Book smart? Here's the novel idea, consider a career as a librarian. I'm Shana and this is Tina and today we're going to learn what her typical day is like. Are you ready to hit the books? 

 Absolutely. 

 Let's go. Tina Alby [assumed spelling] has spent most of her career as a librarian at a public city library. She's the book goddess, that's so cool. 

 It is so much fun. 

 As the book goddess, Tina conducts research and helps customers find the information they're looking for. 

 Hi. 

 Hello, how can I help you? 

 Could you give me some information on Parkinson's Disease? 

 In between assisting customers, librarians mostly work at a desk or in front of a computer. 

 A librarian would spend about half of their time on the reference desk. And the other half of the time, they would pursue projects. They might be helping out with the selection, they might be doing programs. 

 Is this a pretty often occurrence like every week there's something new happening at the library? 

 Absolutely. Every week where's something new happening. Learn to salsa, online harps, our international cinema program. 

 When librarians aren't at the reference desk or facilitating programs, they're in their office. In Tina's case, she's deciding what books to purchase for the library. You said you spend half of your day here, roughly? 

 That would be the normal time span and I spend a lot of time on the computer right at this moment, we are all on a vendor website and so for instance somebody might come to me and say, you know, we don't have enough books woodworking just as an example. I think we do. 

 See you're going to see [assumed spelling]. 

 Yeah and so I would be in here searching my little heart out for books on woodworking. 

 Librarians often work long hours including evenings and weekends. So what it the typical educational path a student would take if they're interested in becoming a librarian? 

 Well the good part is that your undergraduate major is really up to you. And that's good because you can pursue your own interests. And then in order to pursue the prutash [assumed spelling] then you would need to get a master's degree. It's usually called information studies these days. My degree is librarian information studies. 

 Upon graduation, about a quarter of librarians work in public libraries. Here are your other options. 

 You could be a librarian in a school, those are usually called media specialists. You could be a librarian in an academic setting such as a college or university. 

 Lucky for you, it's retirement time. Over the next ten years, many librarians are expected to call it quits. Future librarians that's where you come in. The American Library Association has more good news for you, the average salary for a librarian is up slightly bringing it to nearly sixty thousand dollars a year. Tell me what are the type of characteristics that make a good librarian? 

 Well, you know when I go to career days at school, I will usually say do you like books? Do you like computers? Do you like to help people? 

 Helping people is what Ben Franklin had in mind when he founded the first public lending library in America. Who knew one of our founding fathers was also a bookworm. After a day with the book goddess, I'm inspired to do some reading. I'm Shana for YouniversityTV and I'm checking out. 

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