Hello? Is There Anyone Out There?

Where do I start?

Tens of thousands of blogs are formed every day.  Mine is one of many.  Many are just abandoned or left dormant.  Mine is the latter.  I show up to my page and wonder what the hell do I write about anyway?

The subtitle is 'Life, Libraries, and What Lies In Between'.  I read a number of library blogs by, of course, librarians.  I guess what makes this blog different is this author is a library techncian.  What is a library techncian?  That question can go on for ages, but I will put it as concisely as possible.  I will pretend you are all Richard Armitage and this is witty cocktail conversation.

If librarians are the architects, library technicans are the engineers.  We often study the same courses, but in our case it's the details to carry out the tasks in things like cataloging or reference support.  You can find us doing circulation, and some even supervise circulation clerks and shelvers.  What a library technican does depends on the where and the who.  In some schools the library technician runs the library if the school lacks a teacher librarian.  (In Manitoba it's the case in quite a few places.)  In universities some do basic reference, others work with librarians in marketing services, or putting together material and registration for sessions they teach.  (I did the latter at my last job.)  I do get trained for the job. Two years in a college setting to get my diploma and working in a post-secondary requires a degree along with it.


I like my job. I also like libraries.  My family didn't buy a lot of books, the library often provided my novels and magazines.  I hung out for hours at my school library and occasionally made the trip to my downtown library.  If something strikes me, I find everything I can about it.  Now I can the net to my bag of research tricks.   Libraries kept my love affair with learning going, even as I dealt with boredom at school.  (In addition to bad teachers from time to time.)
 
Clear as mud, uh?
 
Well, this is what you get.  I tried to type in an orderly manner, trying to imitate the blogs and their style.  You know what?  I can't.  I do have a vocabulary and learned my basic grammar.  In my head another language still forms my English words.  If I mix up tenses, or put the adjective in the wrong place, I may have spoken Portuguese within my English.  I do know I have something to say and some people may not like it, or may love it, or go 'meh'.  Some people may feel moved to spill their vitriol all over the place.  I decided to show up.
 
And that's half the battle.