Twinkle Twinkle

I love libraries. 

I love books. 

I love stories. 

I love librarians.

I love new librarians. 

Those super-shiny, squeaky-keen torch-bearers of awesomeness who are making the future of libraries happen now now now! I especially love all of those librarians who were at the New Librarians Symposium in Perth two weeks ago.

I love them because they sang for me. (Even though there were looks of terror when I asked them to put down their ipads and phones and disconnect from the twitterverse for a moment.) 

I love them because they were so supportive of my presentation at the conference, which was about the light and shadow in my own library story and following the joy in your career. (Seriously, I felt all rock-star and giddy with the love I was shown.) 

 The other presenters at the conference were mind-bendingly inspirational and exciting. And every single librarian I spoke to was buzzing with energy. There was an infectious excitement about the possibilities for libraries, about the future. The future of libraries is so shiny!*

Shine on you lovely new librarians!

*I'd tell you all about it but then I'd have to send the library-ninjas out to wipe your memory so that the libraries of the future will be a nice surprise, you like surprises don't you?Then I'd be up all night calming the library-ninjas down with stories and cups of warm milo. Ninjas love warm beverages. 

 

Pondering, moments before my talk... Can I get away with using the phrase "like a stripper-librarian, flashing my Dewey-decimals to the highest bidder." 

(Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpfl/)

This is me explaining that I had planned to have a musical flashmob, but it was too hard to organise. That I had planned to make everyone hand-crafted, individual finger-puppets, but it was too fiddly. This is the moment before I told those two librarians sitting on the stage that they were going to join me - and the whole room - in singing twinkle twinkle little star.