Barbara Calé - employee of the city library "Johann Christoph Adelung", Hanseatic city of Klam

Professional background & career.

I needed an apprenticeship after my unsuccessful studies in 1988, and my parents' house was in the immediate vicinity of the FHB Stuttgart. As a child and adolescent, I have read relatively slowly, but steadily. In addition, after the pastor's career was no longer open, I absolutely wanted to do something with people and knowledge transfer. I have never regretted training as a graduate librarian in Stuttgart.

I am a graduate librarian FH. I studied-almost in second studies-at the University of Applied Sciences for Library in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. Even during the training, my wish to become a information librarian. At the beginning of my professional life in May 1992, I also worked exactly there, as I had dreamed of, in the Munich city library at the Gasteig, in the central library in the information service. This was divided into three, on the one hand at the counter in the reading room with information about the presence and the magazine. Secondly, the second service on the phone - actually my favorite, where you can use 4 old pieces of paper catalogs, to which you still had to walk 10 - 15 meters while the callers had to be put off. Some short questions could also be answered at the phone, for example the reference to the Bavarian State Library and its telephone information service. Our slip -on catalogs were legendary! On the one hand, of course, an alphabetical and a systematic, but also a keyword catalog. The regulations for this were RAK and ASB. However, the alphabetical catalog of the state library was after - please hold on! - The Munich instructions, a typical Bavarian special adapation of the Prussian instructions, ordered, and not alphabetical, but after the first, meaningful word of the title in the noun! A very good exercise in logical thinking.

After 2 years in Munich and 15 years as a mother of triple at home, I worked as a school secretary at a private school in Greifswald from 2009 to 2015. And from January 2016 I will be employed as a library employee in the Johann Christoph Adelung city library in Anklam, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Now I am a all -rounder, I book at the counter, work new media technically and systematically, and do information for the romance lovers who are looking for a nice book. 🙂

Learn more about the city library "Johann Christoph Adelung".
Photo credits BARBARA Calé: © Barbara Calé

Personal experiences.

The daily work in a public library of a small town with approx. 13,000 inhabitants requires several skills and skills at once. From the technical processing of newly acquired media, through all kinds of repairs to the media of our inventory, to the inventory care, shelf regulations and computer -aided familiarization of the new media, to all facets of public relations work with the design of a press release and the design of flyers and posters as well as the daily information work at the counter. Even before, while and above all according to the limited uses for our visiting, where the free hand library mutated into a traditional counter library very quickly, many, especially older users, have remained in the head and heart that the three colleagues of the city library would love to scurry through the manageable small rooms to get the right book or the right DVD for them. Contact with customers, also beyond illness and death, is what makes this work so valuable. With us in Anklam, the fiction is clearly in the foreground, material and specialist literature is hardly in demand, and is accordingly thin. And here the advisory information service is particularly important.

The special moments when you could give a customer with a recommended book by a recommended book, and the customer and the customer also mentioned this when returning. That is really fun. Or if you can get the handling of the on-loan on her e-book reader to a user, and it can be independent of our restricted opening hours.

In general, I like to write for my life and therefore I am the - self -appointed - colleague for public relations. I formulate press releases and texts for publication in the free city newspaper, create the flyers and posters as well as the admission tickets for all of our events and readings, and I ensure that our events are put online, on the homepage of the Hanse and Lilienthalstadt Anklam, Facebook and on Instagram.
For about 18 months we have been carrying out a course on the smartphone and laptop for the 55+ generation once a month-only once a month in the morning, under the title Silversurfer-Smartphonne-Hilf Anklam. Here you can give a lot of joy every time through tiny little things in dealing with the technology.

Meaning & added value.

For me, the focus for me every day and again and again the personal contact with our users, via email, phone but above all face-to-face. In addition to the purely library work, there is very often social neighborhood help by inviting customers to the reading café and talking a little there with them. That too is work.

In Anklam, it is above all the aspect of a social meeting point in the middle of the city, in the town hall on the market. The visitors just come to us to read the daily newspaper to meet someone to finish the seminar work on the PC in the library because at home distracts too much from work to enjoy a hot drink or eat a muffin. We would like to act as a "third place", in addition to school, kindergarten and work as well as our own home as a place where you can feel comfortable.

