Tuesday Roller Coaster

Some say that Monday is the worst day of the week. It being the day that brings many of us back to work, but Tuesdays can be equally ill-fated. I find that as a reference librarian one of the hardest tasks is answering all questions with the same amount of enthusiasm. This can be even more difficult when you are having a bad day, week, or month. Trying not to take your frustrations out on the general public, while giving them your undivided attention, is not always easy to pull off. In a public library you may have screaming babies, older customers who can't figure out how to print their documents, teenagers looking for dating partners, people who have stumbled over from the courthouse after having just lost their court case, and many other potentially stressful scenarios. Trying to help some of these folks, while balancing your duties as a reference librarian means that you have to wear many hats. And unfortunately they don't hand out patience in grad school, so if this is something you are short on, then you will need to work hard to keep up.

Communism teaches that in a modern society all jobs are equally important, and worthy. We need garbage men just as much as we need doctors. If we take any modern job out of society, then ultimately something will fail. I try to treat all reference questions in the same manner. Just because some are easier, and more obvious, than others, does not mean that the people asking these questions don't deserve an answer as much as the college student working on their thesis. If we as librarians begin judging questions, and assign them some merit, we will isolate some of the library's core users, and become subjective in a profession that should be welcoming of all. It is on days like today, when either one person's lack of professionalism, or a fluke occurrence, nearly derailed my day before it got started, that I remind myself I joined the profession to help others first.

So, as today started off peaceful and full of promise, I can only try and make sure that it ends that way too. Staying focused, while attempting to do the best job that I can, enables me to keep trying, even when I could just phone it in for a day. And tomorrow is Wednesday, which means the middle of the week, and who knows what else...