So a cousin of mine had a baby....

...and she had no idea what to do with it. On top of that, she and her husband moved to a new location, where she had a hard time meeting new people apart from the same rounds of grandmas she saw at the market (ie, she couldn't make new friends).

ENTER THE LIBRARY.

As it turns out, there was a program for young mothers at her public library! My cousin quickly made friends with others in the group and proceeded to 1) receive guidance from an experienced mom, 2) share information/baby complaints/baby brags with her peers, and 3) rock the hell out of motherhood.

My cousin had never stepped into a US library before this baby shindig. Now, she's one of the few relatives that don't stare at me with suspicious eyes when I tell them about my Masters program.

What's my point? A library is not just books, not just texts or information --> it's a means of sharing and facilitating knowledge between all of the library patrons, librarians, and (gasp!) non-library users. A lot of the lure of public libraries for me is that they seem to be/should be/could be centers of community engagement and connection.

And I think that part of our job (our new job?) as librarians is to revamp the type of knowledge that people associate with "libraries," to break assumptions that people hold about both libraries and us librarians. This is one way to bring more patrons over to our side, our community, and change the statistics of Dave's Chart of Library User Life and Death.

Our side: we have knowledge and Dark Lords. (Source)

This is why I'm here

I'm here to be inspired, and somehow I get the feeling that IST 511 at Syracuse will do just that.

Dave Lankes is like the Bill Nye of librarianship - possibly a little kooky for the field, but pro at ra-ra-ing and making everyone want to be, of all things, a librarian. (And for those of you who grew up on Bill Nye the Science Guy -- don't worry! According to Wikipedia, he's still alive...unlike...Mr. Rogers...)

Another similarity is their view of the audience: Bill Nye included everyone in his science-y thing, encouraging little kids, adults, reluctant babysitters to EXPERIMENT with SCIENCE and other all-caps crazy shenanigans. Dave, I think, (can I call him Dave? oops) wants to do the same for us and the patron/user/member/owner, except his keywords are: INNOVATION and LIBRARIES.

And it's awesome.


ps - Is anyone else curious about Dave's argument for the use of "member"? Consider the following (har har): one of my friends scoffed and said she preferred "user" because -> "Well, you say 'drug user', and...books are like drugs, right?" That's right, kids.