Often, as a aspiring librarian, I am asked, "What made you want to become a librarian?"
Simply stated, I don't have just one answer. I don't really have more than one answer either. The desire to become a librarian as always been a sort of organic feeling that I have never not felt. The idea to attend library school was a conscious decision. Also, my desire to become an art librarian can have a decided beginning point.
Back in Houston, Texas, where I am originally from, I started to volunteer and intern at local libraries once I decided to become serious about my future career. One of the first places I began volunteering at was the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Hirsch Library. I'm not sure why I decided to volunteer here but whatever the reason is, I credit my experiences there as one of the top influences in my art librarianship career.
At the Hirsch Library I participated in various projects organized by the library staff. One project I remember vividly for its decisive anti-technology nature. The project was to convert a regular word processor document into a spreadsheet document. The document was a list of roughly two thousand books, magazines, catalogs, and ephemera that was donated to the library. The story was that the person who donated the collection wanted a list of everything in a search-able spreadsheet. Our answer, whatever the donor whats, the donor gets.
This being way back in 2006, the librarians charged me with the only task they knew, convert an existing word processor document into a spreadsheet document . . . MANUALLY. So began, probably a month long task (one month, twice a week, five hours each day) of manually typing each item's information (title, author, publisher, publish date, place of publish, LOC heading, etc.) from a word processor document into a spreadsheet. Also, I think formatting a Chicago citation was thrown in there somewhere.
The process was eventually completed and a huge sigh of relief was breathed by the Hirsch staff and most especially, me! The whole time I was processing this huge amount of information I was thinking, "Can't there be another way to do this? Won't the computer do it for me?" Though I thought for sure that there must be, I could never find the way or find a program. And, I had already sort of "perfected" the art of copying and generating citations that the time it took me to look into another way I could of processed 30+ titles.
So, I gave up. I did it "the old-fashioned way."
The kicker? I was lamenting my struggles to my brother (an IT guy for Google in Seattle and all around computer genius) one day over the phone and he just started laughing. And, laughing hysterically. Now, my brother doesn't laugh much, if any. He wouldn't explain himself and said he suddenly had to go. Strange, but my brother is strange.
Not more than five minutes after we hung up the phone do I have an email from my brother with a list of at least five programs that would of done what took me a month to do in less than thirty seconds. Hah!
Technology is great. The best advice is to let it work for you. It doesn't work against us.
Live and Learn . . . I guess.
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