Oregon Legal Research Blog
A lot of people think those of us who choose to work in libraries do so because we “like to read” and “don’t like noise very much.”
Give us a moment to stop laughing, deposit those beer cans in the recycle bins, return from making a statement to the police about that “incident in the stacks,” and wipe our brows after successfully and peacefully removing that badly behaving patron from the library to the relief of our other library patrons.
It is only 10:30 a.m. and way too early to crank up the Closing Time rendition of “Hit the Road, Jack,” so let’s instead talk about Library Work. In a nutshell:
1) It’s rarely quiet – at least not the kind of library-quiet you might remember from days of yore.
2) We rarely get time to read anything more exciting than official memos and emails, unless you count the latest behavior policy.
3) Most of what we have to read is digital and official (e.g. memos, procedures, policies, law, budgets, etc.)
4) Most, 99.99 %, of library patrons are wonderful.
5) A few library patrons should be banned for life from … the planet.
6) Library people know what RFID, Dublin Core, metadata, and digital asset management are.