Michael Guillebeau
MAD LIBRARIAN
YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO LIBRARY
dedication, and all that
THIS IS A BOOK of fantasy. But it is about a race of fantastic creatures who actually inhabit some of the most underfunded and overworked places in our often-dirty real world.
They’re called librarians, and, more and more, they’re called on to shoulder any burden the rest of us don’t want. They sign up to work with books, and wind up looking after kids dropped off for day care from moms who can’t find anything else, caring for homeless men who can’t find anywhere else, providing medical and legal advice, and helping people find jobs. The list stretches to infinity. The resources don’t.
But what if they did? What if a librarian had all the power and money she needed?
This book is dedicated to the librarians who should have more but who always, always find a way to do more.
Four of those remarkable librarians inspired the birth of this book, guided it as it grew, and pointed the way to use it to help mad librarians everywhere. The librarians in this book are pale shadows of these remarkable women who make their communities and libraries better every day. Thank you all, my librarian goddesses:
Anyone who’s ever read an early draft of mine will tell you that this book would be unreadable without the work of my two fine editors, Lisa Wysocky and Stacy Pethel. And you might not have bought it without the great cover from Artrocity and the wonderful title that provided from librarian Amanda Campbell.
Chris Guillebeau and Cheryl Rydbom contributed a lot of time and useful comments.
Most importantly, I always have to thank the best partner, first reader, and co-conspirator any man ever had: Pat Leary Guillebeau.
Because I came to believe so strongly in the mission or our librarians, half of all of the income from MAD Librarian goes to the Awesome Foundation for Libraries fund, a small working group of passionate librarians within Library Pipeline who provide a catalyst for prototyping innovations that embody the principles of diversity, inclusivity, creativity, and risk-taking. For more information go to
http://www.awesomefoundation.org/en/chapters/libraries.
one
little pricks
SERENITY TRIED.
She tried to be a model librarian: professional, polite and as gentle-spoken on the outside as she could possibly be.
Her library was America at its best. In its public spaces, the MAD—as the librarians called the Maddington Public Library, from the abbreviation stamped on its books—was the eminently normal center of an eminently normal small Southern city. No matter what else was going on in the city outside: failing schools, drugs in the street, too few good jobs, teen-aged boys wearing their pants too low and homeless men with no pants at all—the city fathers expected Head Librarian Serenity Hammer to keep the MAD a calm oasis of normalcy as proof that the city fathers themselves were actually doing their jobs. And, they expected her to do that whether they did anything themselves or even supplied the library with actual support.
Serenity tried to live up to that, too.
Which was why, on a hot August morning, she was locked alone in a children’s reading room with a coffee cup of rum for fortitude, a rat named Faulkner for company, a copy of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for guidance, and a highly illegal choice before her.
Serenity Hammer was a librarian. And Serenity was mad.
TWO DAYS BEFORE she wrestled with moral dilemma, Serenity threw open the library’s glass doors on a hot Wednesday morning in August. She smiled as patrons flowed past on their way to her books.
She picked up a handful of books from the “to be shelved” cart and turned to the stacks. She ran her finger along the spine of one, inhaled the paper-and-ink smell, and smiled again.
Someone screamed, “Damned stupid computers.” She put the books back on the cart.
Maybe later.
She then walked up to a worn-out older woman who was slapping a worn-out library computer like it had stole from her. Serenity took the woman’s hands away from the computer and held them.
“I knowed this was a bad idea,” the woman said. “I told my councilman I needed a job and he said they had to close the employment office and he told me to go to the library. But your damned computer just tells me what books you got here. Don’t want a book; want a job.”
The woman tried to pull her hands away but Serenity held on. The woman’s jaw was still jutting out but her eyes were full of fear and shame.
Serenity put the woman’s hands in her lap and pulled up a chair. “Then let’s find you a job. What can you do?”
“Not a goddamned thing. Forty years looking after my husband and he died. Now I don’t know what to do and they ain’t nobody to ask that won’t charge more money than I got and I just feel like everybody’s letting me get torn to pieces.”
“So, what have you been doing in those forty years?”
“Cooking and cleaning and raising kids and—”
“There. Know much about baking?”
“Well, of course. Who do you think made all them cupcakes the kids took to school?”
“Good.” The woman slid over and Serenity brought up a web page. “There’s a bakery out on Segers Road. They specialize in making treats for people who have special dietary needs. They were in here yesterday looking for a book on hiring folks.”
The woman shook her finger at the screen. “They better be careful. My husband Christopher was a diabetic. There’s some stuff you got to know if you’re cooking for diabetics.”
Serenity touched her on the shoulder. “You’re just what they need. But you’ll need a resume.” Serenity slid back and turned the keyboard to the woman. “You type, and I’ll help you.”
A few minutes later, a warm sheet of paper slid out of the printer, and Serenity handed it to the woman. “Take that to Stacey out at Liberated Specialty Foods, see if you can help each other.”
The woman’s tears were gone, “What would we do if the library wasn’t here?”
Serenity said, “My library will always—”
A blue-haired woman grabbed her elbow.
“This thing ain’t got nothing in it.”
She shoved a book in Serenity’s hands and Serenity smiled. The woman was the wife of the Church of Christ’s choir director. She had joined the Romance Book Club so she could condemn immorality. Flipping through the pages, Serenity handed the book back and pointed to the middle of a page. “Here.”
The choir director’s wife bobbed her head up and down like a nervous bird, studying the page and popping up to make sure no one saw her. She raised her head one last time with her mouth open.
“Praise Jesus. This is terrible.”
Anything to keep them coming in.
Serenity headed for her office door. A twenty-something woman with books clutched to her chest and a librarian’s badge blocked her path.
Fine. She didn’t want to face what was waiting behind that door anyway.
“Ms. Hammer, he’s back.”
“Who?”
Amanda Doom pulled one hand from under her books and slowly raised her index finger until it was straight up. “Do you want me to get security?”
Serenity looked over at the high school boy who had volunteered to wear the red “Security” tee shirt today.