Photo illustration by Tom Nick Cocotos

Glance through the thousands of comments left by the participants in School Library Journal’s Job Satisfaction Survey and the same verbs keep popping up: love, help, assist, connect, match, teach, promote. And the objects of these verbs? They’re nearly always children or books, as in “I love finding the right book for a child, and turning a nonreader into someone who’s excited about reading!” SLJ’s Job Satisfaction Survey, conducted online in spring 2008 (see “Behind the Survey,”), asked school and public librarians about their salaries, pay raises, and opportunities for advancement; level of job satisfaction; major causes of dissatisfaction; on-the-job challenges; and how well they were prepared for their positions, among other issues. Even when listing the job’s biggest challenges (funding, terrible administrators, classroom management), librarians often tempered their gripes by emphasizing what makes it all worthwhile: bringing together kids and books. In fact, while the survey revealed some significant differences between school and public librarians—reflecting the distinctive missions of their institutions, as well as their dissimilar work conditions—both shared a similar objective: creating a generation of readers, capable of using information critically. The bottom line? Despite some real problems (workload, salaries), librarians are passionate about their work and nearly all say they’re glad they chose their present careers. Click on our section titles in the box to see the survey.