Queen Librarian of the World

I did not go to library school to earn a Masters in Library or Information Science, but today I think I can crown myself Queen Librarian of the World. I have arrived at this title after months and months of dealing with librarians and answering questions I should be asking them or questions they shouldn't be asking anyone. I find it appalling that recent library school graduates cannot read database records, their own catalogs or a simple check-in card. I cannot believe more experienced librarians are perfectly happy not knowing how to navigate their own email and cannot make sense of anything online. While these people might have a nice piece of paper stating that they are librarians, they are, in fact, nothing more than clerks.

Being a librarian is all about problem solving, following through, putting the pieces together, getting the information and delivering it to the public and showing them how they can do it for themselves. A real librarian can explain to you every aspect of their library because libraries function as a whole. If a librarian fails at problem solving then they are useless to any library patron, other librarians and their fellow co-workers. The librarian's job is above all to know. It is their job to know where to find the information, how to go about procuring the answers and being able to access everything in the library from the monographs and serials in their holdings to the research databases online to all those little journal records with dates and volumes and issue numbers that technical services keep, to those archaic and handsome card catalogs that were placed in closets and top floors ages ago and beyond. Yes, BEYOND. Because librarians should know.

I am sincerely disappointed in these people and quite frustrated with their ignorance. I find more and more librarians lost (or perhaps lazy?) and actually uttering that phrase I really hate more than any group of words strung together, that detestable and foul: "I don't know". That sentence is for bad retail associates. There is no place for that sort of talk in an academic library. When I hear those words from librarians regarding journal titles and serial records that they sit in front of day after day, year after year....I want to vomit. What a waste of education, what a waste of money. What the hell is going on in library school these days?

I don't want a Masters in Library or Information Science. I love libraries but I realize once I take a class in anything I lose all intrinsic motivation. Maybe that's what happened to them? That's why my whole artistic roller skating thing is tres loose and casual. Don't want it to go the way of piano, sociology, economics, history and linguistics...oh yeah, Italian and even ceramics (that quickly became uninspiring). I just want librarians to know again. If you are a librarian and you can't comprehend a simple serial record, I have to tell you, your money would have been much better spent on a fully loaded Prius. You make me feel like a total geniussuperhero librarian.

To all those librarians who take pride in their career and job duties (I have met awesome librarians), those who strive to be a know-it-all for their patrons, those librarians that continue to learn and grow as libraries change...I love you, I thank you and I gladly bequeath the title of Queen (or King) Librarian of the World to you.