How Close We Are

It continues to amaze me about the serendipitous encounters of library assistants, archivists, school library media specialists, and librarians new and veteran across the world, particularly the unexpected ones. This past July 4th I was in DC behind the Lincoln Memorial attending a Parks Police Friends & Family get together with a friend from college and her parents. Another family they knew came over and sat with us, the Gallaghers. They had a daughter, Jessica, and all it took was for my friend's mother to point at each of us and say, "Librarian" *pause, pointing to me* "Librarian" and then she walked away, leaving us befuddled finding one our own in a crowd so large. I learned Jessica's backstory throughout the evening. She had just returned from ALA in New Orleans and said that while it was a lovely experience, a lot of the poster sessions were boring and simplified. She spoke of a library from Kentucky who had come to give a presentation about the positive correlation between young adults and food and how this would impact libraries. Jessica seemed to find it obvious that teenagers liked food and couldn't believe the librarians had received funding to come all the way to New Orleans to tell us something we already knew. I thought back at that point back to past visits to my alma mater, where the main campus library was now home to a Starbucks, though there was a second in another dining hall about a five minute walk from the library. I believe there is some merit to studies such as these if anything so we can see how food in the library impacts attendance vs. damage to the materials. In my experience as a library page I saw patrons sneak and blatantly each food in the open in the library. I'm fairly certain we have a policy in the library expressly forbidding food, but people tend to hide in the back of the stacks or in the YA section to eat it.

But I digress...

The more I hung out with Jessica the more I realized that she was a funky, eclectic, and imaginative girl: the best qualities I admire in library ladies. I did also learn that instead of labeling herself an archivist at ALA she wrote "Photo Librarian" on her badge so she wouldn't be badgered by the Archivists exclusively. Her background is in a archives and her past experience includes working as a photo archivist for a Brazilian fashion agency and now she's doing freelance research for authors writing books on LBJ, JFK, and the sex scandal therein.

The rest of the Fourth was spectacular, including the fireworks and how fast we managed to get my friend, her family, my boyfriend, myself, and his Dad out of DC and home (under an hour). I suppose the moral of this blog entry is, you never know when you may be talking to nerd/librarian/archivist/book geek/etc.

We're everywhere, and we're going to stay that way.