Copied from Myspace blog
the day flew by surprisingly fast. i spent most of my time shadowing the children's librarian at the branch that i'm training at. i was also surprised to learn that she's about as cynical as i am, which was a good and a bad thing. good because the atmosphere was very similar to when i was working at the bookstore. i felt right at home. we exchanged stories about all the crazy regulars we've come across and i got to meet some of them, too. it was a bad thing because although i'm sure she's an excellent children's librarian, she's not exactly the kind of librarian i want to be. she did the least amount of work as possible and what she did do, it seemed as if it was half-assed.
i feel awful saying this about her, especially since she actually wanted to work with kids and focused her education on it. i'd like to think that she started off like i am, wanting to be a great children's librarian, but after experiencing the crazies, the unattended kids, the asshole teenagers, the smooshing of m&m's into picture books and the non-participant parents she's developed a fairly negative attitude. i don't want that and hope i don't get it.
the community library manager (CLM, aka branch manager) is the opposite. she gave me a children's pep talk, telling me about her experience. like me, she went into librarianship wanting to work with adults, but kind of slipped, fell and and landed into children's services. she learned to love it and preaches that she thinks its the best way to start off in the profession, a widely held belief.
we'll see where i land when i finally get to work in my library and meet my kids along with their parents and neighbors.
i'm ready for day two.
