谢谢介绍。我在国内的外甥女喜欢宗教(研究的角度)，由于中国没有，现在大学专业是历史系。建议她出来读个图书馆硕士，也算是实用一些。作者: searain 时间: 2007-1-11 21:18 在美国社区图书馆做图书馆员时，也有难处。缺乏西方的文史知识，跟踪不上美国的大众文化，有时也要闹大笑话。有一次，一群孩子做生物课作业，每人要描写一种禽鸟，孩子各取所好，秃头鹰，鹦鹉，鸽子，绿头鸭，鹭鸶，忙得我不亦乐乎。偏偏有个孩子，还想捎带借点别的书。问我：“你有ＬＬ ＣＯＯＬ Ｊ（黑人影视明星）的书吗？”，我只知道BLUE JAY，没听过叫做“ＣＯＯＬ JAY”的鸟啊。“对不起。ＬＬ ＣＯＯＬ ＪAY？”我说，“Ｉ ＤＯＮ‘Ｔ ＫＮＯＷ ＴＨＩＳ ＢＩＲＤ（我不认识ＣＯＯＬ Ｊ这只鸟）。”That kid's eyes were wide open. If I were not too busy that time I had my way to handle it. So that was the biggest joke I made in 5 years on that position.
I have been a librarian and later on a programmer. I have to say to be a reference librarian is harder. This job is much easier if you were born an American or if you have language talents. My English was never good, specially the speaking and listening skills. When I was in junior high, the English teacher almost wanted to throw her chalk at me once.
When I was studying for the library degree, I lived in the student dorm that helped me a lot. There were no Chinese students living in the dorm. Taiwan students thought the room was too small, mainland students thought it was expensive and small, almost all Chinese students hated that dorm didn't allow you cooking. I was lazy and I didn't know how to cook anyway. So I lived in the dorm as the only Chinese among 3000 students.
Like in my stories 马克的故事, the first day I met my roommate, he only understood one thing that my major was library science.
Mark said later on, first, he didn't know "library had a science". Second, he hated that he was assigned a roommate that couldn't speak English. We were assigned together because we were the only few graduate students and who were 25 or older there. Mark's mom told him he should help me out when he called home.
(I met some other interesting older students there too, including a guy, Scott, who killed or hurt someone in a fight when he was 18, did his time in the jail for 10 years and just got out the jail back to school).
A few days later, Mark and I got along very well, and Mark began to know that my English was not that kind bad. When I asked him to check out my first essay and he didn't believe that I wrote it. So I told him I learned "mute" English, my writing was better than speaking. He told me that in the future I should only ask him to check out my essay and I should not ask next door roommate Thomas, because Thomas' writing was much worse than mine.
One semester later, I got a job as a student assistant working in the current periodicals department in university's library. The job was simple, and we were only allowed to answer the questions regarding to the periodicals if we had it or not, how to get them, how to use the computers and microfilm machines etc. The rest of the questions we were supposed to direct to the librarians. It was easy.
But the third semester, I began my field work to work as a practicing reference librarian in the university's library. 100 hours working there for 2 credits. I only had been in United States for one year then. It was the hardest thing for me. And almost everyday when I went home I was very tired and sometimes I had a headache.
And I still worked as student assistant in the current periodicals department 15 hours a week then. It was kind funny, that 5 minutes ago, I was the practicing reference librarian at the reference desk answering reference questions, and after I finish my shift, I went downstairs to work as a student assistant to make a few bucks.
If the library patrons asked me the same kind reference questions they just asked me a few minutes before when I was at the referecne desk, but due to I was a student assistant now, I would have to say "no, I cannot answer you that, I am student assistant here, you have to go upstairs to ask the referecne librarian there."
But that field work helped me landing my first real job as a reference librarian in a branch library in a large city, I only had been US for 1.5 years then.
The second day I took the job, the two senior librarians took their long overdue vacations. And I was told that I was in charge of everything in the branch library.
And the first few months were very hard, but after that, it became easier. Working in the public local branch library, we were not facing too many difficult questions. And when I talked with the library patrons face to face, most times I could understand the questions they asked.
Almost all the times I could find a way to cover my shortage in English or culture background knowledge. Such as that “L L Cool J” question, if I was not super busy that time, I wouldn’t make that mistake. I would ask that kid, “Oh, you like LL Cool J? Tell me why you like LL Cool J so much.” The kid would say, his songs were so amazing or his movies were so cool etc. Or if “LL COOL JAY” was truly a bird, the kid would say, I like that bird, it is beautiful and smart. So I would know who or what “LL COOL J” was.
The difficult questions were the phone reference, I couldn’t play that “tell me why" trick on the phone. But at the same time, the phone reference questions were usually very straightforward and I could ask for other librarians’ helps after I made the notes, without embarrassing me in front of the library patrons.
The other librarians would be very happy to help me out because I might ask for help once or twice a month, but they would ask me for help or direct the kids to me almost every day if the kids had "difficult" math homework questions or they had computer problems.
In library service, we said there were two kinds knowledge, "you knew it" or "you knew how to find it".
After I had worked there for years, I would know the "how to find it" knowledge like the back of my hands. It was not like that I had 6 years experience, it was like I had 1 year experience repeating 6 times.
As for the knowledge "you knew it", it was a plus. Math and computer science were my "you know it", and I gave free lessons to the public in the library too once a while then.
Also the library comptuer system made life much easier than before for us, such as if i don't know a word at all, in old time, i don't know where to begin with, i cannot ask the patrons to wait here i will check my dictionary first. but in the comptuer time, i go to the comptuer, type in the words, and i don't just find the books right away, you also find the related subject headings, etc., and i can right away begin my "knowledgeable" talking with the client.
in my whole 5 years as a librarian, i only made that one big joke about LL CooJ. I don't know "cool j" or "kull jay" or whatever it was, and there were dozens other kids waiting for me and i had no time to ask more questions to get it clear out. now i could have a good laugh, at that time i was very embarassed but i coverd it with, "oh, i mean i would find books for your classmates about birds first, and i will then get the cool j book for you." then i went back to the back office and asked other librarians what the hell cool j was. they had a good laugh.
I don’t think I could handle a reference librarian job well in University library then. Some of the professors were not easy to deal with. When I was a student assistant working in the current periodicals department, a professor came to ask for one periodical. I checked the system and told him we didn’t have it at all. He was so mad, and yelled at me and made a big scene right there. He told me that he had used it before and I had to find it out for him right away because that he had an important paper due etc. And it was late evening hours, no librarians were on duty. The early next morning, he came back again and brought the head of the library, he was trying to get me fired. It ended up that he remembered it wrong, he used that periodical somewhere else. He apologized to the head of the library and never apologized to me.
(The original old post was in English. I may rewrite it in Chinese sometime later on when I have time)作者: weili 时间: 2007-1-12 21:35 海雨现在的英文多好，一笔下来就洋洋洒洒。：)
