Telling our Story

Below is a video that I created to promote our library.  I wanted to contrast the accessibility and helpfulness of our librarians with what many of us have come to expect from customer service by other providers.

The Library Evangelist

I’ve given myself a new title at the library: Library Evangelist. I love to tell others about the library. I attend mixers and stop by professors’ offices just to tell them our latest offerings. This requires me to walk a line between enthusiasm and pushiness. Hopefully, I don’t often cross that line. It requires me to get out of the library into the spaces that our patrons inhabit. It also requires me to know the message of the library.


Just like many evangelists, I often can find a way to direct the conversation to what the library can do for them. Is an instructor planning a new class? We can help. Is a student about to study abroad? We can find him or her much of the information that he or she may need to get ready to spend a semester in another country. I am always looking for ways to subtly plug the library.

Sometimes, I don’t know if I am making a convert or preaching to the choir. It seems that it is those who already appreciate the library that most want to hear about it. Still, a person cannot act on what they do not hear, and they cannot hear unless someone tells them.

I am not by nature a pushy person, so my form of evangelism is gentile. I am by nature an introvert, but I am a social one. I do not like confrontation. I simply love the library. My passion simply spills into my conversations with others. Have I told you yet about our new…?

The Joy of Old Books

    On my desk are three old books: Macaulay’s essays, vol. 1 (no date); Lamb’s works Vol. 1, 1857; and Ruskin’s Works (no date).  Each of these was half bound in leather with marbled papers filling in the rest of the binding.  The pages are a little yellowed.  Some of them have water stains, probably decades old.  The proximity to the life of their authors is rather close in all cases.  I have not read them yet, but I find myself looking at them often.

    One of our art history instructors has commented that there is a danger in being exposed to work only digitally: we cease seeing a piece of art as an object and start to see it as data.  I wonder if we may be close to making the same mistake with books.  With these old volumes that I am drawn to, the idea of book-as-an-item is obvious.  They are visual, tactile and olfactory encounters as well as intellectual stimulation.  When I touch them, I am also touching all the readers who came to this book before me.  Their fingerprints may well be on the books still.

    I own an e-book reader and enjoy it.  I enjoy the ability to gain instant access to books that are not available in my local bookstores.  I enjoy the portability of it.  In one small device, I have dozens of books.  I tolerate the cold sterility of it because of its usefulness.  I even try to dress it up on warm leathers.  I have yet to try the old book smelling perfumes.  I can only deceive myself so much.

For the Love of the Library

Friday we broke ground on what is to be a new wing to our library. A great many people were gathered to celebrate with us. Our Scholar in Residence, a Georgia Writer of the Year gave a nice speech about the importance of the library. It was a time to celebrate the place that the library plays in the life of the community. It is easy to forget that we librarians are not the only ones who see the library as crucial to the education of our students and faculty. We often feel taken for granted. We may have faculty status, but not be considered on par with the other faculty. We may be among the first to face budget cuts. Yet we soldier on resisting an inferiority complex. Friday, at the ground breaking, a small multitude turned out to tout the library and librarians. I felt proud to be a librarian. I felt appreciated. The whole campus and much of the community was throwing a party for us.


I remember asking Gwendolyn Brooks once if she thought that poetry was going out of fashion. She said that there have been, and always will be people who are deeply touched by poetry. I think that the same could be said about the library. Beyond the budget cuts, the work to prove our value to the community; beyond the students who still have not been through our doors or have not been to our databases; beyond all of this, there are those who deeply love and are greatly impacted by the library. This is what I felt on that day as we broke ground.