Lovely people of tumblr, if I may speak with my librarian hat* on for a moment:

If you are in the US, you may be aware that librarians are Going Through It because some malicious people believe in fascism and have decided to make that our problem. Whether you are in the US or not, there is something you can do to help your local librarians out:**

Say something nice to us.

You can post on social media and tag your library, you can find the library’s main phone number and call, you can go in person, you can send a card (we display cards in our break room)! I guarantee you that you will make the day of the person you talk to, we will immediately go tell all our colleagues how lovely you were, and you will help us live to love and fight another day.

*it is a fetching piece of millinery in purple silk

**I propose we make this an international group project. Whether your librarians are going through it or not, we all appreciate a kind word.

Shared by my library supervisor

I feel called out. lol

comic by @myjetpack

I finally got around to actually putting the signs on my book cart at work 😂

Happy Librarian Day, fellow library peeps

Tagging @millenniallust4death and @library-graffiti specifically 💜

Thoughts and prayers to my friend in this trying time 🙏😂

Library question!

Hi Paddy,

I'm working on redesigning the library app for the area you're living. As someone working in library sciences, do you know of anything you would add to or change in the public library's app? A wishlist that you might have from the librarians side, questions from visitors in your area, concerns as someone who works in the public sector? Any common complaints you hear? Thanks for your time!

@kathmel Just to double-check, are you working on the Airdrie Public Library's app?

Even if you're not I'd be happy to help, I just want to make sure I'm downloading the right app to look at to give feedback on. :)

RAIN OR SHINE! Get your tickets today! And by tickets, we mean your library card. And by today, we mean whenever is convenient for you. Maybe you'd prefer to sign up online at ncls.org? Thanks to @sadbookmemes and @literary_thicction for the inspiration! #librarylife #librarylove #northcountrylibraries #instafestival #libraryland #funwithcanva Reposted from @northcountrylib https://www.instagram.com/p/Clm0f6YOjtK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

i made a thing at work for this month and it makes me incredibly happy 📚🐉✨✨

As a children's librarian, people who harass fans of Harry Potter indiscriminately really worry me.

Here's why.

1. The majority of Harry Potter fans are children.

I've had people call me disgusting and scum and an embarrassment to my disabled community. I've been suicide baited and have received death threats. All of this can be heavy enough stuff for an adult to deal with.

And then I think of how most of my 700+ elementary-aged students are huge Harry Potter fans. Because, you know, Harry Potter is a children's series. And they also have access to the internet and social media like TikTok and YouTube.

Now imagine the stuff that's been said to me being said to a kid. Because Harry Potter's main audience are KIDS.

2. This black-and-white mentality isn't healthy.

Very few things in life are cut-and-dry good vs bad. And if you employ this kind of thinking in one area of your life, odds are you'll apply it to other areas too(more on that in a moment).

And people who go out of their way to harass people who like Harry Potter don't seem to particularly care about any context beyond "If you like Harry Potter in any way whatsoever you're scum".

It hasn't mattered when I've pointed out that I absolutely and unequivocally think Rowling's TERF views are awful and scummy and wrong. It hasn't mattered that I try my best to consume the content only in ways that won't monetarily support her, (which kids typically can't do, btw). It hasn't mattered that it's literally in my job description to keep up with children's media to procure content for my patrons as well as to be able to hold conversations with them.

3. Saying "You're not allowed to read this without being harassed" is no different from saying a book should be banned.

This is ironic, seeing as the people doing the harassing are also often up in arms about queerphobic and racist book bans (as they should be) while demanding book bans of their own.

Because in their all-or-nothing way of thinking, book bans are only bad when the "bad" people do it.

No. Book bans are always bad, no exceptions.

Book bans aren't bad because they're banning the "good" books, they're bad because banning access to different ideas is always bad. Because every book has a lesson to teach us (perhaps not the lesson intended by the author, but a lesson nonetheless).

Renaming my book cart at work Lestat de Lioncart was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.

Happy Librarian Day, fellow library peeps

Tagging @millenniallust4death and @library-graffiti specifically 💜

Mom said it’s my turn with the hyperspecfic polls

further public library of ruina rambles (i've got plenty of time to think about this shit and new material every workday):

it starts when a fairly high-ranking city official stumbles across her when she's just barely started, someone powerful enough to make it very clear the city could wreck angela's shit at this stage if they chose to. but you know, they say instead, it's interesting that this is a library. actually by law we're supposed to have a public library, but we haven't managed to keep one open in quite some time. if you took on the role, we might be persuaded to ignore these... irregularities. what do you say? angela knows full well this is a trap, but doesn't have much choice if she wants to live. also, a would roll over in his grave, not that she thinks about that or anything.

the abnormalities are still there. in fact they're still booked and put on the shelf where anybody can find them. who knows, maybe they were looking for a pug monster.

angela tosses any measured plan she had to wake up the librarians directly out the window within a week, they're all out by the time roland shows up. she takes a management role and does not look back. do not ever call her 'manager', though.

all the librarians technically have their own roles, though they can also get pulled into whatever is needed at any time; in irl libraryland, this is known as the "other duties as assigned" curse.

