Why I like being a librarian

It occurred to me the other day that I run into librarians way more often than I ought to. Obviously I see them at work and school and when I go to library-related events. What’s weird is how frequently I encounter librarians in real life.

Example: I’m currently taking a guitar class. One of my classmates is a librarian. When I went to a make-up class last week, TWO of the other people were librarians. I know two adult skaters who work in libraries. One of the guys in my choir works in tech services.  There aren’t that many librarians in the world. People are always telling me, with a charming combination of surprise and derision, that they didn’t realize librarians still existed. So how is it possible that I am always around them?

It’s not a coincidence, as it turns out. Here’s a fact about librarians: they like learning. That’s one of the best things about this job. Pretty much every day someone needs help researching something I’ve never heard of, and then I get to learn about that topic along with them. That’s an awesome job for someone who’s been known to spend hours trawling Wikipedia for weird and mysterious articles.

So really, it’s no surprise that other librarians devote their free time to learning new stuff, which is why I run into them all the time. It’s why we’re interesting people. Seriously, when is the last time you had a boring conversation with a librarian? We read a lot, both online and in print, fiction and nonfiction. We have access to tons of information all the time, and are responsible for connecting other people with that information. Clearly we engage in lots of other activities outside of work (although you may not want to start a conversation about figure skating with me, because it’ll go on a lot longer than you want it to). We’re good people to invite to a party – we’re well informed and we’ve chosen a job where we have to be personable all the time. We’re great at giving gifts (at least to book lovers). Librarians are awesome.