A Day in the Life of a Rural Public Librarian

More and more, I’m seeing silly (and often frustrating) misconceptions about what it actually means to be a librarian, so I’m here to set a few things straight.

I did a post similar to this a couple years back called A Day in the Life of a Book Blogger, and that was well-received. So I thought it would be a good idea to do the same thing from the point of view of a librarian.

You may wonder what my qualifications are for this type of post, and that’s a fair question. So I’ll answer it. I started working at a rural public library in September of 2019 because I have awesome freaking timing. Six months into this new position, just as I was getting the hang of the job, we shut down for COVID. Fast-forward to the present and it’s been just under three years and one Master’s of Library Science Degree later, and I’ve seen some things.

There are a lot of misconceptions about what it means to be a librarian or what librarians actually do that I hear all the time. Most of them aren’t ill-intentioned, but I still think it’s time to set the record straight, regardless.

I will preface this entire post, of course, by saying that this is my experience. Your mileage may vary. I work at a small, rural library, which is going to be a vastly different experience than someone working at any other library (and there are a lot of different library settings someone could work at). So take this all with a grain of salt, of course.

With that being said, let’s get started, shall we? This isn’t an exhaustive list of what I do with my day (and there is no such thing as a “normal” day in my job), but this will give you a pretty good example of what it’s like to work in a public library.

8:00 AM

Let the games begin!

Eight in the morning is waaaay too early to begin any job that requires a functional brain, in my opinion. Yet, that’s exactly when my butt is in the chair, behind the computer, for better or worse.

First things first: check the email and social media. Most days are quick and easy, but some days . . . phew.

Librarians are sometimes asked weird questions, and I’m the one who fields our generic question account. Not gonna lie, most questions are easy to answer, but then you get the really weird ones. Like genealogy questions that are so very specific that it takes three librarian consultations and an hour digging in our collection.

This is my favorite part of the day, because the library is empty and quiet and I can throw music on and get some early morning things done.

It’s a luxury that librarians don’t often have, because if you haven’t been to a library lately, I’ll give you a hint: they’re not generally quiet. Not anymore. Not modern libraries, anyway. So this is good think-time and prep time to get everything ready for the day. Basically, we’re preparing for siege and we need to rally the troops.

9:00 AM

Release the Kraken(s)!

The doors officially open and patrons start coming in! At my library, the day usually starts slow, with mostly regulars coming during the first hour. Which is great! Gives us a chance to chat and catch up without rushing to serve the next patron.

Even though I say the beginning of the day starts slow, that doesn’t mean we’re sitting around doing nothing. Or, heaven forbid, reading! Perish the thought. Librarians are always busy doing something, even if it looks like they’re not.

The beginning of the day is normally spent prepping programs for either that day or later that week.

At the rural library where I work, we only have one programmer for all age groups, which is fairly common given the setting. Which means everyone pitches in with programs, especially prep. So early morning means arts and crafts! It’s really not too bad of a way to start the day. Sometimes it’s more menial things like copying, stapling, and stuffing bags. That’s more of a bummer.

Almost everyone has hands into programming at some point, whether it’s marketing, crafting, prepping, planning, facilitating, picture taking, or preparing food. Since no programs start until the afternoon, we have plenty of time to get our prep on!

10:00 AM

Killing me softly with this . . . paperwork?

Once the flow of patrons picks up, it’s generally back to paperwork for me. The job of an admin is never done! There are any number of things that might be done during this time. Writing grants or keeping up with ones we’ve received that need constant updating. Marketing, which can be anything from outreach in the community to preparing posts for social media. Graphic design of said social media posts. Digitizing the genealogy section. Updating the website.

Being assistant director at a library means that at any given moment of the day, I may also be a:

• Tech guru
• Marketer
• Graphic designer
• Web developer
• Programmer/Event planner
• HR
• Grant writer
• Educator
• Babysitter
• Researcher
• Reader’s advisory
• Janitor
• Webinar attendee/student
• Buried alive under a stack of paperwork that has finally toppled over on my desk after teetering there precariously for at least a week, and yes it sucks, but there are worse ways to go

Okay, so maybe not generally that last one, though sometimes it definitely feels like it!

This isn’t to complain about the complete randomness of the job. Actually, that’s my favorite thing about my current position: every day brings something entirely new, and I have to keep learning and evolving.

How many jobs can you honestly say you never know what you’ll be doing any given day when you walk through the door but you’re sure it’s going to be interesting? Not always fun, because I can definitely think of more fun things to do than writing a grant. But even that is always interesting. It’s the variety and the surprise that appeal to me the most!