angela is still trying to reclaim the light, but due to the public libraries act, she can't book anybody unless they actively attack staff, guests, or library property while in the library itself. this throws more of a wrench into her plans than she expected but still happens with depressing frequency.

as a result of the vast amounts of emotional stress and instability added by all this, librarian meltdowns are back. which generally trigger angela because a) everything and b) excuse me, you dare pull your fucking bullshit for the eleven billionth time WHEN MY SUFFERING IS RIGHT HERE REEEEE. so it turns into a giant 3-way fight between librarian, angela, and team could we maybe not die today tyvm. they all know approximately half of each other's buttons (and think they know 3/4), it's a giant clusterfuck but everyone lives and maybe at least some of them learn something.

roland figures out like the equivalent of halfway through something that was really just as true in canon: he can't top this. none of his plans were truly worse than this garbage fire. and now he's trapped in it too. his mental breakdown is slow and inexorable.

the irl public libraries in general... are desperate to fill all the gaps and cracks in the infrastructure they see. we do all want that one perfect book. the answer to the question. what that book with the blue cover was. to be a place where kids can run screaming freely and people can study in quiet. to give mittens to the cold and find housing for the lost. we want that one perfect answer. it doesn't exist. it can't, it isn't possible. the book you loved in childhood won't read the same as an adult. the children who can't keep quiet will hurt the children who can't stand noise. you can't have both the drug dealers and the people trying to get clean, the marginalized and the bigots, all equally welcome. there is no one perfect book. so what i wonder is... what happens if you stop looking. if you stop trying to be everything, and be what you are without regrets. i suspect that what you are (that "just a library") is actually quite enough, and if you stop focusing on doing more than you can, you'll find that around and within you are the answers you actually need. this is both literal, a metaphor, a political statement, and a statement of the theme/endgame of the AU.

haha evading timer by using... a laptop

sometimes i think my job makes me a worse person. i don't think this is particularly unique to my field—in fact i think a lot of it very pointedly isn't, it's a product of the wage relation—but i am a public librarian, which is generally understood to be a laudable profession unless you are a fascist who hates libraries (growing numbers of these!), so maybe it feels jarring. i am a children's librarian, which means that the area which i manage is often used by tired parents for a sort of respite care; they bring their children and then ignore them. the children play with the toys we have out and the parents watch videos on their phones. i don't begrudge anyone this in particular. childcare is very expensive and childrearing seems to me unimaginably exhausting. the library is free. i understand the process here and i do not bear anyone physically involved in the situation any ill-will over it. i feel a lot of rage & resentment about the social circumstances. increasingly it is harder to hang on to my understanding of the moral valences of these situations because i am left awkwardly trying to decide how or if to intervene to enforce the library's rules (i wrote the rules, so they are 'please do not run [because you are too young to look where you are going, there are several things to trip over, and that is a crawling infant]', 'please do not hit one another', and 'please be a little quieter, because other families are also trying to use the library'); the penalties for not complying are that i am sad, but in practice i am often sad, and then sad & annoyed, and then just annoyed. i lose my grounding because i am crouching on the floor to pick up toys that someone else's kid dumped out, and they are not trying even vaguely to help me, i guess because they assume that this is a reasonable library service? that we will give their children toys & then clean up after them? and it does not feel like a library service to me, and so i am annoyed. it diminishes my sense of compassion. i don't like this in myself. there is a need & no other obvious avenue to fill it: is it reasonable for me to be irritated? not especially!

the other thing that seems to happen to people, including me, who work in a public library is that the public library is a great good—we are all very loud about how libraries are vital Third Spaces, they are Free, they are Bastions of Socialism, they are a throwback to the Good Times of Actual Social Infrastructure, &c. &c., whether one accepts these claims or not they are omnipresent in libraryland—and also one is constantly at the library, so one's prosocial impulses get refracted into one's work. but the library is not a bastion of anything in particular (socially awkward white women?) and it is fundamentally a very limited avenue for any kind of social change. i know there's a lot of theory out there about radical librarianship but most of that stuff is just tenured academic librarians blowing smoke, even when it's plausibly helpful. it is substantially more difficult to try to beat a public library which is beholden to a stodgy board of trustees into anything other than a convenience for the upper middle class than it is to write a book about the epistemological limits of LCSH. i mean, i assume, having done neither; one is also substantially more worthwhile. instead you see a wave of shiny short-lived initatives which try to respond to a wide variety of social needs—libraries circulate hotspots, do widely publicized outreaches, offer one-off expungement clinics, have staff carry narcan (this was a hornet's nest, not, i think, entirely for good reason). but what is a library? what can a library do? many things which are deeply worth doing. but it can't be a transformative political project & a public institution in the united states at the same time.

maybe i am just tired, though! maybe this is just because i had to sign a loyalty oath swearing to uphold the values of the US constitution when i got my first librarian job (standard in the state of florida for all public employment). i still get a deep sense of fulfillment out of being good at my job, and i do think i am very good at some parts of it; mostly i am interrogating myself, or reminding myself. the limits are sharp.

So like… is anybody else’s Professional World this fucking convoluted, or just libraryland?