How I Came to Be a Librarian

Last week, Anna at Future Librarian Superhero shared her librarian creation story. She asked her readers to consider sharing their stories, too, and that's what I intend to do.

I first wanted to be a librarian after seeing The Mummy. You know that nineties movie with Rachel Weisz as her career headed upwards, Brendan Fraser as his career headed the other way, and that mummy face made of sand? That movie. In case you don't remember the movie as well as you should, Rachel Weisz's character is a librarian. And she can keep her cool and use her brain in the most ridiculous mummy-has-arisen situations, even when her male counterparts just shoot things and/or die. She was the best. Obvious career path.

That was middle school. In high school, I read a few articles* about librarianing. I learned about the Lipstick Librarian, whom I emailed to find out how I could become a librarian. I learned about Nancy Pearl and got her action figure. I bought a library community cookbook. I aided in the school library.

In college, it took me a while to land on a major. Second-guessing my major made me second guess my longtime career choice, but I kept librarianing in mind. Two realizations during the summer before senior year showed me I was meant to go to library school: 1) I spent my summers as a camp counselor keeping a shelf of middle grade books for campers to read during rest hour; and 2) I made several trips to different libraries during my semester in Scotland despite having no scholastic inducement to do so. All signs pointed me back to libraries.

In library school, I tried rare books (pretty interesting); I thought about digitization programs (not quite as interesting to me); but I LOVED doing children's services anything, whether it was in class or in my public library internship. It would appear that all has turned out for the best, as I still love doing anything children's services.

And that's how I came to be a librarian.


*Bitch magazine ran Abigail Leah Plumb's "Smarty Girl: Three Librarians on Film" in 2001; Bust ran Kat Long's "Revenge of the Librarians" in 2004.