Statement of Professional Philosophy
My Statement of Professional Philosophy -- in which I also
articulate Competency O which seeks to answer the question, "How will I
'contribute to the cultural, economic, educational and social well-being of our
communities'”? is something I have been thinking about for the last two years
while I learned about what it meant to be a librarian. It has changed as often
as I have changed my perception of librarianship and it may change again as I
practice my profession in the future. For now, though, my professional
philosophy is service based. That is, I wish to serve my community by meeting
their information and literary needs as a librarian. What that means to me is
that I fight for their access to information and intellectual freedom and that
I help the people who come to me for assistance in finding resources to fill
the gaps in their knowledge that keep them from their goals. Part of that
mission involves ensuring that the materials holding the information they seek
are preserved, protected, and accessible. It also means that patrons who seek
information are comfortable with my non-judgmental discretion. My feelings on
the matter are, no matter what knowledge they seek, why they seek it and what
they do with it is their own business.
I express myself best as a writer and storyteller, so I
think I can better articulate my professional philosophy with a story.
Once upon a time there were two little girls, best friends
who dreamed of having adventures. One day, they found a magic door that could
transport them anywhere they wished to go. They stepped through it and found
themselves in a corridor, stretching into infinity in all directions and lined
with mirrors. Each mirror was a doorway into a different land. The girls
wanted to explore, but without a navigator, someone to help them find their way
around, they were hopelessly lost and could find nothing. They wandered
aimlessly about for a time until they finally gave up and went home, no wiser
and knowing nothing more than they had before.
This story would have had a much happier ending if the girls
had a guide to help them find their way through the infinite mirrors,
reflecting all the knowledge and information that exists. They needed a
librarian. I am grateful that when I was a child, I had such guides. Growing up
in southeast Michigan in the 1970s as the child of a single mother and with the
ever-worsening economy of a one-industry city, there was not much for most
young people to do except hang out at the mall or explore mind-altering
substances or both. Fortunately, I found an alternative. I found friends in
Laura Ingalls, Nancy Drew, the Fossil sisters, the Bobbsey twins, the March
family, and so many others.
It could have been a much bleaker experience if not for our
local library and the librarians who worked there. My favorite place in the
world was the McFarlen Public Library. I can still “see” where every book was
shelved in the stacks there at that time. It was warm in the winter and cool in
the summer and staffed by kind adults who belied images of the stereotypical
librarian. It was the 1970s, after all, and the world had changed and was still
changing and the library, then as now, reflected these changes. There were no
bespectacled, bun wearing cranky old women here with their lips pursed in a
perpetual “shush!” Instead, the men and women who staffed this library were
helpful and caring. At that time, children needed a parent’s permission to
check out books from the adult side of the library. When I was caught browsing
in the adult stacks, instead of simply telling me I had to leave, Miss Jean
approached my mother about giving me this permission and then helped me choose
some books. That is how I started reading classics at 8 years old. I had read
Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Dickens before my 10th birthday and if I
didn’t understand something I read, the librarians were there to help me figure
it out. I was a lifelong bibliophile thanks to librarians.
These were my role models in my most formative years, so it
is no wonder that I would grow up and choose to follow their example and become
a librarian myself. The library was a magical haven. I could travel all over
the world – many worlds, in fact – for free. I could think of no better place
to spend my time than among my beloved books. I confess that library school was
a huge disappointment. So many classes on digital information, metadata,
technology – where were the books? Librarianship, as I was learning about
it now, looked little like my beloved childhood experiences. Then I took a
class on the history of books and libraries and I realized that, at one time, books
were technology, as were the means to create them. Intellectual freedom,
facilitating access to information, preserving the materials in which the
information is located, creating a lifelong love of literacy – these were
things I could see myself doing as a librarian. From the beginning, I
understood that being a librarian was a service career. I currently work as a
library aide in a branch of our county library system. The greatest pleasure I
get from my work is serving our patrons. When I help someone find a book or
assist someone on of our public computers to gain access to a job application
or to print a resumé or term paper, I see the librarians of my childhood. The
difference is that they worked with typewriters and card catalog files. It is
both easier and more difficult dealing with the constant changing and advancing
technology. By staying current with advances, librarians keep libraries and
their services relevant. With books and magazines in electronic format,
sometimes exclusively, with streaming video and music, libraries are not all
about the books any more. Libraries are, and always have been, about
intellectual freedom and service to the needs of the communities they serve.
That is as Andrew Carnegie intended it when he began building library buildings
as long as the community in which they were located built the collections in
the libraries to reflect the unique literary tastes and information needs of
the community. In our branch of the county system, we have many patrons who
have no other access to computers or the internet. I have seen patrons taking
college courses, MOOCs and others, on our computers. I have assisted parents
who have chosen to homeschool their children to find materials to build their
own curriculum. I have located Newberry Award winning books on our shelves and
at other branches in our system for children whose teachers and schools are
trying to instill an appreciation for literature in their students. I have
assisted our patrons in downloading books in electronic format to their various
readers and tablets and other devices.
In my heart and in my mind, though, books – the printed kind
– will always come first. They are part of my history and the history of every
library in existence. To me, the library is a magical place. I can think of no
more wonderful a place than a library filled with volumes and tomes of
literature and information, all waiting to be explored for their treasures. I
realize that books come in all forms now, audio and electronic formats as well
as print. However, I love books, real books. I love the smell of the ink and
the binding glue, the feel and the sound of the crisp pages turning, especially
in the quiet of a library reading room. I would love to be an archivist or
academic librarian, repairing and preserving old books, building, cataloging,
and maintaining collections and helping people to access these things. The
physical artifacts are important. While the contents may be digitized or
copied, the materials from which the books were made give us a context in which
to understand the contents and our place in history. They are cultural
treasures and it is crucial that they be preserved as such. My dream
career would be as a conservator of rare books, however, I can see myself working
in an archive, keeping history accessible to everyone or cataloging things so
that people can find what they are seeking. With education costs ever rising,
people need their libraries and access to knowledge and information more than
ever before. It is my hope and my aspiration to assist these self-educators in
this endeavor. In the end, no matter what position I fill, the joy I take in my
work as a librarian will be serving our patrons and the community of which I
will be a part.
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