What Kind of Librarian am I?

by Jennifer Reisch, Senior Assistant, INALJ NYC

What Kind of Librarian am I?

2013-11-30 15.31.58As a rule I do not take the quizzes that people post on Facebook. You know the ones: Which mythological creature are you? Who is your alter ego? What kind of golf swing are you? How New York are you? What character from Downton Abbey are you? I love Downton Abbey as much as any other binge watcher, but I’m not sure I want to know which character I am. And if I start taking all those quizzes I will spend even more time on Facebook, which is not one of my current goals.

However, when the quiz “What Kind of Librarian Are You?” turned up on a fellow librarian’s feed, I did not hesitate. I clicked that link because I really did want to know what kind of librarian I am.

“What kind of librarian are you?” is chiefly a question librarians reserve for each other. Which is good, because as someone who uses her mad library skills as a researcher, not a librarian, it’s not easy for me to answer. At least other librarians understand what I do. And they don’t ask the follow up question, “So which library do you do that in?”

In this case, I was very excited to have a quiz do the answering for me.

The quiz is hosted by PlayBuzz and was created by the Seattle Public Library in June. There are eight questions/options that supposedly unearth the bits of your personality that add up to your right librarianship.

The questions and/or requests are: 1. Pick a cocktail. 2. If you were a Dewey Decimal number, what would you be? 3. Pick a cat. 4. Which event would you be most likely to attend? 5) Pick a gluten-free snack. 6. It’s a rainy Saturday night. What movie do you want to watch? 7. What’s your favorite NW musical act? 8. Pick a Banned Book.

I got History/Genealogy Librarian. Here is the description: “You’ve been described as a ‘pit bull’ because you’re tenacious in the pursuit of answers. For you, no mystery can remain unsolved, and you know exactly how many of your ancestors were royalty. You can be a little intense, but this is balanced by your great hair and penchant for reading romance novels. Your favorite color is cerulean.”

I think my favorite color is more of a blue green than actually cerulean, and I was kind of surprised they didn’t mention Downton Abbey at all, but overall, yes, I would be a very happy history/genealogy librarian.

I don’t know what all the possible librarian outcomes are. On Facebook I’ve seen selection librarians, teen librarians, reference librarians, reader’s advisory librarians, and music and arts librarians.

Before I wrote this post I decided to take the quiz again and put in all the answers that were least true for me. That got me labeled as a cataloguer. There aren’t any cataloguers at the library I (don’t) work in so I don’t have to worry about a department transfer!

If you don’t find this quiz to be accurate, you can make up your own. PlayBuzz has a Create button at the top of every page. Click on it to create your own poll, list, personality quiz, or trivia quiz. Let me know if you need any help with your research. As you know, I am tenacious in the pursuit of answers!

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