She blinded me with library science

The other day my friend Andrea sent along a link to an episode of what is probably my entire library school’s favourite radio-show-slash-podcast, This American Life. We all kind of blame Andrea for getting us addicted, so her recommending a show is not that unusual. I’ve listened to maybe 50 hour-long episodes in the past three months? And sometimes I say “ak” instead of “act” just to be more like host Ira Glass. And in turn I’ve pushed This American Life’s high-quality, often hilarious non-fiction stories (Ira says: “each week we bring you a theme, and several stories on that theme”) on everyone I’ve ever loved or wanted to be happy, because literally that is how great this show is. Life-changing! Better than fiction! Complete with adorable American accents, but fewer xenophobic themes than the title might imply!

So. Anyway, Andrea sent a bunch of us a link to one particular show from 2005, wherein one of my favourite contributors, Alex Blumberg, does a twenty-minute story for a show themed “Image Makers.” The story’s about a library. And here it is for free, if you’d like to listen to it.

Specifically, it’s about a Michigan youth librarian - Bill Harmer - who invites a Detroit hipster rock band - The High Strung - to play concerts at something like 34 public libraries across Michigan over the summer of 2005. I guess I’m not that surprised by the fact that I’ve a) never heard of this initiative, (even though the rock library tour has gone across America now, twice); and b) that I’ve never heard of the band, either (CBC Radio 3, you fail me in that you’re so awesome that I go nowhere else for music, so I miss out on the American bands.)

Listening to the story, I noted a few things:

• the band is kind of adorable and endearing and if I was queen of my own library I would pay them all my late fees just to hang around Alberta and play indie rock shows in their “get ups” (read: matching super-tight white jumpsuits with blue stars up and down the sides)
• although the target age range is 3rd to 12th graders, I would’ve totally gone to something like this if I’d seen it advertised. Book readings and Harry Potter parties are one thing, but rock concerts I can get behind. Tragically, 2005 was a summer when I was just a few states over, in Connecticut, teaching at a poncy arts summer camp. I feel a sense of loss that I missed seeing this epic library travesty firsthand, with a juicebox in my knapsack.
• Blumberg totally plays up the stodgy “famously quiet” thing, talking about card catalogues and kids covering their ears, including one reference to a mean old guybrarian who hates that newfangled noise you kids call music, although maybe it’s true that he likes music just fine, it’s just the noise that patrons and librarians and books in general despise.

Granted, the theme of the episode is organizations trying to escape their own reputations by re-branding themselves, so Blumberg has an angle to sell, but I kind of have a hard time buying that in 2005 six-year-old kids were coming into Michigan Public Libraries and being told to shush. He hints at it, anyway. But I mean, does that even happen anymore? Would any childrens’ librarian ever do that? I was a little saddened by the idea as well as irritated by some of his deliberately parochial jokes.

Anyway, my sadness at the easy pickings of our apparent uncool aside, my favourite part of the story was by far the band talking about how - even if some of the kids at the concerts aren’t convinced the library is cool, and indeed might be more convinced of the band’s uncoolness through the affiliation - they all use and abuse the public library in every town they come to on their regular rock-club-smoky-bar-drunk-audience tours. Shaving in the sink, using the internet, reveling in the luxury of a clean toilet with toilet paper and a door that locks. Public libraries, according to the High Strung, are where you will find most poor touring bands as they drive across the country. Duly noted.

Also, I came across this quote from Bill Harmer in Library Journal, June 2007:

I’m hoping to, in some ways, change people’s images of what libraries can be, not just for just [sic] people who walk in the door, but people who work in libraries. Also, I want young people to see that the library can be a vibrant, relevant place to go. I’m 39. I’m living vicariously through The High Strung.

Top three bands I would live vicariously through as a librarian:

1. Library Voices (straight out of Regina, Sask, a ten piece pop collective)
2. Shh… this is a Library (and so is Brent from New Jersey)
3. Woodpigeon (Calgary’s own darlings, along with their most excellent album, Treasury Library Canada)