5 Things to Know if You Want to Work in a Public Library

Hello again! 👋🏻 I haven’t been around the blogosphere for a while, and I felt like getting back into things at my own pace while also giving the blog a makeover. Parts of my previous theme were broken and I just didn’t want to use it anymore so I got a new one that works fantastically! I’m still in the process of updating some older posts to show my current social media links since there is one platform that I do not use anymore.

Something that I (and I imagine a lot of other people who work in libraries) hear when I tell someone that I’m a library assistant is how much they would love to have my job, or how ‘lovely’ they think it is. And while I agree with them to a certain extent, it never fails to surprise me that so many people don’t really know what library work entails, especially public library work. This is not an easy job, nor is any library job. In fact, when I was a teenager, my dream job was to be a school librarian because I was so close to the librarian who worked in my school, but once I realised that it’s a lot of work for one person to do, I changed my mind on working in a school library specifically.

There’s nothing else I want to do other than work in the library because I’m so comfortable here and it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, but I think that people who want to come into this line of work should have some realistic expectations. Because just being a bookworm is not good enough for the library service.

books are not sacred, they are objects

I’m not the most active in online books communities these days so I’m not sure how people feel about physical books now, but when I was younger, the thought of doing anything to make a book not be in near-mint condition was considered sacrilege. If you dog-eared your pages or cracked your spines, you were already on thin ice. But I once remember going to a book signing where the audience was horrified to find out that one of the authors used damaged old books in their art projects.

Books are not indestructible, they’re made of paper. And while library books get a lot of years use from them, they eventually have to be put out to pasture. And by that, I mean that they get torn up and thrown away. The policy in the library I work for is “if you wouldn’t have it on your own personal shelves, don’t keep it on ours”. Some people would keep a book that is falling apart and covered in mud, but when it’s for public use, it’s not fit for purpose.

In an ideal world, library patrons would take better care to not drop our books in puddles, spill coffee on them, pull the pages out, or let their dogs chew on them, but we don’t live in an ideal world. At the end of the day, a book is a mass-produced physical object. We can always buy another copy, but we’d rather not have to.

quiet public libraries do not exist anymore

The fastest way for someone to tell me that they do not know what it’s like to work in a modern library is to tell me that I must have a “nice quiet job”. My job is anything but quiet. I don’t spend all day shushing people because we don’t expect total silence, but there are times when I have to tell children to stop screaming and running around because we’re not a playground.

Libraries may have been quiet places for study back in the day (whenever ‘the day’ was), but these days they’re communal spaces for many different groups of people. We don’t ask for total quiet because it’s just not realistic but we do ask that people be respectful of the people and the space around them by not being too loud or playing sound out loud on their phones or computers. They don’t always listen to that and just give the excuse of “I don’t have any headphones” (which is a terrible excuse for being inconsiderate, by the way), but we’ll still ask.

If you want to work in a library but especially want to emphasise a quiet library, your best shot is an academic library.

there are stupid questions

Carl Sagan is the person credited with the phrase ‘there are no stupid questions’, but there certainly are. And ‘stupid’ may not be the best choice of words, but you will get some ridiculous questions that will take you aback. A classic question that I hear almost every day is people asking ‘do you work here’, usually when I’m doing something library-related like shelving books or sitting at the library reception. The building I work in has other departments as well as the library so I can see why people would ask me that, but not when I’m at the reception desk doing library things.

One question that I don’t encounter that often but still surprises me whenever I hear it is ‘how much do the books cost’ or ‘can I buy this’. The people who ask the first question are always pleasantly surprised when they find out that it’s free to borrow books, but one time someone told me that when they were a kid it cost 20p to borrow library books. Thinking back, that person probably returned their books late when fines were still a thing. It is usually kids who ask how much the books cost, but there is the odd adult who asks. The key is to not treat them like they’re an idiot because we all get confused about things at times.

Some people will be very confident in their ridiculous question when asking it. An example that a former manager of mine would give was a patron asking for books about ‘butterflies turning into caterpillars’. Anyone who has been to primary school can tell you that it’s the opposite way around, but this person was adamant that butterflies turn into caterpillars.

you will be expected to be the fountain of knowledge and to do anything

Most people know that you can just ask Google for things these days, but there is still that generation of people who consider their local library to be the container of all knowledge that ever existed. Especially when it comes to technology.

A surprising amount of people who come into my library have either never used a computer before in their lives, or haven’t used one in a long time and have forgotten how to use one. And then some people just want you to do everything for them, which is not what we are there to do. ‘Can’t you just do it for me’ is the bane of my existence. I will show you how to do it, I will not do it for you. Which is something I say every Tuesday when someone tells me that the grocery store down the street said I would set up a loyalty card for their customers.

Something that thankfully hasn’t happened to me very often is people assuming that I’m a mind reader. There will always be the odd person who wants to request a book but they don’t know anything about it: the title, the author’s name, what the cover looked like, not even what the book is about. Those are all very important things to remember when requesting a book and if you don’t give library staff any clues, you’re not going to get your book. I will try my best, but I’m not Professor X.

you are not responsible for other people’s reading habits (especially not children’s reading habits)

In my library organisation, we’re lucky that we only have one person who formally complains about the books that we stock being inappropriate or ‘disgusting’ and that person has had a continuous rolling ban for over ten years so we don’t take them seriously. As far as I’m aware, there aren’t as many calls for book censorship or banning in libraries in the UK apart from one or two school libraries, but I’ve been observing the book bans in the USA from afar and it’s truly horrifying to see from the outside.

Some people do have the perspective that if you can buy a book in a shop, it’s not truly banned and while that may be the case, banning it from a library limits the accessibility because books are not cheap. A lot of moral guardians feel that we have a duty to provide materials that are suitable for all ages because we don’t put limits on what children can borrow (our only policy is that members have to be at least 18 to borrow DVDs and that’s because we charge for them and also down to UK law), but that’s not the case. You wouldn’t go into a Barnes & Noble or Waterstones and harass the staff for having a book that isn’t suitable for children or has a naughty in it, so why do it to a library?

People are responsible for their own reading habits, not libraries, and the easiest way to deal with a book that you find offensive or inappropriate is to just stop reading it and put it down. It may not be offensive to someone else. We already had our deal of wannabe Mary Whitehouses in the UK and thankfully, they just get ignored but I do hope that libraries here don’t cave to the pressure from conservative groups and start demanding ID like some libraries have in the US.

bonus thing to remember: library work can be difficult, but it is rewarding

A lot of things go into making a library run. It’s never been about sitting at a desk and reading books all day, there is actual work involved. These days, library staff are expected to juggle many hats because so many people from different walks of life come through our doors every day. We’ve got homeless people who just need some shelter for the day, people using our cafe to pick up food parcels, people who use the library to escape from abusive homes, as well as people who just want books to take home. Every library is different and some libraries are used solely for books, some are used for socialising, and some are safe places for people. Knowing that we can provide a service to anyone who needs it will always be rewarding.

talk to me!

What’s something that you think people should know before they step into your field?