Working Knowledge

A Monthly Column about Life on the Job

By Mary Pergander
American Libraries Columnist

Mary Pergander is director of the Deerfield (Ill.) Public Library. Send comments or questions to working@ala.org.

Column for May, 2008

Living the Dream

Take a moment to appreciate what you’ve got

Have you had the experience of telling a new acquaintance that you work in a library, and having them proclaim how lucky you are?
    I think it is taking a while for librarians to wake up and recognize that we are working in what others recognize as a dream career. Though certain misconceptions abound (“Wow, a job with no stress!”), we are nevertheless fortunate.
    In Easier Than You Think . . . Because Life Doesn’t Have to Be So Hard, author Richard Carlson titles a chapter “The Grass is Green Enough.” During my morning meditation time, I pondered his words, and recognized that we can apply that philosophy to librarianship and our own work.
    As librarians, we have familiar rants: low pay, poor budgets, crumbling buildings, dearth of technology, and little opportunity for advancement—just to begin the list. Stimulated by Carlson’s observations, however, I stopped to appreciate all that working in a library offers. Even given the broad variations of individual settings:

We get to work indoors regardless of weather, often in pleasant surroundings.

The world’s knowledge surrounds us, and the entire world of information is at our fingertips.

We work with interesting, intellectually stimulating people who generally share interests with us. We develop relationships with colleagues across the state and the nation, even around the world.

We get to sleep at night without interruption from the workplace (unless you are one of the few oncall librarians).

Our work brings us in contact with the edge of change in our society, enabling us to be early responders and adapt to what is coming—if we keep our minds open and flexible.

Many of us have opportunities to read, to watch, or listen to bestsellers or newly minted, well-respected works, at no cost to ourselves except the hours devoted to devouring them. Others have the honor of reviewing priceless historical items on a daily basis.

Whether serving patrons directly or in support services out of the public eye, the work we perform matters, and we make a difference in the lives of those served by our efforts.

    We may habitually focus on the unpleasant, difficult, or humiliating aspects of our professional lives. Those do exist. But I wonder how much of the good we simply take for granted in the library, or in any workplace. How much better might we serve ourselves by letting up on the relentless disappointments and focusing, if just once per day, on all that we love about our jobs, our profession, and the libraries in which we have the privilege to work? Contact me at working@ala.org, and let me know how you are living the dream.

WORKING WISDOM

Spring is the season of starting again. Renew your appreciation for the work you do and the career you have chosen. Find the aspects for which you are most thankful and recommit yourself. What do you like best about your job? What aspects do your nonlibrarian friends envy? Can you see why?

Latest Library Links

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Genevieve Trainor writes: “The Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief is Ottumwa (Iowa’s) Stephen Blumberg. The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 catalogers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours to determine who might be the rightful owners.”

Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
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Casey Newton writes: “At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the large language models that are now under development will achieve superintelligence and transform the world. And in that uncertainty, two primary camps of criticism have emerged. The first camp, which I associate with the external critics, holds that artificial intelligence (AI) is fake and sucks. The second camp, which I associate more with the internal critics, believes that AI is real and dangerous. Today I want to lay out why I believe AI is real and dangerous.”

Platformer, Dec. 5
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Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
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Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
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Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
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Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
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Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9

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