We have a “liaison librarian” model, which means each librarian takes responsibility for ordering material and serving the information needs for people studying one subject area. I take care of philosophy, which is great fun and lets me drop the word “phenomenology” into my casual conversation.

Our public library was a room in the shire hall which opened every Tuesday afternoon for 3 hours. I also preferred our school library – although I wasn’t too keen on the spiral staircase up to the mezzanine that allowed the boys to look up our skirts if we didn’t hold them.

Hope all is going well with your new job – I have just one complaint – it’s taking you away from your blogging, so I don’t get to see the world through your eyes so much any more.

Great post! I always saw the librarians at public libraries as the people you don’t disturb – if you could ask them questions, they wouldn’t be in separate offices, right? Even if you wear a bright t-shirt, you’ll still be walled away from the public, quietly slipping in and out of the periphery.

At uni its obvious that many of the circulation staff members are students and therefore not qualified librarians. Also, one librarian (Humanities, Murdoch, you may know who I’m talking about!) came to give us a lecture, which left me feeling like someone cared about the collections, enjoyed the job and encouraged enthusiasm and curiousity in students. Fancy that! A long time ago now.

I liked school libraries much more than the local public library as a child – maybe it was the warmer colours and that the staff (librarians or not) bothered to engage with us.

Anyway, enough rambling from a random user. Hope all’s well with you!

Dee

Of course, there are people who do realise this, and take every chance to take full advantage of our open door policy that we have with our offices. I mean, how many other professionals can you think of where you can just walk up and get immediate service?

I think that part of this problem lies in a primary/secondary school system that doesn’t utilise its librarians – many don’t even employ librarians (after all, library technicians are cheaper to employ and can cover all the necessary tasks). Similarly, at uni, I find that we often need to do all our marketing and promotion – although when students attend our various library skills classes, we find that they start using us more.

With public libraries, I think it’s a matter of people seeing the librarians at work in the community, liaising with community organisations, visiting schools, nursing homes, child care centres, etc. In these cases, people realise that librarians are more than just people who provide an over-the-counter service.