Like a “Where’s Waldo?” puzzle, how many stereotypes can you find us breaking in this video clip? Watch and read on, and you’ll find out.
My birthday is this coming Wednesday. I’ll be teaching in Dr. Elaine Martin’s data management course at Simmons College (Boston) on that day, so we had to celebrate early.
Oh, who am I kidding?! I celebrate my birthday for DAYS! And I believe everyone should do the same.
So to begin the week of celebration, my spouse and friends threw me a grand “Jam 50!” party this past Saturday evening. I share this particular video here to entertain, but also to point out that there are librarians, business folk, teachers, editors, and self-employed entrepreneurial types on that stage. In the conga line we have medical researchers, a pediatrician, more librarians (from different libraries), and even an old tax man! And guess where we’re singing and dancing… a Baptist church’s fellowship hall.
All of this goes to show that too often, too much of what stops us from building relationships that make life and work so much better (and successful) are stereotypes. Better put, the fears that they give us, thinking that we’re really different from one another – too different to work and play together. Let’s get beyond them, everyone! And for those of us trying to make our way into the embedded librarian world, I have but one piece of advice:
Invite the researchers you want to work with to the party! Conga line!!
A Librarian by Any Other Name 
Love it! Just makes me sad to see what I missed. But it reminds me, that back in the days of the old Worcester Foundation when the library was in the Hoagland Pincus, the library hosted a weekly night of activities for all the post docs, researchers, techs, everyone. Sometimes it was just wine & cheese, other times games or old movies.