Retrospective: 30 Lessons Learned (and a Few Strokes of Luck) at The Crossroads

摘要

1 I suspect that few of you who are reading this thought you would have a career as a law librarian-or any type of librarian-when you were a child. Flash back to 1958:Mommy: What do you want to be when you grow up, Jimmy?Jimmy (age 8): I want to be a law school librarian, Mommy. It looks like fun. I can work with smart people who want to help other people and answer questions and teach and write articles and attend conferences and have 5 weeks of vacation every year.It didn't happen that way, of course. But sixty years later, it would have been a good answer to my mom's question. And far more realistic than playing shortstop for the Detroit Tigers.12 In the next few pages I will tell you how I got to where I am today, a few months from my retirement. If you are thinking "musings of an old man," I guess they are. But my goal is to share some of the things I learned during my 40 plus years as a law librarian.3 As for the title, capitalizing the "T" in "The Crossroads" is not an error. We come to crossroads every day when we make decisions; some are minor, some are important. Others are really important, like decisions to quit or take a job. As for the article's style, the changes between past and present tense are intentional. This may not be grammatically correct, but I think it's more interesting this way.