The Mage Librarian

Why am I the "Mage Librarian" instead of something else? Well I've always had a fascination with the world of imagination, fantasy, and magic. In my opinion, magic comes in various forms. Magic is anything not understood by the greater population. At one point in history piecing together two pieces of hide with a pointed implement and a thin piece of sinew or later wool or flax was considered magic. Yes, I’m referring to sewing. Fire too was probably the devil’s work until the many understood how to make it and saw its benefits.

With the vast amounts of information available today it can feel like magic to retrieve the right resources. It too can be magic just for that resource to exist. Think about how over many years, facts of history have endured despite political and social upheavals and the test of time. Book burnings, volcanoes and earthquakes, the church: great collections of history have been destroyed and yet a little bit of this information have survived so we can learn about it today, saved in written form and much more in oral traditions. The folk tales read to us as children may have started thousands of years ago. Yes, the story may have changed, but the basic elements are still retained.

There are not many people who do understand how to correctly locate the information they seek, nor do they know how to judge it as a correct resource. Sadly, many do not even wish to know. Someday, it is with my fondest hope that the librarian profession will become not one of magic, but will have to have evolved into something completely different in order to survive the common, improved knowledge of the world around us.

Already librarians must know about much more than books, be more than the protectors of literature that they were in the past. We must strive to serve our community which includes using the Internet, embracing e-books, the self-publishing internet, even accepting the text messaging novels that have become so popular in Japan. This brings yet another element of magic: the public library surviving despite all the technological changes. The library is still able to encourage many to read, even teens who are faced with distractions of peers, computers and the Internet, MP3/MP4 players, video and computer games and all the new and evolving forms of entertainment that exist. And we can continue to survive as long as we are willing to adapt to change.