Straight from the Stacks
Straight from the stacks comes a bunch of librarian recruiters. Though I suppose one reading “Straight from the Stacks” would already be considering a career as a librarian.
While this book did do a really good job at giving you inside information about what goes on in certain library jobs, and the specifics on what you need to do to get these jobs, I was not to impressed with the number of job types listed. Most of the book focused on public and school/academic libraries, which don’t get me wrong, are a huge sector of the library world, it didn’t give much information on the nontraditional and the medical/law libraries. It would also be nice to know about jobs within libraries that do not require an MLIS; there are a lot of people employed in all these libraries that are not actual librarians. Many of the librarians giving descriptions of their jobs are just a little too happy-cheery about their fabulous jobs, helping the world be a better place, instilling life long lessons to their patrons and all that jazz.
This book felt very dry, and many of the described jobs seemed great to the point of being ordinary. I did like John F. Dean, the Director of the Department of Preservation and Collection Maintenance at Cornell University. He seemed like a very driven person, and I have always been fascinated with bookbinding, as well as preservation and conservation, they are art forms. So perhaps there is hope for me yet in this field.