Unfortunately, no. Only in my wildest dreams do I have an action figure modeled after me.
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Bless you for putting them on the same level. We paraprofessionals are the Rodney Dangerfields of the library world.
Iām half kidding of course. At a library conference one person made it clear to me he considered paraprofessionals lesser beings, but a founding member and former president of the host organization told me we were welcome and appreciated.
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Or you could go hereā¦
Unfortunately, it seems like no one lives in the libraries any moreā¦
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Are you in a public library or a college one?
Iām well aware of how much work each of them puts into their respective jobs, even while acknowledging the degree and years of hard work that one has put in - sheās been at the same library for more than 16 years and is the head of her department, but also the work the other one has/is doing with teens and children. (Also, the latter has to deal directly with the public, which the first most certainly doesnāt not want to do!)
Theyāre different jobs, even though the paraprofessional has said that they are strongly considering going for their MLS ā¦ once their current student loans are paid off, of course! For me, itās kind of like noting there is a difference between desktop support (which Iāve done for the last several years while finally getting my degree) and say, network administration. Both are part of IT, and use some of the same skills, but trying to say one is more important than the other simply wonāt fly for me, even though Iāll freely acknowledge the network admin (should) have more formal training.
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Tangential, but definitely worth a read:
And, similar to my thoughts about living in an aquarium (Monterey Bayās comes to mind), living in a library would be lovely.
College for many years at several institutions, or was. Now I work for a bunch of college libraries in a consortium. But while at said colleges, I found a guy passed out in the stairwell with no pants on game day, helped set up a secret camera to catch a habitual mastubator (always in the Pās ā Iām still not sure what to make of that), and encouraged way, way too many boys/men to watch porn at home. Sorry, guys, but it was always your gender. Women have the decency to watch porn at home in private, like god intended.
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THIS post, applaud, applaud, applaud. Iāve worked with entirely too many librarians who draw artificial demarcations. As with most professions, we always encounter those who feel the need to elevate themselves above others. Itās ridiculous, and in āelevatingā themselves, they deny themselves the opportunity to meet some of the most interesting, intelligent people. FFS, I waited tables with a masterās degree in English. A healthy dose of humility does a body good.
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I started as a page, or student helper. Through many alarums and excursions, including several abrupt reroutings of my undergrad degree, I worked behind the circ desk, in processing, and finally procured my MLIS. Having come up āfrom the lower decksā, I know exactly the trials and tribulations the staff is prone to having inflicted on them, and will not willingly increase them.
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P.S. I love that there are apparently so many here that understand libraries for what they are. Librarians, paraprofessionals, lovers of libraries ā whatever label one wants to apply, it doesnāt matter. Not to get overly dramatic (but Iām gonna) ā publicly funded libraries are some of the last defense we have against the likes of Trump.
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and now youāre a grown-up tome with leather binding?
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You must have heard this line from A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthurās Court a million times:
āGo 'longā¦ you aināt more than a paragraph!ā
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I donāt find that overly dramatic at all. Education and the free expression of ideas is a large part of the defense against falling for the garbage that Trump and his ilk are peddling around the world. I donāt even mean anything like claiming libraries are some bastion of leftist / progressive thought ā Iāve known far too many librarians, library directors, and others associated with the system to think that, but I do know that the vast majority will stand to argue for the expression of a range of ideas, even those they might personally find distasteful.
Yes, you can always find exceptions to this, but even there, for every collections manager trying to exclude a book for their libraries collection due to personal bias, youāll find dozens dutifully defending its inclusion ā¦ even as they hold their nose during the cataloging process.
(Yeah, OK, so I might have a bit of a bias of my own here ā¦)
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renke ā Nyah!! :
:
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