Especially the Silversurfer just mentioned, the help for self -help in dealing with new, technical devices in the hands of the users, especially members of the 55+ generation are unique and very important here in Anklam. Unfortunately, with a part -time position of currently 34 hours per week, a stock of approx. 21,000 media and approx. 1,300 users, we are not possible to carry out this offer more than once a month with a part -time position of approx. 64,000 warnings per year (all information is December 2023) and a total of three colleagues on 2 floors, above the adults and adolescents from the age of 14. It would be necessary and correct to organize this at least twice a month or even every week as a regular appointment.

Recommendations.

It is a great mix of knowledge, knowledge transfer, research work, press work and a lot of service on the circle of the respective users. In a scientific seminar library at a university, a library -trained specialist must also “be able to” with fellow human beings. And even if, not like me, you cannot and does not want to chat endlessly, every public and scientific library needs quiet fellow human beings for all sorts of important tasks in the back office.

I would now spontaneously recommend that I will definitely be used by the local public library at the place of residence, and an internship, mostly unpaid and quite short, in a facility. When visiting the local library, and prefers to talk to colleagues what they do and what tasks you will have as a library employee.

It is important to have a big sense of order, a good, average language feeling in German, the ability to find the right point in the alphabet, and not to be afraid of boring routines, of course. And, at least in public libraries, normal contact with fellow human beings and their wishes and concerns is essential. If you don't want to come into contact with other fellow human beings, you should strive for a career in the archive or a scientific library. It is very important to me to capture the following point. The ability and motivation to read a lot, very much and quickly is expressly not a basic requirement, but a welcome jewelry as part of the career in the library system. We don't read more than other professionals, how do you not have to read much, we just have to know where something could be found and which book should be profitable for this customer and these customers. But here too you are not infallible.

We are a small team and work in hand from early to late. We have no our own office, see each other constantly and stay in contact all day. Agreements are made directly and easily, we do not need team meetings, but team spirit very much. Mutual representations and acquisitions of counter services are challenged everyday and constantly and are very happy to do.

Developments & future prospects.

Of course, you will work more digitally, even more than before. We here in Anklam, but also the colleagues in Wolgast, Stralsund, Rostock or Greifswald, work a lot with print media because this is the request of the users. However, there are also library users who only use the MV on -loan and borrow digital books, magazines and audio books. The online research, the opportunity to browse, to prolong, extend, or to withdraw the reservations via e-mail and especially in the EOPAC of BVS, is increasingly used by our users. We are very proud of this and this relieves our daily work enormously. And yet on the other hand, one should not forget to incorporate alongside and despite the increasing digitization of everyday life, the human, the simple, the manual, the man in the visiting of literature, for example. And the 55+ generation should be taken away on the way to the increasing mechanization of reading and consuming knowledge. No matter what always gives way around, the printed book, especially as a novel, is not death, and will never die. Our hardworking, especially younger writers, such as our author from Anklam, Fieda Radlof, will take care of this, especially younger writers. Beogle and read your novels. She publishes under the pseudonyms Philippa Jordan (crime novel) and Anna-Maria Atwell (youth books), or of course the Antonia Michaelis, which is based in our district, which is based in the district.

In addition to the Silversurfer technology tutoring course, our library in the reading café offers inexpensive hot drinks, free tap water and daily changing, homemade little things from my kitchen. This, and the two desktop PCs can also be used by people without a library affiliation. Likewise, many people who are still not used come to our readings and our regularly taking place flea markets and above all for game afternoons, where, in a classic manner, with expert guidance of our game consultant Sieglinde and Heiner Wöhning, old, but above all, new board games are played. Here, too, we always meet people who did not yet know or use our facility. For all three events, access is not bound to a library membership and on the other hand free of charge and free of charge.

The special moments when you could give a customer with a recommended book by a recommended book, and the customer and the customer also mentioned this when returning. That is really fun.