Thread: Future Career
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Old 03-06-2009, 12:00 AM   #12
ZenGum
Doctor Wtf
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Badelaide, Baustralia
Posts: 12,861
I was a library assistant in a university library for three years.

Librarian can be a good job but might be bad.

Mostly it is quiet, helping people out, moderate physical work, some social contact, and you meet nice books. And maybe a nice patron or two as well

However, you might occasionally have to confront a patron who is misbehaving. Can you shoosh people? Confront a book thief? Refuse another loan to someone with overdue books?

The worst risk is amongst the library staff. Take a bunch of obsessive compulsive anal retentives and make them work together. It can work or just turn spiteful. There was one time I was offered a promotion to another unit which I declined - it was a VERY unhappy team.

Maybe this was an exceptional case. Quite likely it was to do with being a university library with all the power game BS that large organisations often develop, and a local library wouldn't get this.

You could try volunteering at your local library and see what it is like.

I don't mean to put you off it. It was, by and large, a good job, and there are other perks. Today I am wearing a jacket and sunglasses that were abandoned in the lost property box of the library, which I adopted at the end of the academic year. This was at least four years ago.
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