Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Steven Bauer contacted me this morning to let me know he’d linked to WisBlawg on his blog, To Speak the Truth. It’s quite a nice post about his positive experiences with libraries and librarians as the following excerpt illustrates:
I love libraries and librarians. I was going to write “good librarians”, but after using libraries my entire life, I can’t remember a bad experience with a librarian. (I find that statement to be quite incredulous, even to myself, understanding the bell curve of human behavior and performance in any profession.) I am almost always impressed with their helpfulness and ability to navigate the labyrinths of a library and other sources of stored knowledge.
His statement made me think – are all librarians really “good librarians”? Of course, as Bauer notes, there are varying degrees of behavior and performance in every profession – so certainly some librarians are more skilled than others in digging up and organizing information.
But if you consider that what makes a “good librarian” is someone who is happy in her career – who enjoys helping others and the intellectual challenge of working with information – then he may be on to something. I know that this certainly fits the bill for me – and can honestly say that it’s true of most librarians that I know. Yes, there are downsides – as there are with any profession – but as a whole the good outweighs the bad.
It stands to reason that someone who is happy with what she does (and has at least a minimum level of skill) is likely to do a better job than someone who doesn’t care about or dislikes the work. Despite whatever difference in skills, the person who is happy in her career is just likely to have a better attitude and try harder.
So to all you librarians out there – keep up the “good” work!