Here that silence? It's the sound of information being dissemeniated to library staff....

To the left you see a notice for an event held at the library where I work, in conjunction with National Poetry Month. Seems like a good enough idea. Except that I, as the person who buys all the literature and poetry books for the Adult collection (and also the High School books), had no idea this program was taking place.

It may sound like I'm nit picking, but this is just another in the trend of my library director, and the library board, taking responsibilities away from Librarians who do the collection development, and giving those duties to a "PR" person, who, in actuality, does very little real PR work. What she does is plan programs, without so much as a heads-up to library staff, who should know what's going on, if only too answer the patrons' questions about what programs are being held.

There was a time when the Librarians were responsible for programming at the library. They were familiar with our patron base, what community members were interested in, etc. As the librarian who buys poetry books for the collection, when I received information from The Academy of American Poets about this year's National Poetry Month, I wondered what kind of program might be well-received by the library's patrons. I thought a contest of some sort for the library's teen patrons might be fun. But upon doing a quick check of the library's website, I found the above nugget of information. I was not told about this event directly. I had to dig around till I found it. Had I been notified, I could have tried to involve the local High School students (yeah, I know, they wouldn't have shown up anyway), or somehow worked with the community to get them involved in library programming.

It's bad enough that Librarians are underpaid, but to not get professional respect from the library director herself...well, it's insult heaped on top of injury. (Perhaps part of the problem is that my particular library director has worked at this library SINCE SHE WAS 16, and SHE HAS NEVER WORKED AT ANY OTHER LIBRARY EVER IN HER LIFE. I find this extremely troublesome: I really believe that in order to be a good librarian, one needs a variety of library experience. Fuck--life experience would add a lot to a person's outlook on the Library's place in the world. But if you've lived in the same town, and worked at the same place your whole life, your world view is myopic. You don't see how other people do things, you don't gain new insights. And this is my director in a nutshell.