About My Job: The Academic Librarian

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

Donna Reed in the nightmare portion of "It's a Wonderful Life," be-spectacled, bunned, and timid, seems still to be the exemplar in people's head when they think of a librarian.  And, although we have a country full of college graduates, a librarian is still conceived of as the matronly local public librarian, stamping cards and finding interesting books for tweens.

But librarianship is both more rigorous and less self-important than people think.  My...