Library Profession

Thanks to my mother who inspired me to become a librarian. It was actually her unfulfilled dream!! At younger age, I was voracious reader. At that time I used to read mostly fictions and general magazines. Also I wanted to do something different than conventional. Hence I preferred to become library professional. I thought that being library professional, it will help to me satisfy own reading habits!! (Just joking)

Seriously, as we all know the library profession is a service-oriented profession as we the librarians are expected to serve the users and in turn the organization where we work. The attitude of the other professional fellow beings (including my few relatives) always amuse me as they feel being librarian is a easy job of just issuing and returning of books...

In contrast, working as a librarian in special library of highly well known institute is always a challenge for me due to following reasons:

• I have to keep my self abreast with latest happenings in not only my field but also in the subject area for which we provide services to our users.
• Thinking innovative ideas to attract users to library
• Learning new things especially in the area of technology so as to update/add/experiment with existing services and introducing new ones
• Implementing the library committee recommendations, which are most of the times challenging in it’s own way and time consuming.

I am sure this will be same for all the library professionals!! In today’s advanced technological scenario, it is essential to keep pace with it by learning, using it for various purposes in library. For that, librarians have to prove to their management the utility of such technology for user’s sake due to cost involvement and after implementation again, the difficult task is to prove the actual usage from user’s side so as to justify the cost!!

In my case, I really enjoy my work as it gives me opportunities to meet new people, to guide them as per their requirement, to help them to fulfill their own academic/research/professional commitments by providing them accurate information. Every day is different which guarantees the job satisfaction. Library profession is no doubt a noble profession.