Well, you know the saying, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Blah blah blah. Another meaningless platitude in a world full of meaningless platitudes, it’s been said so many times it has no meaning. And come on, is “fonder” even a word, really? Yet, here I am, day 11 of being in the library but not being on the reference desk and I cannot wait to get back out there and get a headache from the fluorescent lights as I nod off waiting for a student to ask me where the bathroom is.
It’s not because we recently carpeted the area behind the desk and I’m anxious to wriggle my toes in the thick, stain-hiding patterns of the plush, but rather it’s because of this thick stain-hiding patterned plush that I’ve spent all this time at my desk fuming, banging my head on things and pacing like the sad, sad polar bears at Lincoln Park Zoo.
Since our summer term ended, our library has been running on interim hours (M-F 7:45-4:30). In addition, we’ve taken this slow time as an opportunity to refinish the floors on our main level– the level with our circ desk, the reference desk and the coffee shop. The circulation desk was re-created as a circ outpost upstairs in our archives room, a reference assistant was scheduled to field questions at our College and Career Information Center, and the coffee shop… well, I’ve been going to Caribou Coffee and spending too much money on my cafe au laits.
For the first part of this two week period, the coffee was the focus of my irritation. I don’t really consider myself a big coffee drinker– I don’t need coffee to start my day, I don’t get cranky without coffee, sometimes coffee makes me feel lousy. But like most people who have bad habits, I enjoy the process associated with going to get coffee. Sure, stopping at Caribou on my way to work got that over-priced cup of milky fair-trade into my hand, but that didn’t solve the problem that at 10am I didn’t have any place to go to me out of my small, dark office.
But the most psychologically damaging part of this 16 day period of weirdness has been my lack of interaction with the patrons. I really, really miss reference! Even though the last weeks of the summer session consisted of 3-hour stretches of reading back issues of Chicago magazine while I loaned pencils to the 8 students in the library, I felt as if I were accomplishing more then than I have in the 80 plus hours I’ve spent in front of my computer in my office.
Maybe it isn’t so much that I’ve grown more fond of reference in these past days as much as I have realized that reference is really at the heart of why I chose to be a librarian and what keeps me coming to work every day. I get totally enthused about my side projects– tutorial creation, workshop development, odd-ball 2.0 concepts that may never get off the ground. And since I got back from Immersion, I can barely wait to get back into instruction. But if I were only doing those things, I would feel as if a huge piece of my professional identity (?) were missing. I’m a librarian because I like working one on one with people who need information. I’m a librarian because I love research. I’m a librarian because I get so damn excited about figuring things out. I’m a librarian because I love reference.
And I’m a librarian because I hate office jobs. Get me the hell out my office, damnit. I wanna go help people.
