There was an interesting article published on Medium the other day about the emotional work that librarians encounter in their day-to-day work.
I really resonated with the subject matter of the article. Many of my friends and colleagues have heard me say multiple times that I feel more like a bar tender or a psychologist when I work the reference desk. The stories and information you learn about the patrons, both regulars and non-regulars alike, is sometimes overwhelming. Often, I've been confronted with information that I don't feel equipped to handle. For example, during my first semester as a community college reference and instruction librarian, I was helping a student find information about men with HIV/AIDS. Being a novice in reference services, I was stumbling through the interview. To get at the type of information the patron really wanted, which was personal narratives of homosexual men with the disease, the person admitted a recent diagnosis of HIV positive. While I felt honored the student felt comfortable enough through our limited interaction to share this information with me, I left the interaction with a sense of failure. It felt a failure on two levels; the first being that the student felt he needed to share that information to communicate his information needs and the second being my reaction to his news, which was to pretty much go "okay, I think I know where to look now". That was probably the most personal information anyone has shared with me at the reference desk. It wasn't the only thing though. I've had people, whose names I don't even know, share their fresh divorce news and financial troubles of house foreclosures. One night I had a "regular" ask if I could feel her forehead to see if she had a fever because she felt sick. Another night I had to call an ambulance for a student that was complaining of chest pain, and the professor and I worked to keep him calm until help arrived. During a terrible rainstorm I had a student come to the library with a scraped and bleeding leg asking for bandages because she knew the medical center was closed and the library was the next place she thought of. Physical ailments are fairly easy to deal with (aside from the drug overdoses that many librarians are encountering). For the most part though, we assist in a limited capacity until medical professionals arrive. Emotional issues are another thing entirely. The number of times I've calmed a student down who was basically sobbing over an assignment at the desk is so high I've lost count. I've seen the fear in students' eyes as they realize they forgot to save properly and have lost most, if not all, of the paper they were working on for the last six hours. Patrons have told me how they connect with the books they're reading because, like the main character, they too were raped and assaulted. For most people, especially the "non-regulars", I'm just a face they can dump their troubles on and walk away from. I exist to help them in that moment of crisis and then be forgotten about. I understand that role. The thing that they don't understand is that it stays with me. I worry when my regulars are having problems and I don't see them come into the library as usual. My mind still thinks back on that student diagnosed HIV+. I kept checking in with the professor of the student I called the ambulance for until I heard he was all right. I don't just forget, and many times I'm left without an answer and to wonder whether that person is okay. Librarians don't just deal with information needs. We also deal with the story surrounding that information need. Is it for an assignment? Is it for personal research? Like a doctor, we need the patient's whole story, not just what they think their symptoms are, to make a better diagnosis. While we learn many skills on the job, I think it would be beneficial for library students to have some introductory coursework in psychology. Not only to feel better equipped to handle the very odd situations that happen consistently at the reference desk, but also to know how to better emotionally stabilize ourselves. I've grown as a person and learnt a lot from my interactions with patrons, but I wish I had been better equipped to handle their problems before starting my job.
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AuthorI have worked in Education my entire life moving from K-12, to a community college, to my current position at a four year. I am fascinated by weird things and information in general. Archives
November 2017
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