Why the fuck is that so hard and unsustainable. I want to eat and afford rent and organize an archive of knowledge. I want a horde that I get to share with people. I want curious individuals to come to me and ask me to direct them to the knowledge they seek. I want to read and read and read and get lost in my ivory tower. Is that so bad? Is there no plcae in our society for this? It’s so fucking frustrating to receive nothing in response to a job application. I guess I will teach instead of being the esoteric librarian I crave being. Why did I have to be born into a working class family at a time when archivists are becoming obsolete. It’s such bullshit. I just want to preserve the knowledge I love and pass it on to similarly interested people.
Humans have a built in desire to gather and share knowledge. We are a social species and evolving ways to communicate and share our experiences in order to increase the overall knowledge of the whole community increases our chance of survival immensely. I would say this communal sharing and understanding of others perspectives in order to strengthen the whole group (empathy) is the greatest achievements of our species and what makes us human.
People take for granted that the ability for a species to have information learned through experiences be passed on and not die with the experiencer. Not many other animals have that. I think this is why most of human culture has a strong culture of story telling and remembering our ancestors.
We stand on the shoulders of giants to see further than they could. This is why the loss of education, the warping of history, and loss of media preservation is so tragic. It leaves us in a loop of having to relearn the lessons we already learnt. That’s what happens when you atomize and hyperindividualise a social species.
Imagine if we didn’t have this tendency to store and pass knowledge? Imagine not knowing what germs are, not knowing to wash your hands, not knowing which food is poisonous? Imagine if every individual had to come up with the invention of the wheel all on their own?
So yeah, librarians and archivists of all kinds are cool and it’s natural to want to be one. I don’t think they’re valued as much as they should be.
we are not. I got my MLS over 15 years ago, it took 5 years to land even a part time job, and I finally got fulltime employment about 4 years ago. I work for a library in a mid sized city in the the North Eastern USA and even with a strong Union only make about 50k a year. Libraries are the last to get funded and the first to get cut. Everyone has to run programs and classes, interact with the public at large events, and be a social worker on top of all the normal work were supposed to do. I still love it, I have good benefits, and I am still in line to get a pension, but I will never recommend anyone to get the degree. The days of what the OP are talking about don’t exist especially in Public Libraries.