Librarians, physicists and zen masters

I've been thinking about libraries and librarians. Librarian is kind of a multi-purpose word at the moment. For some, a librarian is anyone who works in a library. For others, a librarian is some one with a Master of Library Science. But some states have a test that they say is equivalent to the MLS. And then there are teaching certificates. Nearly all states require children in school to be supervised by someone with a teaching certificate. Some states require the school librarian to provide planning time for the other teachers and therefore require the librarian to have a teaching certificate but not necessarily a library certificate. And some states don't require anything of the librarian. The Duchy insists on the teaching certificate but is kind of fuzzy about the library part of it. And those are just issues about the official definition of a school librarian. I find the Librarian state of mind more interesting than the job definition. In terms of mindset, Librarians have a lot in common with physicists and zen masters. They all believe that there is an underlying order to the universe that can be discovered by study. And they believe that understanding that order is the ultimate goal. I realized this listening to Sage explain that Melvil Dewey didn't need to know about cell phones to have allowed for their existence. You can probably think of some librarians who really don't have a Librarian mindset because they clearly don't believe in an underlying order. And there are clearly people without credentials who have the Librarian mindset. I'm not sure where I'm going with this but maybe we should just people by the content of their mindset rather than the color of their credentials.