By A. Faulkner
What is your role in the GLBTRT?
Right now, I am just a regular member. In past years I’ve written and edited book reviews for the Newsletter, and I served on the Stonewall Committee in 2007 and 2008.
What does the GLBTRT mean to you?
I joined ALA the summer before I started my MS program, and GLBTRT was one of the first groups within ALA that I joined. To me, the GLBTRT means fellowship and camaraderie, a home within the larger world that is ALA.
Are you involved in ALA in other ways?
I’ve scaled back my involvement recently, but I have been involved with the Office of Information Technology Policy and served on the ALA Awards Committee. I am also a member of ALSC.
What professional work do you perform?
I am a Children’s Librarian in a smallish branch of a very large public library system. I’m fortunate to get to do a lot of things, so every day is different. Besides regular shifts at the Reference Desk, I do children’s programming, collection development, and outreach. I have Baby/Toddler Storytime right when the library opens on Mondays, because that starts my week off right.
What would you like to share about your personal life?
My wife and I were married in a UU church ceremony in 2005 and legally married on our third wedding anniversary – we were among the couples left in limbo for a while due to California’s Proposition 8 in 2008. We have a daughter who just turned 10, a dog who is at least 12 (no one knows for sure – when we got her in 2005, the vet said she was “between 6 months and 2 years”), and two cats.
What are you most proud of?
Moving halfway across the country to a city I’d visited exactly twice (and one of those visits was to rent an apartment to move into!) to start a job in a completely different area of librarianship than I thought I’d be doing when I started my Master’s degree program. It’s worked out pretty well.
Who inspires you?
My daughter. She’s a smart, quirky, amazing kid who inspires me every day.
What are your goals? (Professional and/or personal.)
I’d really like to visit all 50 states (plus DC) – I’m not even halfway there yet.
What do you think (or predict) is the future of libraries?
People have been predicting the death of libraries for a good long time now, and yet here we are. I think libraries will continue to adapt to new ways of storing and sharing information. I think neighborhood libraries like mine will keep figuring out how to connect our patrons with the resources they need. They might not look like the libraries of my childhood, but they’ll be the libraries that people need.
In what direction would you like the GLBTRT to move in the future?
Towards an ever-more-inclusive and equal world.
If you could be transported into the fictional world of any book, where would you go?
Through the Phantom Tollbooth
What would be the title of your autobiography?
This Tangled Skein: Adventures with Yarn, Tea, and Sherlock Holmes
If you could only choose one song to play every time you entered a room for the rest of your life, what would it be?
I was going to say Pink’s “So What”, because that’s the best entrance song I know, but then I thought that I might want to enter a room quietly from time to time, so never mind!
If you could have a dinner party with 5 culturally or historically significant figures, living or dead, who would you invite?
Oh, man. This is one of those things that changes daily. Today, I’d say Mozart, Queen Victoria, Shakespeare, Hillary Clinton, and Harry Houdini. (I was going to say Oscar Wilde, but on dinner party questions, he should be like the letter “E” in the Wheel of Fortune Bonus Round – just take him as a given!)
What is the meaning of life?
I’ll let you know when I figure it out. :)