I subscribe to a couple of TED Talks feeds and thanks to that, I found a link in my email this morning to a talk by Kare Anderson, a columnist for Forbes who writes about how and why people make connections with one another. I took the 10 minutes required to watch the talk and couldn’t have been happier that I did. Not only was it inspiring on a personal level, but also because it was inspiring on a professional level. As Anderson shared a story about how she connected several people that she knew over a shared interest in public art, I couldn’t help but think and see how she’d make a great librarian (if she wasn’t a great journalist already). Bringing people together, connecting them, is what we need to do in our profession today, perhaps more than ever. As I’ve written before, the library long served as a physical place where different people gathered and found connections. If/when you’re working with a patron group who rarely if ever come to the library anymore, they’ve lost that opportunity to connect. We, the librarians who go out and meet them where they are, we bring that connectivity of the library to them. That’s a big part of our job. And as Anderson says, that work is the work of OPPORTUNITY MAKERS.
Near the end of the talk, Anderson lists the traits of opportunity makers:
So here’s what I’m calling for you to do. Remember the three traits of opportunity-makers. Opportunity-makers keep honing their top strength and they become pattern seekers. They get involved in different worlds than their worlds so they’re trusted and they can see those patterns, and they communicate to connect around sweet spots of shared interest.
Can you see where and how librarians fit this mold? I sure can!
A Librarian by Any Other Name 
Am honored as librarians opened up a wider world for me as a child, have spoken at Canadian Library Asn and Oregon Library Asn and am an avid advocate of librarians ~ Kare kare@sayitbetter.com
Thanks so much for the comment, Kare. All the best, Sally