It used to be a bit of a dream job: buying books for a living. As I saw my colleagues at work though, I realized that I valued information and access to information more than a single carrier of information – books.
Now years later in an afternoon I’ve learned how to order books that faculty staff request the subject librarians to buy. The subject librarian for history needs some help getting though a backlog of requests and I have the time to step in.
It’s still a little bit thrilling to have a vast amount of cash at your disposal and clicking “send” at the end of the order process.
It feels strangely empowering. I fear this feeling will quickly change to mind-numbing boredom though, because the process is highly automated and is in fact just simple data entry.
in any event I’ve learned a new skill, which will come in handy here at the library if anyone needs me.