11:00 AM

The one in which nothing was accomplished.

It’s usually around this time that my day derails, for various reasons. If I make it to here with doing all the things I planned on doing, that’s a good day. Look how focused and productive I was! Most days, though, things come up.

My role as the assistant director is that I generally try to field things so my director can do all the big important things, which means I get to handle a lot of the things that can go wrong with customer service. As anyone who’s worked in customer service knows, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with customer service. It’s not even necessarily bad things, but just systems acting wonky or things not where they’re meant to be or needing to quickly train an employee on how to do something. You never know what’s coming!

You know what never happens as a librarian? Fully planning your day out. Because something always comes up, no matter what. That’s just the law.

It’s even more powerful than Murphy’s Law. No matter how well-intentioned, no matter how meticulously planned, no matter how carefully scheduled, there is always something unexpected that crops up and derails everything. It’s not even necessarily a bad thing. But all of these things need to be addressed regardless.

12:00 PM

Girls just want to have lunch

This is technically my lunch time, but guess what? I’m salaried, which means, surprise! I’m often interrupted during my lunch or have a working lunch. Again, this isn’t always a bad thing. I get an hour, and I find that’s often too long for me. These days, I mostly plan on half an hour, and when I do that, I rarely ever get interrupted during my lunch. I suppose an hour just gives too much time for things to go wrong. 😉

One of my colleagues jokes that I have the most interesting lunches, because she never knows where she’s going to find me or what I’ll be doing during it, but it’s rarely ever actually eating. Which is fair. Eating is for suckers who don’t have someone on the phone asking for them. I could say no and stand firm on my lunchtime, buuuut . . .  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like I said, I enjoy the hustle.

1:00 PM

I can see the future . . .

And it’s bleak, guys. Bleeeeak. Doooom. Doom on you and your cooooow!

Just kidding. I can’t actually see the future. Ha, that’d be way too easy. No, I just have to pretend that I can!

By this time of day, we’re either putting final touches on a program coming up that evening or I’m laying out what I can feasibly finish by the end of the day and what I can put off until tomorrow. I know that, technically, you’re not supposed to put off until tomorrow what you can do today, which is fine in theory, but for some reason no one will make 36-hour days so I can do all the things I need to do today. Very inconvenient of them. So things get pushed.

Realistically, there are just too many things to get done on any given day, so it becomes a matter of being able to determine what needs to get done immediately and what can wait. Prioritization is super important.

Fact: librarians tend to be overworked. Basically, the idea is that tax dollars pay for the library, so the library should be able to do everything the community needs. Which, fine, we’d love to be able to do that. But when you’ve only got so many people on the staff and so many hours in which to do everything, things are bound to fall by the wayside. We can only do so much, and we already do a lot, but even so, we try our best to meet as many needs as we feasibly can!

2:00 PM

Getting my steps in

Most people imagine librarianship to be a pretty sedentary job, and it is. Mostly. But there’s always at least one hour in the day where I’m on my feet the whole time. Sometimes I’m re-shelving books. Sometimes I’m making sure they’re in order and neatly placed on the shelf. Heck, we might even just get donations and need to haul several heavy boxes of books somewhere to decide what we’re going to do with them.

Since the only people that are staffed at the library are basically patron-facing, customer service positions, librarians are required to do everything. Sometimes that includes manual labor.

To be fair, we tend not to do things that are too taxing on a regular basis. Some days, though, when things get backed up, as they do, and you’re forced to clean or rearrange areas, it can definitely work up a sweat. Or just walking back and forth to shelve books racks up the steps. While librarianship is mostly a sedentary job, I think people would be surprised to find all the different, random things we get to do in the meantime to keep things clean and running.

Like yesterday, one of my staff members and I spent the first hour of his shift completely rearranging our storage room and setting up space to store items for an upcoming program that’s going to require quite a bit of storage space. It was necessary, but it was also hot and not particularly fun. I do so love the rush you get when you see the clean (well . . . ish) room at the end and see how much work you’ve done!

3:00 PM

Crafting, learning, and things that explode

By this time, we start having programs. Not every day, for sure, and sometimes they’re later in the day. However, the point is: programs! Which means, usually, children of all ages. Very loud, very eager children.

Most programs can’t feasibly be run by a single person, and usually the programmer and their assistant take care of it. However, that’s not always the case. There are times when others also need to step in and help out, which is usually where I come in. Most programs, my function is taking pictures and then noping out of there to let the professionals do their thing. But sometimes I fill in, which is extremely chaotic and extremely fun.

