With shushing action!

Barbara Gopas Gubbins send us the perfect quote for these troubling economic times.

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money
will get you through times of no libraries."

How true is that! We can’t even imagine a time with no libraries. The horror. But it might make a great topic for a great dystopian ya novel.

We're so thankful to live in a place where the following anecdote is possible. Where a librarian in a school with little funds still manages to put books on the shelves! Thanks Sandi Jones in Arizona for sharing!

"I’m a firm believer in the power of a good book collection. When I started working in my current high school library in a poor rural district two years ago, the fiction section had an average copyright date of 1980. Needless to say, teens couldn’t relate to the books on the shelves, and there were hardly any titles of interest to our diverse student population. One student actually asked me how I could stand working in such a lonely boring place! Seeing the need for change, I became determined to replace all those dusty, never-circulated titles with hot bestsellers. Soon after I started ordering books, a shy senior walked through the door one day and began checking out books. A few weeks later, that same senior—by then a regular patron—admitted in three years of high school she’d never been inside our library.
Today, my favorite part of my job is when a new box of books comes in the door and the students attack the carton like vultures. Kids hang out in the library at lunchtime because they want to and enjoy browsing the shelves. I’ve been told that the "boring" place is the heart of the school now."


DID YOU KNOW!!!

Librarians have their own action figure.


This librarian superhero is based on real life librarian Nancy Pearl and caused a bit of controversy amongst librarians keen to change their image. But anyone who loves librarians knows they are so much more than shushers!

I think Paula Poundstone said it best. "It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed."