing the questioning look on her face, telling her sotto voce that I wouldn’t let anyone know that she used the “wrong” bathroom.
Library school never prepared me for the overwhelming emotional experience of seeing such a wide cross-section of Vancouver’s population. Currently, the racial makeup of Vancouver’s librarians isn’t on par with the population; I can only imagine it’s worse in areas where ethnic minorities make up a majority of public library users.
Library school never prepared me for getting flop sweats when a ten-year-old girl asked me to help her find french language books for beginners to help her finish her social studies project, especially when said student hasn’t fully decided on a topic.
Library school never really taught me how wonderful public libraries could be. That could be my own fault; after all, I was one of those “information professionals” who thought she’d only darken the door of a library as a patron. I don’t mean to suggest that I looked down on public librarians, it’s just that I thought my fortunes lay elsewhere. It wasn’t until I sought out those fortunes that I realized how bereft of real-world experience they really were. There’s a reason that contextual observations and user testing were my favorite parts of usability work.
The people made all the difference.
*(The washrooms in the children’s area are kept locked. Only one person can enter the washrooms at a time, and adults aren’t allowed to use washrooms in the children’s area. The little girl was perfectly safe.)
