Sometimes I believe that nothing matters and everything is random, and sometimes I can believe that everything has consequences and that crazy shit is interconnected. Like dinosaurs. And librarianship.
So I think the universe is trying to tell me something.
I’ve been saying for a couple of years that if librarianship didn’t work out, my backup career was velociraptor. It was a fun little joke, and provided some entertainment during slow shifts when I would practice my claws.
But it just keeps coming up! Dinosaurs and librarians. Librarians as dinosaurs. And it’s making me realize: I don’t have to choose. I just have to shift my thinking a little bit.
When I did my interview for this class, Jane referred to herself as a dinosaur for still preferring print books. It’s something you hear a lot – unless we modernize, we’ll go extinct.
But why is dinosaur our go-to synonym for old, outdated, slow or irrelevant? Judging by the number of children’s books about them, dinosaurs are still alive and well in the human imagination. Even better – they are an extension of the human imagination. We’ve taken their bare bones and constructed an epic story from them. And we’ve imagined dinosaurs as badass.
So I ask, why do I have to choose between being a librarian and a dinosaur? Why can’t I be both?
Why can’t I reimagine my role as a librarian and throw in a little extra toughness and cleverness and claw? Maybe some roar, on special occasions?
It’s not a safe career anymore. There are constant challenges (asteroids if you will. fuck yes metaphor) that threaten to take us out. We can view “going the way of the dinosaurs” as an ending, or as an impetus to reinvent ourselves as something completely amazing.
Let’s continue testing fences. 🙂
Katie St. Laurent 
Ooooh, can we be the dinosaurs that evolved into birds of prey! They're still around (in a way) but now they can FLY!!!
Not boring 🙂
While I love this post, all I can think of is a librarian chasing a child through the stacks, like the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park. 😛
OMG, Dan, that scene scares the bahjeebus outta me!! Every. Time. When one almost bites the girl's leg off while they're hauling her into the ventilation shaft. Yeeps!But I can see it now: raptor-librarian is sneaking around the stacks looking for the prey, I mean, kid, clicking it's claws on the floor and snorting while looking between shelves, calling in a freaky raptor voice to its fellow librarian as they're closing in on the kid, and then the kid hurls a picture book towards the reference section to throw off the scent, and scrambles to the safety of the bean bag chairs as the librarians run in the opposite direction. Awesome.
In honor of this comment, I hastily photoshopped myself a new profile pic. Stalker/Dinosaur/Librarian? Enjoy.