It has always interested me how many people come into libraries, or information work if you prefer, via other jobs and after a number of false starts. For me, working in libraries was what I wanted to do. As several people say in their blogs, it sometimes feels as though we are no longer allowed to say that it was a love of books that brought us into libraries. In my case that was the reason - I've developed a great interest and passion for other parts of the profession, but basically, without the love of books I wouldn't be here.
There are some interesting class (and gender) issues around library work. I remember seeing a paper ages ago on librarianship as a kind of halfway house in class terms. Librarians compared to their parent were supposed to be either on their way up in terms of social mobility or on their way down. This struck me as reflecting my own observations, but I'm not sure how this compares to other professions. I can't find that one, but I did identify a couple of interesting papers in a similar area.
One on men in librarianship which seems from the abstract to be saying that men become librarians because working in a female dominated profession gives them greater access to class mobility and one on the "glass ceiling" in libraries (quite old this one) which (again from the abstract) seems to be saying that women achieve less because they choose to take career breaks to bring up their children. So that's ok then. I was surprised at just how annoyed this one made me!
Anyway, enough about my obsessions. Let's publish.
References(if you're interested)
Lupton, B., Explaining Men’s Entry into Female-Concentrated Occupations: Issues of Masculinity and Social Class - Gender, Work & Organization -
Available at:
[Accessed November 7, 2011].
Jones, Elizabeth & Oppenheim, Charles, Glass ceiling issues in the UK library profession - Journal of Librarianship and Information Science -
[Accessed November 7, 2011].
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