Cheerleader Librarian

I have been known to be Gidget-esque in my qualities.  I am sure that the serious PhD-types that I work with must be sitting in faculty meetings and thinking “Oh my God, it’s like a member of the Mousketeers has escaped and somehow gotten assistant professor status”!  I am jovial, I don’t use huge words (uh, like jovial), I laugh a lot, and I like to give sales pitches for upcoming programs and new purchases.  Gosh darn it, I’m down right chipper.  So, why is this an issue?  Well, I know it takes all types to make the library world go ’round, but I look forward to a day when librarians see themselves as sales people and cheerleaders as much as they do as information seeking machines.  I think it will help us a lot, and we will have fewer meetings that start with the phrase “How can we get more people in our building???”.

We are good at what we do and goodness only knows that librarians wear a lot of hats, but we need to really do a push towards reinventing the librarian image…and what we’re doing now simply is not enough.