Why Am I a Librarian?

I should note that I've always been a fast reader, so when I was a senior in high school, I'd go to the library, check out a book, return it the next day, etc. I didn't begin to consider librarianship as a career until I roomed with a friend who was in the UC Berkeley School of Librarianship [alas, no longer]. She had a subscription to Library Journal and the ads for jobs sounded interesting.

I had to take a year of college-level work in order to bring up my grade-point average and fulfill the UCLA Graduate Division's foreign language requirement. I enrolled at what is now California State University, Northridge (in those days, Valley State). Since I didn't have to worry about fulfilling other requirements, I took courses I'd enjoy. Along with my year of French I took classes in children's literature, European history in the 20th century, and essay writing.

At the same time, I worked in the school's library, in the Reserved Book Room and also as a shelver. That was my first taste of library work.

Lawrence Clark Powell, one of the legends of librarianship, was dean when I applied. (He retired as dean, but taught Introduction to Librarianship in the summer session.) Seymour Lubetzky, THE name in cataloging, instructed descriptive and subject cataloging and classification; and Betty Rosenberg, who had been in the acquisitions department of the UCLA libraries, taught selection and acquisitions, academic libraries, special libraries, and reading and reading interests, which morphed into Genreflecting, a bible for reader's advisory librarians, were on the faculty.

My model for library work was the secretary to the executive director of the Associated Students of the University of California [Berkeley], Peg Davies. The word was that if Peg didn't have the answer to a question, she knew who would.

Although I "specialized" in academic and special libraries, I've spent most of my career in public libraries. My first job out of library school was with the County of Los Angeles system. I lasted six months. Then I went to Inglewood for what would be my first tour of duty. I headed serials and government documents, and was somewhat involved with converting our collection from Dewey Decimal Classification to Library of Congress.

After I left Inglewood, I had several jobs - two as a law librarian - as well as working as a temporary secretary. One job which was the most fun (but sadly underpaid) was as a typist at the 1984 Olympics. A bit later I was a half-time young adult librarian at Los Angeles Public Library's Cypress Park branch. (I had accepted that job with the hope I could go full-time elsewhere in the system. That did not happen.)

Among my temporary jobs was one as a cataloger for what became the sports library at the organization funded by the surplus from the Olympics. I think I was the only person on the staff who knew a bunt from a base on balls.

Finally, in the late 1980s I became a substitute with LAPL. I labeled myself "SuperSub," and my catchphrase was:

Faster than a speeding book truck!

More powerful than a CD-ROM [that was the top of the line technology in the period I'm talking about[g])!

Able to leap tall reference desks in a single bound!

Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's SuperSub!

I finally landed a fulltime job at the Inglewood Public Library in 1991, and have been here ever since. The most exciting part of this job is digging information from under the woodwork to satisfy a client's question.