Nothing could have prepared me for the surprising day-to-day reality of work as a public reference librarian. Certainly not graduate school, where I studied advanced research techniques, information literacy, library history, and cataloguing. These courses gave me a strong foundation in the essence of library work, but they didn’t shed much light on what I’d soon experience as the actual work environment. And though I’d been a library patron for years, I still couldn’t know the bizarre truths of the profession until I sat behind the desk myself.
When I did, I expected patrons to ask for help with their passion projects, or with finding novels set in Prague before a planned visit. What I didn’t expect were questions like, Where can I find Dr. Brown’s Celery Soda in town? Or, What time is CSI: Cyber on tonight? And, What’s the weather in Dubai right now? How about Jackson, Wyoming? St. Petersburg, Russia? There was even a regular joker who pretended to put in a breakfast order before asking me for directions to nearby shops; he thought it was funny enough to do this every time he called, which was quite often.
I thought there’d been some mistake: wasn’t I supposed to be putting all my training to use at the reference desk? Wasn’t I supposed to be answering actual reference questions? If you’ve read my novel, How Can I Help You, you’ll know that this same thought passes through Patricia’s mind when she starts working at Carlyle Public Library. The difference between her dismayed reaction and mine, though, was that I was utterly fascinated—even delighted—by the oddness of these questions. They weren’t official reference questions, no, but they were incredibly revealing all the same: of people’s habits, desires, interests, and fears. In short: a writer’s gold mine. Above all, what they revealed was the human desire to connect; it was clear they wanted connection more than any information or knowledge, and that made it more meaningful to answer their strange queries—unless they went too far, and asked me for medical advice re: their ‘swollen testicles,’ which did actually happen once.
Aside from that, though, my first days at work made it clear to me why I, a writer, was drawn to the librarian profession. I, too, wanted to connect; I just went about it differently. And now I relish the balance between helping patrons at the library and turning to what I previously thought of as my “solitary” work, my writing, which isn’t, ultimately, solitary at all. I’m grateful now that I was unprepared for my workplace reality; it gave me a good surprise, one that helped inspire How Can I Help You.
