Re: Where do school libranans come from?

[Dan Robinson / Indexing Services <drobinson@INFO.HWWILSON.COM>]

An interesting question. I'll add: And where do they go??

I started out teaching 5th grade for three years and discovered that
the classroom was not the place for me. I went on to library school
and got my MLS and certification for school libraries. It was heaven,
but no job security at that time. I had two elementary positions. Was
riffed out of the first one after two years and took over for a
pregnacy leave for a year and a bit. I was sort of riffed out of that
one, since the district went from one school (K-8) to two schools
(k-4, 5-8) and wanted to have two librarians. However, the voters
turned down the school budget and the job disappeared.

After that experience, the Bronx didn't look so bad and I applied for
a position with Wilson. My school library experience was very helpful
as I was hired to index for Education Index. If you like to sit and
read almost all day, indexing is for you. Of course you do have to be
able to identify the main points of the article, but it's a small
price to pay. <grin>

From there, I've moved around in the company until I reached my
present position. I'm involved in most of the conversions of our
database format to MARC and other vendors' formats. And testing the
results to make sure it all comes out correctly.

I consider my training and experience as a school librarian
invaluable in my position. As the sole librarian in my schools, I had
to do everything. What I didn't know about, I had to learn quickly.
There was no time to take a course on anything. I had to learn to
communicate effectively with people who had a vague idea of what a
library was about.

I'm still doing much the same thing today, only now I seem to be
doing a lot of interpreting between the Indexing staff and our
Computer services staff.

LM_NET is a terrific resource and a great community.  It keeps me in
touch with my roots in librarianship. I try to contribute when I can
and stay product neutral.  It is hard sometimes. <grin>.

Dan Robinson
Editorial Specs Specialist
H..W. Wilson Company
Bronx, NY
drobinson@info.hwwilson.com