Library Jobs Details: What to Expect — Riti Grover

A library is much the librarian’s domain as the hospital is the doctor’s. The librarian runs it; they are supposed to be the most knowledgeable of all people, but they are by no means the only people there. There are various other less-known roles in the establishment. The following are the types of jobs in the library and the functions of their occupants.

Library Managers

The department employs library Managers to manage several facilities. They oversee operations such as work schedules and the evaluation of staff. They also assess the training needs of the team and organize their training. They manage these training needs with the input of the librarians, but they are at liberty to observe and decide too. Their feedback on staff training needs is particularly critical when introducing products that require new competencies.

Librarian

The librarian decides which items to procure for the library; these include books and electronic resources such as computers, DVDs, etc. They, therefore, need to understand the needs of the community to be served by this library. It is also the librarian’s responsibility to manage these resources.

The librarian also acts as a representative of the library in different forums. They also manage other staff in the establishment, including recruiting those that need to be employed. Management of staff includes training them whenever they need training, especially recruits.

Library Assistants

These are also known as technicians, and they primarily perform clerical duties. The library assistant is the first person you see in a library, and people often confuse them with librarians. This is the person who will register you for membership, check out books and receive them when you return them, etc. They also receive your fines should you be late with the books, and they are the people who receive phone calls and answer questions. If a patron needs to get reserve materials, the library assistant recommends the suitable materials and helps them access them.

Pages

These are usually part-time workers in the library. They are the people who return materials to their right shelves after patrons who had borrowed return them. Sometimes pages organize the books on shelves to ensure they are on the right shelves because people tend to re-shelve them wrongly. When a patron needs something from the reserved or secure areas, the pages get the books. They also put new books and DVDs on the shelves after library assistants have entered them into the record.

Besides library-specific jobs, libraries may also have other types of professionals to help with running. These include people such as accountants. Bigger libraries may have a professional to run their human resources departments.

They may also have a P.R professional, a person in charge of logistics if the library conducts large-scale mobile outreaches. All these professionals need to have the qualifications for their departments. They also need to customize their operations to the institution for which they are working.

Collaboration

Riti Grover, Former Library Director of Farmington Hills, has begun to collaborate with The Leadership and Innovation Academy to help public libraries reach their full potential.

Originally published at https://www.leapzipblog.com on October 1, 2021.