I am writing this on Wednesday, December 20th, two days before my last day. I am retiring from my position at NJIT and am also leaving the profession of reference librarianship. I started this blog in August 2008 to reflect on my experience as a reference librarian. As the years went by, the number of postings I have made has declined. The reason for this is that number of reference questions has declined dramatically. I remember years ago we used to get a steady flow of questions at the reference desk. Now, at best there is a trickle of transactions with most of them being very simple questions about the availability of a specific book. The dramatic decline of students who come in and ask for me has bothered me more. Years ago a student would come in and say Professor X suggested that I come to see you to discuss my research. This rarely happens these days.
The concept of information literacy has frustrated me greatly. When I teach classes, I sense a disinterest or indifference by the students. Perhaps they don’t take it seriously since their regular professor is not teaching this class. At the end of each lecture, I show a slide which gives me name and contact information for students to reach me. They rarely do. I am being cynical by thinking that information literacy is a concept created by librarians in response to the declining reference transactions. They must substantiate their existence. I also feel that assessment of information literacy is an overkill. It is a skill that is obtained over time and if it is to be evaluated, it should be done at the senior level by a standardized exam.
Students at a tech school are obviously “information savvy” and can search the database with minimal assistance. It seems very often they just “Google away”.
I must admit that I am sorry that I stayed in this profession as long as I did. I guess as people age, they become complacent and fear change. I found out the hard way that it is difficult to make a career move at an older age. For a 4 year period, I sent out resumes and interviewed at a few places. It probably was just as well, that I didn’t change jobs since I really valued the job security that my university offered. I was bored and frustrated, but at least wasn’t let go as I traveled on the dreaded career plateau. I made the best of it by collaborating with a colleague at another university on research projects. I am proud of my contributions to the American Chemical Society and the Metropolitan New York Library Council.
I have looked into some organizations that offer volunteer opportunities, I will definitely not be a reference librarian again.
This will be my last post on this blog. I will leave it up so I can share my thoughts with others. I doubt if there are any regular readers to this blog since I have posted very sporadically over the past years. If anyone wants to keep up with me they can do so on my personal blog
Thanks for reading.
