The years 1990 – 1992. I was an Assistant Librarian of the Indian Institute of Geomagmetism. Fresh out of Library School. However I was not in my twenties like most of my batchmates were. I was married and had two school going children.
But having got married immediately after graduation, I was still carrying the mindset of – Listen to your elders / Do not break any rules and all the generally good/ethical stuff that one is taught. However, as a “professional”, one is not often taught to make decisions that may not fall under the above
We had a photocopier in the library which by rule was meant only for making copies of technical drawings and similar documents. Not for copies of book pages or journal articles, for which there was another machine in another section. That machine, thanks to fairly heavy usage, often had problems and people had to wait for it to be serviced.
One evening a young Research Scholar came to the library. He needed a copy of a journal article. My boss was on leave. And the “other copier” had problems. He requested me to make a copy from the library machine. I was just too scared to “break the rule”. He explained that he had to travel out of Mumbai and meet someone involved with his PhD and so he needed the copy. I understood and sympathised but was still too scared. I asked him if he could take it out and get it done. Unfortunately there were not “Xerox shops” as they were known – close by. And the poor scholar went away without the copy
Later one of the Scientists heard about this from me and said “In such situations just use your discretion and use the library machine. Exceptions must be made”!
Looking back I wonder – what seems to be pure common sense now – I was not able to apply then. These are “life lessons – how to live life”. Not about “how to make a living”. And when we study for our degrees we do not learn such lessons. We are not even exposed to situations with questions like “What would you do if….”
It is easy to say – everything cannot be taught. True. And yet – we need to constantly think of how we ensure such learning. One is with encouraging students to view videos / read about such situations. Another is to empower every employee to take decisions and learn from mistakes.l More ideas? Do share.
#Libraries #JuniorLibrarians #Empowering #decisionmaking
