Tuck Your T, And Move On

Dispite all the bluster of libraries and librarians being bastions for radical readership and freedom of thought in print, they are for the most part conservative in all creatures. Not conservative in a political manner, though Conservative Librarians do exist. I mean in a general sense of beige, sweaters in the summer sense. Sure, your library might have drag queen story time, but I bet you no fewer than four librarians frayed the sleeves off their favorite cardigans with worry before they signed off on the program. And, it's still just story time. Drag shows with a literary twist, at the library....now we're talking. Unless The Lady Chablis is taking her pills and tucking her "t" before she glides from the James Patterson section, color me only mildly impressed with Drag Queen Story Time. 

My first exposure to Librarianship came from a lady I happened to be acquainted with who would be a Degen Librarian if there ever was one. She knew things, and tied them into her library work. If something got in her way she got around it. By the time she'd been at her job with a small college in Virginia for a year, she had increased library usage by double digits, and had faculty begging her to come teach their classes. How did she do it? A simple balls out approach to librarianship. If it worked, it worked. If it failed, it failed. You didn't fret over what could happen or how things had always been done. Failure wasn't an option because you didn't fail. You made progress in a different direction. You didn't lose your shit if books were out of place, and you damn sure waved late fees. Staff were to be utilized not wasted. Whatever it took to keep things rolling down hill. 

And she had vision. It wasn't always perfect, and things did not always go as she had planned, but she at least looked a couple moves down the road. She was one of the first to argue against the library spending needed cash for a 3D printer. She saw it as an expensive toy that would sit unused 90% of the time. Yeah it looked great but it was underused and broke down all the time. She also argued for expanding library services to vodcasts and podcasts, and well as hosting a weekly book talk radio show. It might not seem like much but you sprinkling in her advocacy for the library buying rudimentary recording equipment so students could record their music and you have someone turning heads in small college Virginia. 

Upsetting the apple cart isn't in the nature of most librarians. We like things the way we are. Glitter is terribly hard to vacuum out of the carpet after Drag Queen story time, but at least it is something different. Why not next week invite the BDSM club over for a leather craft time? Sewing a zipper on a facemask is hard but kids have nimble figures, and I bet more than a few of the parents might walk away with a phone number or two.