Why Are You A Librarian?

12/22/20 • 15 min

Hello librarians. Thank you for joining me. Today’s episode is short but essential. It hits at the heart of what you do.
Today, I’m going to talk about the why of what you do and why that why matters.
You can find today’s show notes at masterfullibrarian.com/ep3.

When I ask why you become a librarian, I don’t mean how did you come to this profession.
That may not be that relevant at all to why you are inspired to do the work you.
For instance, I got my MLS only because I couldn’t find a good job with my Public Relations degree and the chance for a graduate stipend from the University of Alabama Graduate School of Library and Information Service (now SLIS) dropped in my lap.
My mother was a college library director and a graduate of the school. The Dean happened to call her looking for graduate assistants while I was sitting in her office making a nuisance of myself.
I applied and the rest is history.

That’s how I got into the profession, but it certainly wasn’t why I stayed.
When I talk about your why, I’m referring to the concept so beautifully articulated by Simon Sinek in his 2009 book “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action” and his subsequent TED talks with the same title.
If you’ve never read the book or listened to the talk, I highly recommend doing both. You can check out his work and his message on his website at simonsinek.com. The link is in the show notes.

One of the most powerful things Sinek says in this book is
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe”.
He uses the example of Steve Job’s masterful marketing for Apple. Apple’s marketing strategy didn’t focus on their products, which of course were good; it focused on the company’s own why.
Sinek describes a Golden Circle needed to be successful in engaging others.
This circle has Why a business does things at it’s core, How it does things as the next circle out from the core, and what it does or produces as the outer circle.
In his TEDx talk he describes Apple’s Golden Circle this way:
“The inner core, the Why- In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently; the next circle, the How – We make products that are beautifully designed and user friendly; and the outer circle, the What – We just happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one? "

So when I ask about your why, I mean that thing that serves as the bedrock of your motivation and inspiration for your library work. It’s the deep belief or beliefs that drive your ideas, decisions, programs and professional relationships.
And it’s an absolutely critical component to achieving greater relevance, meaning, and library impact.
Your patrons, your users, will be drawn to your why much more so than your what.
In fact, I would say that librarians who struggle the most to gain support and be effective are the ones with the least compelling and service-oriented why’s.
For complete show notes, go to masterfullibrarian.com/ep3.

Previous Episode

Librarians, You Matter More Than You Know

Hello, Librarians. In today’s episode, I want to talk to you about how important you are and how much impact you actually have on the people you serve. You all matter so much more than you may know or realize.

In my very first podcast episode, Why I’m Glad I Lost my Library Job, I talked about how I reached out to librarians all over the country and asked questions. If you haven’t listened to that episode, you can find it at MasterfulLibrarian.com/1.

Those conversations were both informative and heart-warming. What I heard over and over is that you love your work and the people you serve. And that you want to have an even greater impact than you feel you’re currently achieving. But I also heard lots of great stories about the positive impact librarians are already having. And that was the truly heartwarming part.

If you’re at all like me, it’s easy to let the less pleasant things that happen in your work dominate your attention and your memories. Like, remembering that Board member who objects to every single programming change you bring before the Board, or every policy change; or the parent who comes in and complains that you were buying too many diverse and inclusive books; or the lawmaker who held his expensive tablet up while asking why you need more print books when everyone has one of those.

Those memories might take up way more space in your mind than maybe they deserve. That’s only normal - research suggests that events charged with emotion, especially negative emotion, stick more in our minds. So it’s only natural to remember those things more. But it can definitely put a damper on your morale and enthusiasm for your work.

So today, I’m going to tell you about some real life stories of magical things librarians have done. And this is meant to stir memories I know you have of times you’ve made a difference in the life of a patron or a student. And I hope that it lifts your morale a bit and brightens your day. Because what you do truly matters. It has the power to change lives and inspire greatness. Often, some seemingly small action you take, a book you share, or a program you offer, will be that one thing that causes a sea change in someone’s life.

A parent recently shared with me that when her now adult children were little and she was newly divorced, she didn’t have any money for any entertainment for her kids – not even for something like a movie rental. And back in those days, movies were coming from places like Blockbuster. So, every week, they’d make a trip to their local public library where the kids not only got great books to read, but where they could check out movies to watch at home. She told me that some of the happiest moments she had with her little ones during those very difficult times were when they were sharing books and snuggling up together in front of the TV to watch a movie from the library. She also shared that she regrets that she never let the librarians at that branch know how important that service was to her.

Mary Chappell, my friend and a rock star elementary school librarian, recently told me a story that brought a tear to my eye. When her district closed schools in March because of COVID-19, she went to her principal and said, “our kids will be scared. They need to see one of us every day to see that we’re all fine. They’ve got to see someone they know really, really well, so I’m going to start doing videos and posting them on the school website.” She started those videos that next Monday and got an email in about ten minutes from a parent saying this: “I had no idea that our child

Next Episode

Stress Relief for the Exhausted Librarian

Welcome! Thank you for joining me today.

This has been a strange and difficult year for all of us, no matter where we live or what we do. But I think it's been especially challenging for librarians whose primary mission is to serve the public.

Whether you're a public librarian facing angry patrons who won't where masks, a school librarian trying to deliver instruction virtually, or an academic librarian pushing into online classrooms where perhaps the professor doesn't value or acknowledge your presence, you're probably feeling more than a little bit frazzled by now.

So today's episode may be a bit on the fluffy side. We're going to talk about simple stress relief for the exhausted librarian.

I hope that most of you are enjoying at least a few days off during the holiday season. If so, or even if you're back at work, I encourage you to take some time to relax and release some of the stress that's probably been building up in your body and your mind over the last several months.

The suggestions I'm about to offer will work for anyone. Many, if not most of them, can be used anytime and anywhere. And none of them cost anything, or require any special expensive equipment.

So I invite you to pack these ideas into your masterful librarian toolkit to pull out whenever you need them.

First of all, I want to say this:

Make any effort at de- stressing very gentle, and very easy.

The worst thing that any of us can do is to stress ourselves more trying to find stress relief!

So please just listen to these and take what works for you - and works for you easily - and leave the rest.

My first suggestion, and this isn't what's normally recommended, but unless you're already a seasoned practitioner,

Don't meditate for stress relief!

It's a profound and wonderful practice for those trained for it. And if you are trained for it, certainly use that as a technique. But it's hard for most of us.

Telling the mind to be still and to focus on nothing or even just a single point such as a candle is almost guaranteed to make your mind jump around. So for many people attempting to meditate can create more stress than it relieves.

And as my spiritual teacher has said, meditation is old school and recommends a different practice that I find very effective.

I recommend a reading contemplation rather than meditation.

Read anything that calms or inspires you.

In a reading contemplation, you're bringing your mind into focus and into the game so to speak. You're letting it be part of your activity, which allows it to calm down and be still. Which is the opposite of telling it to be still as you might in meditation.

In a reading contemplation, your mind is engaged and interested and focused. And focus, relaxed focus, will relieve your stress. So as I said, read anything that calms or inspires.
For complete show notes, go to masterfullibrarian.com/ep-4