I was talking to one of the librarians on our staff last week and she told me one of our library success stories. A patron got laid off from his job and came to the library looking for help. He attended our series of employment workshops and decided he needed to change careers. Our librarian helped him research possible new careers and he came back in to thank her for her help because he was excited about being accepted into an education program for the new career he had chosen through his research at the library. Cool!
If you are at that point in your life where you are choosing a career or considering a career change there are a lot of resources available at the library to help you. There are tools that analyze you and recommend careers based on your preferences. There are tools that analyze future business markets and employment trends and recommend careers based on anticipated growth. Consider the US News and World Report article: 30 Best Careers in 2009. One of the 30 best careers for 2009 on the list is………LIBRARIAN!
Here are some excerpts from their overview of the job: Forget about that image of librarians as mousy bookworms. More and more of today’s librarians must be clever interrogators, helping the patron to reframe their question more usefully. Librarians then become high-tech information sleuths, helping patrons plumb the oceans of information available in books and digital records, often starting with a clever Google search but frequently going well beyond……Librarianship is an underrated career. Most librarians love helping patrons solve their problems and, in the process, learning new things……That effort to land a job will be well worth it if you’re well suited to the profession: love the idea of helping people dig up information, are committed to being objective—helping people gain multiple perspectives on issues—and will remain inspired by the awareness that librarians are among our society’s most empowering people.
It never hurts to be reminded of why I love this job. Our success stories show why you might love it too.
