Wintereise cartoon

I'm beginning to worry about me lately. My resistance to the whole librarian thing is breaking down. It must be those online classes I've been taking --sending subliminal messages in digital form. Because I'm beginning to think that being an "information professional" would be alright, and worse yet, I've been spending lots of time with lots of other librarians lately. On Friday I went to a workshop to learn about changes to the search features of a widely used online database. The changes were not well received by the other librarians. There was a hue and cry. Have you ever been in a room surrounded by outraged librarians? The scariest thing is, I shared their indignation: "how dare they get rid of the single citation matcher?!" I hollered, along with the others. It was torches and pitchforks time. There was a muttering that rose up from the incensed crowd that this was the work of programmers. Librarians and programmers often lock horns, because programmers often seem clueless about library functionality and the needs of dense patrons.



Other disturbing signs that I am being taken over: Yesterday, I found myself presiding over a whole roomful of librarians! I was at the head of the room with a microphone, handing out awards to a group of seasoned, grizzled old bookmarms. (Well they weren't all old and grizzled.) How did this come to be? It's all because I belong to this group of health science librarians in Kansas City, and for the second year in a row I had been suckered into chairing the Awards committee, which picks five libraries to win "awards", and then hands them out at the January meeting. Yet I'm not even a bonafide, gold-seal approved librarian myself. And I am not sure I want to be. I wrestle all the time with the implications, of what I could become if I go down this path. But yesterday, there was no distinguishing me from the others. And as I stood there and scanned those faces, it was like that song by the Talking Heads: "and you may ask yourself, how did I get here?"