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They're All Special: From Special Librarian To Public Library Director... And Back Again!
by Karen Botkin
What do you call a person who is part concert booker/promoter, part civil engineer, and part politician, who shelf reads books with a library staff and writes pithy articles for a local town newspaper? The answer is not a riddle from a children's book: A public library director does all this -- and more. After fourteen years in the world of special libraries, all located in New York City, I made the jump both to working in the public library world and in New Jersey.
The Path to Special Librarianship
Earlier in my career, I twice had a taste of the public library world, both times before earning my MLS. The best experience was a work-study program in my senior year of high school, in which students had a chance to try out a career by shadowing a professional in the field. The experience of working with that public library director remains a strong influence, as she let me try almost every aspect of the job -- or at least to watch her and her colleagues up close. In spite of that wonderful experience, I entered and graduated from library school knowing I wanted to work in a special library; I wanted to work with one topic or area and really become an expert.
For fourteen years, I spent a career with a finite constituency, working in a total of three jobs. Each was in a different subject area. Each could bring a day loaded with reference requests, research, or technical services challenges that emanated from any and every area of the company for which I was working at the time. Getting to know the characters in the company and their information needs and patterns was part of being a valued member of the business. I answered to one or two supervisors, and gained enough confidence in each position to offer suggestions dealing with the library or information center's contributions to improving the business. My skills as a librarian grew, but so did my knowledge of the business world, and its drive toward profit. Then my professional life changed.
Special To Public
The job I took with a medium sized urban/suburban public library was that of Assistant Director and Head of Technical Services. All of a sudden, I had 45,000 taxpaying bosses. I was thrown into the world of patrons who came to the library for a place to get in out of the weather, to research a life-and-death health situation, to be entertained by light fiction or videotapes or children's story hour. I no longer had the luxury of calling on an IT expert to help wire a new workstation; I did the desk diving myself.
After a year and a half, the director retired -- and the keys to the kingdom fell to me. Forty people were reliant on my talents for extracting money from the town council for salary and operating expenses. The slate roof leaked in the children's library? I took bids from three contractors, looking for the best and the most economical one to do the work without disrupting after school craft sessions. (At times like those, I silently thanked my father's civil engineering skills, taught to me at home when our house needed work.) A retirement dinner to be organized for another member of the staff? I became the hostess, though thankfully a great secretary did most of the arrangements. Publicize the library in the weekly town paper, the board ordered. Articles on the most minute parts of library operation followed until the idea of sharing the "fun" with the other professional staff eased the constant publication deadlines.
The staff made that place hum. Most of them had been there for years and knew the patrons. The taxpaying patrons felt they had a right to services that would have kept three times the staff running constantly, and I had to develop placating skills that I had never before had to call on, even when working for 300 lawyers! Public relations there was a cross between fund raising, trying to convince some parents that the staff was not a babysitting service for after school care, and guessing at and programming related activities to bring the most warm bodies (statistics) into the buildings.
The creative ideas from the staff were only held back by budget dollars stretched to the limits. The non-fiction shelves needed shelf reading? All hands on deck with me there to set a good example. The wonderful reference staff, serving a local patron who happened to be a feature writer for the New Jersey section of the New York Times, found our library to be a Sunday New Jersey section page one story for their troubles. They treated all the patrons that well; the results weren't always so obvious.
Full Circle
I'm back in a special library now. When the phone rings or an e-mail pops up with a request, I can once again be fairly certain of the range of topics I'll be asked to search. The skills I learned in the public arena transferred with me, just as my special library skills had followed me into that world. Which do I prefer? That depends on the day you ask the question. Some days when I'm holed up in my cubicle, ransacking the Internet or expensive commercial databases that most public libraries cannot afford to offer their patrons, I may be grateful for the range of resources at my fingertips -- but I'd love to be arranging a Sunday jazz concert in the library auditorium, too.
Karen Botkin is an Information Specialist for a pension and benefits consulting firm in New Jersey.