Does anyone read Michael McGrorty’s blog over at Library Dust and say “Man, that guy is almost too erudite to be a librarian”? I know I sometimes do. One of his latest gems is about Nancy Pearl, and what makes her so special, and by a related tangent, what we are all looking for in a special librarian.
I certainly expect you to know, and to say, and then to show. What that means is that I consider it necessary that the librarian have done a considerable amount of reading—close, critical reading at that, and that she keep reading as if her livelihood depended upon it. Because it does. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t hire anybody to work a reference desk who couldn’t be awakened from a dead sleep to give a book talk to a reading club.