Librarianship is one of those awesome professions in which you know you’re doing something good with your time. For the most part, you can focus on the needs of the user and not worry about corporate things like profit. You know that your work benefits the community and only in the rarest case could it cause harm (which really would be very rare, but I feel the need to hedge that comment). By the end of the workday, you know you’ve contributed something useful or at least not contributed to something negative.
Even better is that you can use these same skills to do further good in volunteer time. Helping people find information, teaching people to read, and working with community groups are all types of work that library workers might do in the course of the day, and also are things we can do in our spare time. My most recent discovery is computer training. I feel very strongly that computer literacy is as important as traditional literacy today. I rarely help people who can’t navigate computers at work, but I knew there are lots of people out there just starting to learn. Four weeks ago I started teaching a class of these people how to do some basic things: use the keyboard and mouse, get to the internet and search on google, make a word document, and send an email. Tonight was the last class. It was absolutely the most rewarding teaching experience I have ever had. It’s a totally different type of experience from teaching library instruction classes (which is fun in a very different type of way). Teaching people to go online, when they never have before, reminds you how amazing and fun the internet can be. It’s inspiring to see how driven folks can be to catch on and how excited they are when they get “there.” In all honesty, at the end of the work day, I was a little stressed each time about having yet-one-more-thing to do after work, but after class I was totally energized. It’s been a very good experience. I highly recommend it (or the local equivalent) to anyone who enjoys teaching.
On another note, I got some good news tonight. I hope to be able to share here soon!
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