I have worked as a librarian since September and it is a terrific joy! The pay is meager, but I have no expenses...

I work for a library too. It's a great job and I wish I can get my MS in library science. They don't the best, and I'm being tempted to be a teacher.

Grow up

You will live a miserable life.

in the uk and france, you need a degree to be a librarian

I have worked in two libraries at big universities

At the first one, all of the senior staff were real old librarians who were in their 40s-60s and were being muscled out by the new high tech management squad that liked to have 9 catered meetings a week and give themselves 3x larger salaries for doing nothing. They were basically praying for the people who had worked there for 30-40 years to die, so that they could inaugurate a new GOLDEN AGE of Harry Potter Interactive Funzone Library Kiosks that cost 50% of the yearly budget, as well as overdesigned study spaces for billions of chinkers.

They had drastically downsized the amount of traditional librarian shit. Student workers did menial shelving and sorting, while the original old timers did all the real librarian stuff that couldn't be eliminated or replaced by a broken computer system run by a guy who doesn't know how to use it. But this latter stuff was pushed to the fringes, almost as if the new high tech management types didn't want to acknowledge that libraries are libraries. No one really checked out books anymore because internet shit is so common. It was way more common for me to be asked how to use JSTOR by a 5th year student than to help someone find a book.

Aside from all that, it was just an office with lots of office politics, gay little backstabbing shit, bickering. etc. Without exception, every single person was miserable.

The other place is a lot better, but only because it's WAY better funded. Still office politics, still slave armies of student workers who do 10% of the work they should and then randomly just don't show up for work. They can at least afford to keep the office-working traditional librarians in all day to do the real clerical stuff. But again, it's just an office at that point, parcelled up into 30 departments.

What DO librarians do? Like the old timers?

What kind of books do blind people read?
How practical are braille books?
Do you meet cute blind girls?

This how big is the average braille book? Is it printed (pressed) on normal paper?

>What kind of books do blind people read?
It varies, naturally, I can only tell what they pick up most from the library. One of the greatest mistakes is to think "blind people" like this or that in particular, it's like asking what kind of books green eyed people like.

Most of the users like cheap stuff like Danielle Steel, John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks, John Green, it's what is taken out the most. But it's also worth mentioning that these books are also what gets made in braille more easily. There aren't much braille books. We make an effort to put more important books like classics or required readings on courses and so on, but we don't usually succeed.

>Do you meet cute blind girls?
One or two, yes. But I never met "you love you lose" material there.

There are horny blind old ladies that like to squeeze my arms in abusive ways though.

>How practical are braille books?
>how big is the average braille book? Is it printed (pressed) on normal paper?

Braille books are not practical at all. They are printed on Letter sized paper of 90g weight (ordinary paper is 75g so they are slightly thicker). The reason they are not practical is because a braille character must fit in your fingertip, you cannot make it any smaller or bigger, so the equivalent font size is 24pts. Imagine printing a book on 24pts. Usually one page "in ink"(as we refer to anything not braille) is 3 or 4 braille pages. Some books are printed on only one side of the sheet, though most are printed on both sides nowadays.

So it looks nothing like an ordinary book. We split the books in several volumes. A 300 page book is 10-15 volumes in braille. We have an entire shelf for the Harry Potter collection alone (ONE collection). We have a Bible that is 31 volumes and dictionaries are ~40 volumes. When an user wants to take a book out, they usually take 3 or 4 volumes and have to get back to continue the story. Some users come with large backpacks and cases and take all the volumes.

Not to mention we have to be specially careful with them. We are constantly washing our hands, both to preserve the books and because everyone touches them, they gather a lot of dirt compared to a book in ink. In time, the braille is squeezed back onto the page and it becomes harder and harder to read. Books that are 20 years old are often impossible to read and we have to unfortunately throw them out and order new printings.

no, a lot of university's provide a major in 'library sciences' which is usually sufficient for a public library system.
a private organization might require a more advanced degree. my cousin is a corporate librarian and i'm pretty sure she had to obtain a masters for her current position.

This is fascinating thank you

I see a lot of people ITT talking about a master degree in library science, but what activities in a library require a master degree? I'm not trying to be condescending. Being a librarian seems comfy as fuck, but I am genuinely curious.

Do you clean the books?
I guess you'd have to know a lot about books and writers and the connections between them, history, language, literature etc.

No problem m8

>Do you clean the books?
No. The books are cleaned only superficially by the cleaning staff, there is no way to clean them inside. I may have exagerated in the way I said it, they leave your hand with a dirty feeling, but it's not like they are totally disgusting.

Every year or so we review the books in the worst states to see if they are worth it or if we must throw them out.

Elucidate

blind people should be executed and their libraries destroyed.

Considered this as an almost last resort if I drop out of uni. It seems like a comfy existence barring all the plebs asking you where to find the teen fiction section.

Merry Christmas to you too edgelord

book burners should be burned

You did take them up on their offers like any sane man would, right?

I'm not into fat old ladies and I have gf btw ;)

Btw, funny story, a few weeks back we had to warn a couple of blind people that the walls of the library were made of glass because they were making out very hard next to it and everyone outside was staring. Not to mention it's a library.

I think it's more for university/museum/government archives library work.