Origin Story and Explanation of This Blog's Title

When I was a kid, I used to get grounded from the library.

This sounds much more dramatic than it actually was. I only got grounded from the library on one or two occasions, and then only because I made the mistake of misbehaving on a night that we were planning on going to the library. My parents were not Dickensian villains with a vendetta against childhood literacy; they fostered and encouraged my love of reading. They also believed that if a child were to perhaps pick a fight with her younger brother, that child should experience consequences for her behavior, such as not allowing that child to do something that she wanted to do. And what I wanted to do more than nearly anything else was visit the library.

My avid patronage of the library had a lot to do with books, certainly, but I loved the library because of the librarians. The children's librarian was so good at helping me find books that I absolutely loved--Alanna, Dealing with Dragons, Beauty, and so many others. I memorized her schedule so that I could time my visits accordingly. She didn't seem to mind that I was shy, awkward, and bookish--she embraced it. She never treated me like I was "just a kid"--she saw value in my thoughts and ideas. In the children's department, I was always free to be myself.

"Grounded from the Library" refers to the idea of the library as a place where people want to be, and it reflects my general philosophy of librarianship, particularly within the realm of youth services. This may seem trite, but I keep returning to this particular idea because it can be lost amongst professional jargon; "fun" is not necessarily a concept that goes hand-in-hand with, say, metadata. Granted, metadata plays a very important role in libraries--however, it wasn't metadata that kept me coming back to the library as a child.