My dad is from Mason City Iowa, the city were Meredith Wilson is from, the city that the Music Man's River City is based on. I've been to Marian the Librarian's house, walked across the "Till there was you" bridge, etc. Marian, as a librarian was in love with her collection, and not particularly bothered about getting the city to read the things that she loved. It's Harold Hill who interests the town in reading ("the professor told us to read those books, and we simply adored them all- Chaucer, Rabelais, Balzac!"). Marian is the traditional Guardian librarian, like the Irish monks who copied and Illuminated their texts through the dark ages, not understanding them, but understanding the need to preserve and protect.
I am a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. In the spinoff show that follows the redeemed vampire Angel, they always emphasize his status as a champion- helping those who are helpless, being their partisan against all the forces of evil.
The articles this week were all about mentally moving away from the guardian librarian mentality, where the collection, and the knowledge is the primary concern of the librarian to a champion model, where the patron is the focus, where all the library collections and the librarian's knowledge are tools in helping the patron.
This isn't a perfect metaphor (it's pretty dorky I know) but changing the viewpoint from guardian to champion is a hard one to do.
I found the article on teaching at the desk to be most helpful of this week's readings, as it outlined the teach a man to fish training I've received and tried to emulate. It's not every patron who needs it, or every patron who's interested, but helping someone master or gain proficiency in a previously bewildering task is more satisfying than being the master of the knowledge, or the guardian, or even the Hermione Granger.
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