In the Stacks and How to Make Money Teaching Online

"In the Stacks" edited by Michael Cart was a book of short stories about libraries and librarians. There were a few stories I really liked. One was called "Summer Librarian", about a college student who returns to her hometown during the summer to run the library so the librarian can go on vacation (where is this library that the librarian gets the whole summer off? I want to work there!). One of the local high school boys develops a crush on her and starts following her around. It was cute. Another one was a mystery story involving the Library of Congress classification system, which I thought was the coolest idea ever, cataloging nerd that I am :-) Some of the stories weren't so great, but I liked most of them. After all, it seems pretty logical that published writers probably spent a lot of time growing up in libraries, and it had a strong influence on them. Stephen King, for instance, has mentioned libraries and librarians in several of his works. They're usually men; I don't know why. Doesn't he know women rule this profession?
"How to Make Money Teaching Online" by Danielle Babb and Jim Mirabella completely dispelled any notion one might have that it is "easy" to teach online. I certainly never thought that; I was just curious as to how one might get started doing it. I always thought I might like to teach at a college level, and since I've taken all these online classes for my master's degree, I understand a bit about how distance learning works and how it really can be a valid degree if you go to the right school. Of course, my master's degree is completely worthless for teaching online (they even say so, just a few pages into the book!) but it was nice to know exactly what's involved and what is expected of you, if I ever decide to pursue this line of work. What I think I would like most about teaching online is that I could still work my day job as a librarian and just teach a class or two in my off-time. When I went to community college I was so inspired by the teachers there I decided if I ever did teach, I wanted to help give back to the community like they did. Well, it gave me something to think about, if nothing else!