Monday, December 8, 2008

Self-motivation for librarians:

There are three types of library professionals (this is true for every profession..). One who always look for challenges, learn new things and get things done. The second category belong to those who try or want to do new things but are handicapped due to various reasons such as lack of funding, support from management (Very common reasons) and other who don’t do any thing new at all (until ask for!!!)

The first two categories are self-motivated which is must as it helps the library professionals to update their knowledge, implement new techniques to expand their services. This not only helps in their personal life but also in professional life. Due to self-motivation, the librarians can demonstrate their skills in various ways such as learning new software so as to provide better services to users.

Third category is really difficult to handle, as these people can hardly prosper in their career. Doing routine jobs over period of time without self – motivation is dangerous for library profession as it affects the overall working of library and the institution in turn. Self-motivation is most important for librarians as it results in imagination, creativity and helps in professional development giving personal satisfaction at the same time.

One can be self-motivated by:

1. Learning new things such as blogging (I do it purposefully as it help me in improving my writing skills)
2. Sharing experience with fellow librarians (Thr’ various discussion forums)
3. Planning for future – One can plan for future as what should I do after 3/5 years from now on and start in that direction
4. Continuing education as gives more insight into the future through new knowledge
5. Remembering famous librarians till date – This will surely inspire as it gives idea what other have done and what we can do!! Following are few such examples as given by Kate Hilpern on website of http://www.independent.co.uk/ regarding LIS career planning:

· Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, was a librarian at Christ Church College, Oxford before penning the classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
· Laura Bush
The (soon to be former) first lady of America, is a qualified librarian and school teacher.
· Mao Zedong
Chairman of the Communist Party of China and leader of the People's Republic for 27 years from its creation to his death in 1976, gained his first insight into Marxism from working as an assistant to the chief librarian at Peking University.
· Benjamin Franklin
One of the founding fathers of the USA, and also the founder (in 1731) of America's first lending library, The Library Company, in Philadelphia. He briefly served as librarian there.
· Philip Larkin
English poet Philip Larkin spent his working life as a librarian, first at a municipal library in Wellington, Shropshire and then at the University College, Leicester, Queen's University, Belfast and finally the University of Hull.
· Mohammad Khatami
Khatami served as head of the National Library of Iran from 1992 until winning the presidency with a 70 per cent majority in 1997. He remained president until 2005.
· Melvil Dewey
Inventor of the Dewey Decimal System by which the library world sorts itself to this day was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a librarian. He was also a great advocate of the early library as a "university of the people" and founded the first library school in America.
· J Edgar Hoover
The former head of the FBI found his first job as a messenger and cataloguer in the Library of Congress, Washington DC.
· Philip Pullman
The best-selling author had a brief, enjoyable stint as a librarian before becoming a teacher then moving on to write His Dark Materials.

6 comments:

  1. Very nice! I wish I can do a lot as a good academic librarian in one of the biggest university in Malaysia. Many things could be done with money but many more can be done with extra self movitation. This will be more meaningful.....

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  2. lovely and very interesting!self motivation is the key to a succesful end...proudly librarian.

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  3. learning to motivate yourself by yourself is a rare and important quality. motivating yourself day in and day out is the true meaning of self motivation!

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  4. Thank you i did really need this topic you share a very nice information about the self help it's great work.




    Speaking

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  5. Nice blog. I often need motivation to stay in the librarian profession.

    ReplyDelete

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