Defining My Librarianship

There’s that phrase which chases us around the libinfosphere, a variant on:

‘You don’t become a librarian because you like books.’

Well, actually, many of us do. Let’s be more accurate:

‘You don’t become a good librarian because you just like books.’

You become -and stay – a good librarian by liking other things, too. You like people; computers; metadata; gin. You have a passion for teaching or research. You see the void which exists between a person and the information they need, and you have to fill it.

Sometimes, that void is filled by books. Sometimes it’s filled by information about books. Don’t put barriers in the way of either of them. Don’t make future generations crawl around in the electronic equivalent of a dusty old storage room, hunting through obsolete data formats. Don’t make them have to put in a request.

Set My Data Free

Lord have mercy on me a sinner