A librarian's knowledge

Working on my last assignment for this semester, I found myself thinking a great deal about a librarian's knowledge.  The assignment is a journal on a one-day placement at the State Library of Australia and, during the course of the day, I noted how much of successful reference work was due to the librarians' own knowledge.  And not just their knowledge of the State Library's collection or their catalogue or of information sources generally, but also their own local knowledge of Adelaide, South Australia and Australia.  This local knowledge provided a lot of assistance in answering queries.

This was a point that was partially picked up in the one of the journal articles I read during the semester - it noted that a qualified librarian who was also a subject expert was "doubly expert"*.  Which I suppose makes me triply (or more) expert, given my degrees in literature and philosophy of science.

But that expertise is the main reason that I have chosen to retrain as a librarian at this stage of my working life.  It feels like a natural progression to take my knowledge, skills, expertise and experience and put them to the service of the patrons of whichever library I manage to get a job in.  And it's certainly one of the reasons that all my family, friends and former colleagues agree (without exception) that librarianship is a most appropriate occupation for me (that - and the fact that I am a born bibliophile).

And certainly, during my one-day placement at the State Library, and the volunteering at the Women's Studies Resource Centre, I felt very much at home and very comfortable with learning library skills.  That in itself shows that I have made the right decision career-wise, if even there are people out there who feel that libraries are no longer needed in this age of the Internet.  And though the Google news alerts ofnlibraries make for depressing reading with the constant stream of budget cuts and library closures, I will persevere and hopefully, sooner rather than later, find a job in a library - even if it is now called an Information Centre.

Because if there is one thing that the Internet and Google can never replace, it is a librarian's knowledge.

Cheers!

Catherine

* At the moment I can't recall which article I read it in and have been looking for it.