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A review by jwsg
This Is What a Librarian Looks Like: A Celebration of Libraries, Communities, and Access to Information by Kyle Cassidy
4.0
After reading this book, it made me wish I had trained to be a librarian. I've always loved libraries for, well, the books. But This is What a Librarian looks like made me realise that for many communities, a library is so much more than just about borrowing books. It is a lifeline: "programs for children and teens, after school programmes, computer classes, programmes to support small businesses and job seekers, visits from day care, community and senior centers, community meetings...English as a Second Language programmes" to name a few.
This is What a Librarian Looks Like features librarians from all across America - from public libraries at the town, city and state levels, high school libraries, university libraries, research libraries, libraries in correctional facilities and hospitals - speaking about their role. It also features essays written by guest authors such as Neil Gaiman (his essay was one of my favourites), Cory Doctorow, Amanda Palmer speaking about the importance of the library in their lives, and essays on different libraries and the different roles they play in their respective communities (the LA Central Library, the Lewis and Clark Bookmobile in Montana; the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library in Northampton Massachusetts, the Tablet Room at UPenn and the Greybull Public Library in Wyoming, to name a few).
It amazed me how broadly librarians interpreted their mandate to support the public's access to knowledge, their mission to build communities. They described libraries as "community centers, schools, health clinics, post officers, movie theatres, job placement centers", "safe place(s) for the maligned members of our community", catalysts for democracy, "places of community". Librarians saw themselves as "search ninjas", "sense-makers of complicated information environments", "connectors" of people and ideas, of past, present and future, "guide(s) to what's possible", "social worker, educator, storyteller, advocate and activist". I was amazed by some of the programmes librarians initiated and fought for: Nick Higgins at the Brooklyn Public Library created a programme in 2010 called Daddy and Me, which involved incarcerated parents at Rikers Island reading to their children and delivering a DVD to their child, to help connect kids with their parents; library director Mary Anne Antonellis of the M.N. Spear Memorial Library in Shutesbury, Massachusetts got a bunch of kayaks to loan out by the old town beach so that people could explore the lake without having to own a boat or transport one to the lake; Briony Zlomke Beckstrom is a youth services librarian at the Franklin Public Library in Franklin, Wisconsin in Milwaukee who started an American Girl Doll lending program so that little girls in the community could get a chance to play with the dolls even if they couldn't afford one of their own; Bretagne Byrd drives a 32 foot Freightliner which serves as a mobile library for communities in rural Montana.
Along the way, you also learn interesting nuggets like how librarians are increasingly automating the process of deciding which books in their collection to cull, using software like "Decision Centre to isolate recommendations for weeding, shelving allocation, floating collections, etc", and the tensions between archival and circulating collections.
A lovely, lovely read.
This is What a Librarian Looks Like features librarians from all across America - from public libraries at the town, city and state levels, high school libraries, university libraries, research libraries, libraries in correctional facilities and hospitals - speaking about their role. It also features essays written by guest authors such as Neil Gaiman (his essay was one of my favourites), Cory Doctorow, Amanda Palmer speaking about the importance of the library in their lives, and essays on different libraries and the different roles they play in their respective communities (the LA Central Library, the Lewis and Clark Bookmobile in Montana; the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library in Northampton Massachusetts, the Tablet Room at UPenn and the Greybull Public Library in Wyoming, to name a few).
It amazed me how broadly librarians interpreted their mandate to support the public's access to knowledge, their mission to build communities. They described libraries as "community centers, schools, health clinics, post officers, movie theatres, job placement centers", "safe place(s) for the maligned members of our community", catalysts for democracy, "places of community". Librarians saw themselves as "search ninjas", "sense-makers of complicated information environments", "connectors" of people and ideas, of past, present and future, "guide(s) to what's possible", "social worker, educator, storyteller, advocate and activist". I was amazed by some of the programmes librarians initiated and fought for: Nick Higgins at the Brooklyn Public Library created a programme in 2010 called Daddy and Me, which involved incarcerated parents at Rikers Island reading to their children and delivering a DVD to their child, to help connect kids with their parents; library director Mary Anne Antonellis of the M.N. Spear Memorial Library in Shutesbury, Massachusetts got a bunch of kayaks to loan out by the old town beach so that people could explore the lake without having to own a boat or transport one to the lake; Briony Zlomke Beckstrom is a youth services librarian at the Franklin Public Library in Franklin, Wisconsin in Milwaukee who started an American Girl Doll lending program so that little girls in the community could get a chance to play with the dolls even if they couldn't afford one of their own; Bretagne Byrd drives a 32 foot Freightliner which serves as a mobile library for communities in rural Montana.
Along the way, you also learn interesting nuggets like how librarians are increasingly automating the process of deciding which books in their collection to cull, using software like "Decision Centre to isolate recommendations for weeding, shelving allocation, floating collections, etc", and the tensions between archival and circulating collections.
A lovely, lovely read.