Librarians by the numbers

Pre­vi­ously in this col­umn, I talked about the value of librar­i­ans and libraries in the United States and in Delaware County. The more than 135,000 librar­i­ans work­ing in the 122,000 libraries in the US have busy and pro­duc­tive work­days, help­ing cus­tomers in a vari­ety of ways, in the front and in the back of the house, so to speak.

Seventy-eight per­cent of librar­i­ans are women, and about 25 per­cent of all librar­i­ans work part time. Even though librar­i­ans tend to be older than other work­ers, thou­sands are expected to retire in the next few years, and the field of librar­i­an­ship will grow at a rate of about 8 per­cent between 2010 and 2018.

Typ­i­cally speak­ing, the library staff mem­bers who check out books at the cir­cu­la­tion desk are not librar­i­ans, but they are incred­i­bly impor­tant to the library and their com­mu­nity. Being a librar­ian requires a mas­ter of library and infor­ma­tion sci­ence. You may well ask, “What do librar­i­ans do all day if they are not check­ing out books?”

The aver­age librar­ian works 2,785 min­utes each week, and here is the break­down of how those min­utes are spent, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion: 800 min­utes check­ing busi­ness email, 390 min­utes in meet­ings, 300 min­utes in pro­gram man­age­ment, 240 min­utes work­ing on the ref­er­ence desk, 185 min­utes at lunch and/or din­ner, 145 min­utes on planned phone calls and mis­cel­la­neous tasks, and 100 min­utes on plan­ning events. The remain­ing min­utes are spent on pro­cess­ing invoices, weed­ing the col­lec­tions, writ­ing grants and pro­pos­als, order­ing books, DVD’s and other items, pro­mot­ing the library, and orga­niz­ing. We are a busy lot!

And speak­ing of order­ing books, the next time you visit the Delaware County Dis­trict Library, look for these books on the New Book Shelves, avail­able dur­ing the month of July:

• The Boy in the Song: The True Sto­ries Behind 50 Rock Clas­sics by Michael Heat­ley. Focuses on the boyfriends, hus­bands, band mates, exes, heroes, celebri­ties, fathers, sons, and even com­plete strangers who inspired 50 of rock’s great­est songs.

• The Dog With the Old Soul: True Sto­ries of the Love, Hope and Joy Ani­mals Bring to Our Lives by Jen­nifer Basye Sander. Per­fect for ani­mal lovers, this heart­warm­ing col­lec­tion of uplift­ing true sto­ries cap­tures the pow­er­ful con­nec­tion between humans and ani­mals, from horses to moose to dogs and cats.

• Floyd Pat­ter­son: The Fight­ing Life of Boxing’s Invis­i­ble Cham­pion by W.K. Strat­ton. Doc­u­ments the inspir­ing story of the civil rights activist, Olympic gold medal­ist and history’s youngest World Heavy­weight Cham­pion, plac­ing his career against a back­drop of boxing’s golden age while ana­lyz­ing mis­un­der­stood aspects of his character.

• The Food and Feasts of Jesus: Inside the World of First Cen­tury Fare, With Menus and Recipes by Dou­glas Neel. Offers a new per­spec­tive on life in bib­li­cal times by tak­ing read­ers inside the food cul­ture of the day. From wed­ding feasts to a farmer’s lunch, the book explores the sig­nif­i­cance of var­i­ous meals, dis­cusses key ingre­di­ents, and offers acces­si­ble recipes for read­ers to make their own tastes of the first century.

• Global Weird­ness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relent­less Drought, Ris­ing Seas and the Weather of the Future by Cli­mate Cen­tral, Inc. An acces­si­ble expla­na­tion of cli­mate change sum­ma­rizes its sci­ence while shar­ing insights into its impli­ca­tions for the future, answer­ing key ques­tions from the role of fos­sil fuels to the eco­nomic costs of reduc­ing car­bon emissions.

• Hours Thir­teen by Kel­ley Arm­strong. A long-awaited con­clu­sion to the Oth­er­world series finds Savan­nah Levine emerg­ing from the res­cue of her half-brother and sum­mon­ing for­mi­da­ble pow­ers to halt a super­nat­ural war that is being com­pli­cated by the forces of heaven and hell.

• Leader of the Pack by David Rosen­felt. Believ­ing that a client whose case he lost nine years ear­lier is inno­cent, lawyer Andy Car­pen­ter vis­its the man’s aging uncle, who imparts knowl­edge about a dan­ger­ous, secret-ruled world where the key to Andy’s client’s free­dom may be found.

• Mer­cury: An Inti­mate Biog­ra­phy of Fred­die Mer­cury by Lesley-Ann Jones. A por­trait of Queen’s late lead singer draws on insider access to trace his rise to fame, strug­gles with risky behav­ior, rela­tion­ships with loved ones and death from AIDS complications.

• Odd Apoc­a­lypse by Dean Koontz. A return to the pop­u­lar world of Odd Thomas finds Odd con­fronting deadly adver­saries in a decay­ing estate.

• Sly Fox by Jea­nine Pirro. While inves­ti­gat­ing a series of bru­tal crimes against women and chil­dren in 1978 New York, Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Dani Fox takes on the chal­leng­ing case of a busi­ness­man who has been secretly molest­ing his young daugh­ter for years.

• When in Doubt Add But­ter by Beth Har­bi­son. Ded­i­cat­ing her­self to her culi­nary patrons includ­ing an old-fashioned fussy eater, a seri­ously over­weight woman and a neu­rotic diner who believes she is aller­gic to every­thing, pri­vate chef Gemma Craig goes home every night to boxed cere­als until an unex­pected event com­pels a con­fronta­tion with the past and an unex­pected romance.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call us at 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Jul 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.