Who cares about us Librarians?

There are so many people that thank us for taking the time to care and find answers to even difficult questions. Moments of serendipidity have been shared between the patron and the librarian when the detetective work elicits a result. I have read letters of thanks from parents and grandparents about their surprise and pleasure at how their little ones have been inspired by the stimulating and creative children's programs. I have received praise from many attendees to programs for adults that I have scheduled and coordinated. Then why is it the negative comments that seem to have such an effect??

I am so bothered about this one that I dug out my unused blog!!

I have been working hours and hours on a professional library organization trying to do everything possible to motivate others to be involved and speaking up for libraries and educating everyone around us how much more we are than just books. I have seen much positive feedback and appreciation of my efforts and yet now I feel like I have been smashed to bits.

Why do I have such dramatic reaction? Because the negative response I heard came from the Chair of our county's school district. The same county's school district where I attended school for and made honor roll for years and the same school district that I worked very very hard for nearly a decade before becoming a librarian still serving the educational needs of our county's children and now also adults.

In our passion to help more people learn about all the ways that the different libraries in our county serve the community, a committee came together to come up with an exciting event. The first thing that one must do is choose a date for an event. Little did we know that this could prove to be more problematic than initially imagined. Since all different types of legislators and representatives and dignitaries would be invited, we could not really work around the schedules of everyone. However, the chair of our school board said at a meeting last night when one of his colleagues suggested perhaps they could move their board meeting and all attend this event to show their support in how they believe that libraries are important in the lives of children supporting their education, that: community organizations need to learn that if they want School Board participation in educational events, "then don't schedule the events on Wednesdays when board holds its meetings."

Okay, so there. That's it. Nope, not really. When I told my fellow people about this, everyone said, we should say nothing at all when asked could we ask them to reconsider and let them know that they are not the only people invited and other people have meetings on different nights. Then I suggested, well, I could go over and do a special library advocacy workshop just for them. Not one person in "my team" has said anything at all: completely ignoring my comment. Perhaps the e-mail server messed up or something?? I thought offering to do a workshop is a wonderful way to show that I still care about including them regardless of the lack of tact in the comment and have the willingness to go the extra mile to reach out to others and make it easy for them so they don't have to go out of their way. Perhaps I care too much??