Programs are sometimes a little fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, because no matter how well you plan a program, whenever kids are involved, things are going to go sideways at some point in some way or another.

That’s another law. I call it the Parenthood Law, but it also applies to people who work with children. For example, we had a Coding for Kids program where we got out Botleys (which are little robots controlled by remotes) and had kids do an obstacle course. Which was super fun. But also didn’t take nearly as long as we thought it would. And we had some younger kids mixed in with the older ones who were too young for the program and had to be entertained with more age-appropriate technology. It was bonkers. Also, a heck of a lot of fun. At some point, we just threw away our plans for the program and let the kids lead it with whatever they were curious about, and it went swimmingly.

Note: Regardless of what the heading says, most times, things don’t explode. But, you know, sometimes they do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Science, am I right?

4:00 PM

Someone’s not happy.

Spoiler alert: it’s me! But also probably a patron. There’s always one, at least once a day. This comes with any customer service position. As the assistant director, if my front desk staff can’t deal with it, it escalates to me. It’s not always at this time (that would be rather convenient), but it does happen, so it might as well go here, right?

It’s not always a patron, either. Sometimes a staff member isn’t happy. Maybe I can do something about it and maybe I can’t. Part of the fun of it is having to decide whether it’s one of those things that can be fixed or one of those things someone just needs to get off their chest. People skills are hard, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

5:00 PM

Sorry, we’re out of what?

Guess who does at least part of the ordering for the library. That’s right, this gal! Which means that we sometimes run out of very random things at very random times. I don’t always know where the heck we purchased the original things, which means it’s time to put those investigative skills to the test. Luckily, I read a lot of mystery books, so I’m up to the task!

There are some really funny, random things that we don’t realize we need until we don’t have them. I swear, the office supplies in our library just spontaneously grow feet and shuffle off to . . . well, wherever office supplies dream of being? I obviously haven’t figured out where that is yet, or I wouldn’t constantly be needing office supplies that seem to be missing in action. Like . . . staple pullers! There used to be one at every station, and they slowly disappeared until I finally caved and ordered new ones because what the heck is happening to all the staple pullers?! It’s not even the sort of thing someone would up and walk away with.

6:00 PM

It’s crunch time!

Final hour of the day! Also means that we’re fast approaching the finish line and zomg look at all the things I still need to get done before I leave for the day!!! *flails*

This is final crunch time. Remember where I said there are too many things to finish in one day? Yeah, this is make or break time. There is absolutely no hard-and-fast rules about what this hour looks like. It’s a wild west, lawless free-for-all where anything goes. I’ve learned to just expect the unexpected at this point.

Sometimes I’m super productive during this hour, nose to the grindstone, get all the paperwork done. Sometimes I’ve hit my breaking point for the day and I spent the last 20 minutes discussing what my staff is having for dinner, because that’s the light at the end of the tunnel at that point and we’re just crossing our fingers and hoping it’s not a train.

Last night? I completely forgot that we had to prepare some Do Science At Home kits by stuffing each one with an informational half-sheet of paper. I remembered at exactly 5:30. There were 150 kits. It took five librarians (one printing and cutting, four opening/closing boxes and stuffing) to get through all the kits, but we made it! With some hustle, we finished right at 6:00 on the nose as we closed. In hindsight, we should’ve done that earlier in the day, because my staff was pumped and ready to take on more challenges, whereas they had been a little bit dragging before that. Oops. But you know what they say about hindsight.

At the end of the day . . .

I. Am. Librarian.

As I’ve said, this is boiling a whole career down into one post, which is never going to encompass everything. Librarianship can be ridiculously fun and creative and busy, but it can also be draining and exhausting and fraught with tension and stress. Like most jobs, it has its ups and downs, which is to be expected. And there are no “normal” days.

I could tell you stories, and maybe one day it’ll be a thing. For now, it’s something I talk about around the table with other librarians, who have been in the field longer and tell me better stories. By “better” I of course mean stories that make you go, “I’m sorry, they did what?!” Every librarian has these stories. Most are funny, especially as years pass. But some are downright dangerous.

If you take anything away from this post, remember that librarians don’t read all day, it’s not an easy fluff job, and just be nice to your local librarian because they’re trying their best!

Also, if any of this sounds like something you’d love, I highly recommend checking out librarianship. The job’s not for everyone, but it is a freaking amazing job, at the end of every day, no matter how difficult! And I’m obviously ridiculously lucky to be able to get up and do this messy, creative, absolutely bonkers job every day.

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