I want to be a Librarian
Greene
1960
Thanks to anonymous submitter for this wonderful relic from the past! Submitter says there is lots of information about the card catalog and finding good books. (I wonder if this counts as a good book?) I quickly breezed through the world cat holdings and A LOT of public libraries are hanging on to this title. Please do the profession a favor and get something more current.
We weeded this book about two years ago. Aside from the complete absence of anything resembling a computer, the children in the pictures weren’t exactly “multicultural.” And the librarian in the story gave off a definite “old maid / spinster / can’t-get-a-man” vibe, if I recall. This was the kind of storytime piece that gave children the impression that teachers and librarians slept on a cot in the closet after work, because it was absurd to believe they might have families at home…
My mom gave this to me as a present when I was entering library school!
My daughter – despite years of saying “I’ll die rather than be a librarian like my mother” – has now decided to go to library school realizing that, from the time she read Jane Eyre at the age of 10 and joined the JaneAusten Society at 16, her fate was sealed. I am glad she never saw this book or she might have chnaged her mind.
I love the blog idea, but could you post higher res images of some of the images you post. They seem like they’re hilarious, but we can’t get in on the joke because we can’t actually read many of the pages.
Thanks, and keep up the good hunting.
I suspect that nostalgic librarians are holding on to this one despite the rational part of their brains telling them to let it go.
I actually had somebody ask me for a librarian-as-career book the other day. I couldn’t find anything – not even this! Any suggestions for a 12-year-old? Librarian doesn’t seem to get included in most career books.
That is so awesome 🙂
During my schooling to become a librarian five years ago, my fellow librarians-to-be and I ran across six copies of this old book on the shelves of a school library we’d been assigned to weed. It was just enough copies for each of us to keep one. For me, it was oddly familiar as the copyright date was in line with the time I might have seen this book on my school library shelf and checked it out.
I’ve been toying with sending you guys this book to put on your blog and it was so bizarre to see someone else had the same idea!
Did anyone else notice the reference sticker on this book? (Green sticker, lower left corner) Apparently it’s so valuable they can’t afford to let it out of the library!
i have this book and i LOVE it – i got it when the public library i was working for weeded it from it’s collection. It’s up as decoration in my home office!
I have it too! It’s a relic of the good ole days when life was simpler, or seemingly so. Maybe the libraries that have it are keeping it as an historic relic not as a career guide.
I would be first in line to become a Media Specialist if I could wear that girl’s suit from the front cover.
I love this site, and I love the chance to see this book again…but don’t you think it’s reference because they aren’t taking it seriously? I generally shifted these fascinating oldies (think Dr. Nightlife’s Guide to Chicago, 1975) to our reference or historical collections, and used them to answer reference questions. There are still social historians using public libraries. In a school library, not so much (although I confess to keeping some librarianship howlers in my school library for display.)
So, what really intrigues me about the cover is the little girl’s dog…does she get to bring him into the library?
You know what this would be really good for, though? If you really needed to educate your library board about how “this isn’t the library of 1960” anymore. Show and tell.
I was given a toddler t-shirt for my daughter with this exact design!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, man, this cracks me up. I want one!
I love that the pictured copy is a REFERENCE BOOK too
I own this one … and like one of the other posters, use it to decorate my office. Wouldn’t have it in a collection, but its a great piece of weirdness.
I snatched a copy of this for a quarter when my local public library system weeded it and put it in their book sale. I remembered it from my elementary school library days! I knew I loved books and libraries, and by the time I was 10 I knew I wanted to be a librarian. The book is displayed, cover forward, on the bookcase in my office. When I first read this book I lived in a small, rural all-white town, and had no idea yet that there was a different world out there. Hard to believe it has survived on library shelves for so many years after the Dick and Jane readers of similar ilk (how many of you are old enough to have learned to read with that series) were long gone.
This book is making me long to visit a computer free zone, like a retro village. I secretly fantasize about being an old maid spinster librarian.
I wouldn’t mind having it behind the counter for moments like when I try to explain to a ten year old what a card catalog is. One day I finally said, “Go watch Ghostbusters. That scene in the library where all those drawers start opening and cards fly out – THAT’S a card catalog!”
I would weed this on general principle. Please don’t ever tell anyone to be a librarian. We’re all getting laid off! Run little girls and boys, run! Go into law, medicine and technology! Be solvent, little ones. Dear God, be plumbers….!
Weeding Girl the book was written in 1960 were
we multicultural then??? Also the computer thing… ahem…