How did you decide to become a librarian?
It was my senior year as an undergrad at Pratt Institute and...I was feeling really discouraged about entering the workforce--all my friends seemed to have their lives together. I would go to the Pratt library a lot. I had a rapport with one of the librarians there. She started talking to me about her job, so I thought, maybe I should be a librarian. I always liked libraries and always went to them as a kid, so it kind of made sense even though it didn't occur to me until almost the end of my college career.
So, what do you have to do to become a librarian? Any advice?
You have to go to library school (laughs). You have to get a Master's degree in Library and Information Sciences--an MLS. And it really doesn't matter what you study in undergrad--in fact it's better if you don't study information science in undergrad. Study something you're interested in, stuff you want to know about.
What did you do in library school? What kind of classes did you take?
A lot of people teased me about going to library school, because they thought a librarian just shelves things, but it's actually more involved. Being a librarian is about connecting information and serving people.
Librarians don't know everything; they just know where to find it, or how to catalogue it. So in that vein, I studied things like cataloguing, retrieving information (using databases or the internet), library marketing, science resources, social science resources, children's resources classes and YA classes--and it was amazing--that's why I decided to be a YA librarian. I took a class on digital libraries-- a lot of computer classes actually. Oh and I took a class about instructional librarianship and that was a blast.
Can you do anything else with a library degree?
There's a lot more you can do than be a public librarian. Money wise, there are more lucrative things to do.
You can be a law librarian (it helps if you have a law degree). You can work in an academic library, you usually need another master's for that, and you have to publish while you're working there, since you're part of a faculty. You could work in a business library, and in New York, business librarians make an upwards of $65,000--that's like working for a publishing company or doing private research on clients of a company.
You could be a medical librarian. You could be an archivist or preservationist. You can do so many things with a library degree...Oh, you could work at a museum! You could be a museum curator, things like that.
What do you love about your job?
I really like helping people find things in places they would never find things. Introducing them to new resources and teaching them how to use databases. Also, teaching them how to use the internet, because people think Google is everything and it's not. Google can be a great resource if you use it correctly, and if you verify your resources.
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