There is a prevailing stereotype regarding librarians: frumpy women with glasses, buns, and a shushing frown plastered across their wrinkled faces. Look at the photos from an ALA conference and this will seem to be entirely accurate. I love this stereotype because it allows me to break it, to be a rockstar librarian. My boss likes to send me to do our school outreach because I have red hair, tattoos, and I’m under 30. So when I enter a classroom and ask who knows where I am visiting from, the students rarely know the answer. I did get one girl who guessed I was a doctor which I found both strange and flattering. I do wear glasses (after online MLIS work for nearly 2 years), I often wear my hair in a French twist, and I have a penchant for librarian cardigans. I also love to bellydance, have danced on stage with Iggy Pop (at last year’s Vegoose music festival where Jane and I had artist-access wristbands and got tons of free stuff and hung out with Flava Flav and Chuck D, among others), enjoy cheering on the Sin City Rollergirls at their derby bouts, and love to go to offbeat places like the outdoor sculpture museum at Rhyolite or to the Amargosa Opera House. (Look those last two up, you’ll be glad you did.) All of these aspects of my life are integrated and not exclusive. Maybe next time you visit your local library’s reference desk, you should give the librarian an extra glance to see if you recognize her from somewhere else.
"Hey you, just keep on dancing". This quote from the incredible Austin duo Ghostland Observatory was written by Jane on a picture of Mikhail Baryshnikov and hung on our refrigerator and it never fails to make me smile.
“I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket” – Sylvia Plath
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