I was that kid that every youth librarian and page hates: When my mom would bring my sister and I to the library, I would spend 90% of my time in the children’s fiction section, shoving all of the books toward the back of the shelf.

I’ve been working in libraries for more than half my life. I started as a page at the Berkley Public Library in 1986, when I was just fifteen years old, where I was able to arrange my schedule around Driver’s Ed and Girl Scout meetings. I read as many books in the stacks as I shelved, scrambled to find back issues of magazines, dodged traffic to fetch newspapers, shoveled snow, tipped book trucks over, and dropped many an encyclopedia on my foot. I never thought that an after-school job (totally my mom’s idea) would become my career.

My stint as a page evolved into a circulation clerk position, and over the years I have worked as a retrospective conversion sticker/label drone, acquisitions librarian, technician, branch librarian, branch supervisor and library director. I have worked mostly in public libraries, with a short summer stint at the Congressional Research Service, where I learned as much about living with five complete strangers (imagine a naive librarian dumped into the old tv show, Melrose Place) as I did about reference services to patrons that I never saw in person. I did contract/temp work at two libraries within General Motors, which was nowhere near as glamorous as it sounds.

In my previous position as a branch manager at the Warren Public Library, I was witness to how the Gates Foundation grants changed the face of the public library. As a library director at the Lapeer District Library, I see everyday the challenges of running a library system in a growing and changing community. I work for a board, head up a small administrative team and lead a staff of forty-three in uncertain times when demand for our services is increasing and at the same time, our revenues are decreasing.

In the past year, I have:

• bid on and won a gift certificate for a tattoo at the Family Literacy Center’s Annual Dinner & Auction
• acted as the pronouncer at the county-wide spelling bee
• been arrested for the Muscular Dystrophy Association
• gotten the African violet in my office to bloom
• successfully survived two challenges to materials in our collections
• served on a panel at the Michigan Library Association annual conference, where we encouraged young librarians to “Drink the Kool-Aid” and consider becoming a library director
• played Guitar Hero and gotten paid for it
• had third-row tickets for Duran Duran in Detroit
• introduced the next generation to the magic of the library by having my nieces come to story hour

There are moments when I get overwhelmed, but honestly, after almost 23 years in this fun, crazy, sometimes intense and ever-changing profession, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

And yes, I am, and always will be, the Bastard Librarian From Hell.