Flirting with Fame among the Librarians
Alex Halpern talks about his passion for libraries going viral, & highlights some female librarians paving the way for the future.
It has been a strange few months. In October, responding to a columnist for the New York Observer, I spewed out a rant on the importance and viability of public libraries in America. I didn’t expect anyone but my handful of followers to read it, but since the virtual world of Twitter is fast-moving, it went viral beyond my expectations, getting tens of thousands of retweets and gaining me tens of thousands of followers. I was interviewed by the Washington Post, was profiled in magazines, and received invitations and accolades from people I had long admired. There was only one problem: I’m not a librarian yet.
I am certainly part of the library-sphere. I’m an MLS (Master’s in Library Science) student just a few months from graduating. I grew up with a librarian mom, who just had her library named after her, and I have spent a substantial percentage of my life in the stacks and hidden corners of whatever library I lived near. But, I am still not a librarian, and while most librarians didn’t seem to notice or care, some certainly did.
The library world is a small one. People know each other. People talk. And as exciting as this has all been, and as many doors as it has opened, I am also left with inevitable anxiety that I am still an outsider, seemingly taking credit for a community of which I am not a full-fledged member. And what a community it is.
The best part of the last few months, aside, perhaps, from sharing a page in American Libraries Magazine with Dolly Parton, has been meeting and hearing from so many amazing librarians across the country and across the world, who are doing such impressive, notable work for their communities with little to no recognition. There are so many people, predominantly women, who are doing such worthy things, and I can’t help but feel that, as another random white guy stumbling into success in a community this small and important, I am taking the wind out of someone else’s sails. So, when I was asked to write a bit on libraries for Library Lovers’ Month, I thought this would be a great opportunity to highlight some librarians that I admire.
Kristen Arnett is another of the myriad librarians who wile away the hours on Twitter, though in her case most of her tweets chronicle life in Florida with an almost obscene number of animals. In addition to librarianing, Arnett just published her first book, and received accolades for it from the New York Times, as well as her unique decision to hold her book release party in her local 7-Eleven, whose wine selection she continues to rave about. Arnett represents a new generation of librarians: hip, cynical, and not content to be saddled with the decades-old stereotype of stuffy shhhing and mothball-smelling cardigans.
If the library world has a rock star, it’s Sarah Houghton, who coincidentally enough is the library director at the San Rafael Public Library in California, where I spent my formative years. Blogging at librarianinblack.net, Houghton has also been on the forefront of changing public ideas about what libraries are and what librarians do. To quote from her website, “I have been called an iconoclast, a contrarian, a future-pusher, and a general pain in the ass. I take great pride in each.” Houghton is the role model for a lot of the young librarians I know, kicking ass, taking names, and not just embracing the changes that are coming to libraries but leading the charge.
Carla Hayden is an easy addition to the list, since she’s our current Librarian of Congress, and the first woman and African-American to hold that role. It’s somewhat astounding that it took 14 Librarians of Congress to get a woman in the job, seeing as how dominated our profession is by capable, impressive women, and she is as good a standard-bearer as we in the library community could hope for. Formerly the head of the Enoch Pratt Free Library System in Baltimore, and the president of the American Library Association, Hayden helped lead the evolution of libraries into true community centers, emphasizing them as a place where everyone was welcome and everyone belonged. When Ms. Magazine named her 2003’s Woman of the Year, in part because of her vociferous opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act, Hayden said, “Libraries are a cornerstone of democracy — where information is free and equally available to everyone. People tend to take that for granted, and they don’t realize what is at stake when that is put at risk.” In our current political atmosphere, and with threats to privacy on every horizon, there isn’t a better librarian on Earth to have at our helm.
Lastly, and perhaps obviously, the librarian I most admire is Carol Halpern, my mom, and district librarian for the Larkspur School District in Northern California for 40 years, before retiring last year. My mom taught me to love libraries, but more than that, she taught me that libraries were more than just a place for books. They were a place for learning, a place for engaging, and most importantly, a place for community. When she was named Marin County’s Teacher of the Year in 2011, her quote in the local paper summed up everything I learned at her knee: “When I was growing up, in Portland, Oregon, I used to get shushed in the library. I hated that.” My mom rebelled against the stereotype of librarianship her entire career, and it was from her I learned that being a librarian wasn’t just about checking out books. It’s about being an activist, a community leader, and an advocate for progressive learning.
The list of librarians I admire is a lot longer than I could ever fit into an essay like this, but it was important to me that I use this fleeting fame I have unwittingly stumbled into to emphasize just how much libraries are changing, and just how dynamic the leaders on the ground are, spearheading that change. I can only hope that as my career develops, I am able to maintain the energy and passion that these women have brought to the community; and so during this Library Lovers’ Month, I honor them and their contributions not just to libraries, but to our national culture. We are better for their efforts.
