American Library Association Barbara Gordon Batgirl Bookmark

Thinking about Banned Book Week has me thinking not just about the books, authors, publishers & history of banned books, but about the real heroes in this censorship battle: librarians.

Every day librarians are the front line in our battle to be free readers, but they also come to our rescue in other ways… Helping a little kid reach a book; assisting a grown adult in finding the right book or research material; keeping libraries stocked & organized so that we can be delighted, educated, inspired; coaching the unfamiliar on how to use the Internet; reading to children, keeping kids entranced long enough for mommy to find something for herself to read; and even shushing obnoxious jerks so that you can read and research in peace.

Librarians are superheroes, you know.

I’m certainly not the first to think of librarians as superheroes. My recollection is that this all started with Batgirl; I could be wrong, but watch this retro test episode for a possible Batgirl TV series.

In any case, there’s a whole plethora of librarian as superhero images collect. Naturally, the American Library Association uses Batgirl to promote libraries, but other libraries and associations have created their own librarian superhero mascots. Penn State’s Eiche Library recently had a contest to name their official 2008 Open House mascot (Sam Wagner won with The Database Ace, a.k.a. Kat A. Log; signature move - The Eiche Strikee).

The New Jersey State Library not only has Super Librarian, but she has her own comic. In fact, there are many comics in which librarians are featured or even the main character. And you’ll find that many comic artists love to draw superhero librarians. So far, my favorite is Jolly Jack’s sketch titled Overdue. (If you’ve paid the fines I have, you’d certainly fear the stamp!)

If you aren’t quite ready to invest dollars or space in collecting librarian superheroes, why not go for digital renderings? LibrarianDressup.com has an online version of a paper doll you can put in caped crusader costumes and then send as postcards.

I started my love affair with books as a reader. Readers are just that — folks who love to read, but once the publication is read they can and do happily move onto the next one with no need to keep it. Readers, often frequent users of libraries, do purchase books, however once a book is purchased they will either pass it along to a friend (who likely is passing books along to them too) or they will sell it. Readers have no attachment to the book itself.

In the beginning libraries were where I found all my friends (as I called my books). But once I got my first job and I went to the mall to spend my first check and I discovered the book store, things changed. Suddenly here was a new idea: I could live with my dear friends instead of just having them over for visits. I became a book owner.

Book owners are the next level of bibliophiles. Sure, book owners are readers, but they feel more than the need to read — they must keep (at least some of) the books. While these folks certainly have more than three objects (my official definition of a collection) and are usually dedicated to specific authors, genres &/or subject matter, they usually do not consider themselves collectors.

Of course I still used the library but owning books was exciting. So exciting that I soon realized my wages as a 16 year old part-time employee wasn’t going to be enough. This is when I re-discovered the joy of rummage sales. Here my paltry pay check went further. Oh the days of 50 cent hardcovers and 25 cent paperbacks, I miss you so…

At rummage sales I discovered another kind of book: the out of print book. Here were books that one couldn’t get in the mall book stores. I couldn’t understand why not — these books were equally fascinating. Many had much more wonderful boards, bindings, illustrations, typefaces and, even if they were often tanning, had a better page quality.

Once I discovered out of print works visits to thrift stores and used book shops weren’t far behind. I even dabbled in those book exchanges — you know, where you can trade your used books for other used books — but after doing that twice and finding myself wishing I had still had the books I traded, well, I gave that up in a jiffy. But I continued to buy books.

One of the neatest things about books is that they so often come with a list of other books you must have. Even if they didn’t have a bibliography or a list of resources, if you loved the author you suddenly had a new list of works to look for. Book buying literally can never end. And I have the sagging shelves, with books double and triple-rowed, to prove it.

Amazingly, I still didn’t think I was a book collector.

Book collectors were those who sought first editions, or antique tomes which should be in museums; I was just a reader who preferred to have books near at hand. I didn’t seek a first edition of Moby-Dick or any other great whale of a prize; I just want books to read.

I don’t think it was until I moved in with Derek that I realized I could be considered a book collector. He called my books a ‘book collection’ — and as I was unable to let my books remain in boxes as he could, I decided my books must be at least as much of a collection as his were.

Derek and I joke that we many never read all the books we own (well, at least not until the kids move out!), but like most book owners we believe that book ownership provides a sort of learning or enjoyment via osmosis. Just having them around us means the knowledge and stories must seep into our beings somehow… Or maybe we are just rationalizing buying books faster than we can read them. Then again, maybe we are rationalizing by calling our huge number of books, old and new, ‘a collection’.

But I don’t think that anyone, no matter how they define a book collector or a book collection, would hesitate to call either of us bibliophiles.

Something delicately and quietly flutters to the floor from between the pages of a book that hasn’t been opened in years, maybe decades. An old photograph, or a pressed leaf, or a scrap of paper with something cryptic written on it. Something ephemeral and effectively meaningless, but so rich with what it once meant that it’s irresistibly mysterious and precious.

And maybe this happens once or twice a day, when you work at a library. And maybe you’ve worked there for six long, underpaid years. And just MAYBE you’ve collected these things to make the job slightly more interesting and fulfilling and have a folder filled with them secreted somewhere among your more traditional collections.

Sure, they’re not all interesting. For every poem scribbled on the back of a magazine subscription card, there are a dozen torn bits of plain, unmarked paper and sprinklings of unwelcome cookie crumbs, but that one secret poem, it’s worth dealing with that little snot-nosed kid who’s pulling out every single water cooler cup, one by one, while his mother browses for new boyfriends on the public internet. I’ve kept the blank scraps of paper too, but not the crumbs.

After so many years and square footage of books and whatever unit you might measure the growth of an ulcer with, I’ve finally made sense of my collection, and I’m sharing it with the world.

I’m fascinated with books, and the stories within books, and the stories that are books and everything that the books themselves might experience. Things left between the pages and written in the margins are strange echoes of the true history of the book itself. They have exciting lives, and quiet lives, and travel longer distances than I have in my entire life. They’ve known more people than me, and frankly, I’m jealous. The collection began with a note from three kids to their ailing grandmother, whom they were not permitted to visit in the hospital because of age restrictions. It was a melancholy, yellowed thing, and it left me wondering if they ever DID see their grandmother again.

I haven’t limited my collection to things that fall out of books, as I’ve found myself taking photographs of those things that people might underline within books. Which sentences stood out as important to the reader? What clarifications and questions did they have while reading the book? What would possess someone to write within a book that wasn’t expressly a textbook? Because each one of these things is a story unto itself, branching out in all directions infinitely, there’s a whole new level of fable and fascination.

The first underlined book that I added to my collection was a first edition Ayn Rand book, which was incidentally signed by (presumably) the author. While it eventually found its way into the library discards because of the severe underlining, I was curious about what points the reader found especially poignant. After I later discovered that it was signed, financial restraints prompted me to sell the book. While it was purchased for a quarter and I offered no guarantee on the signature, it was sold for roughly 270 dollars. Collecting photographs of these things keeps the collection flat and manageable.

Check out this collection, with a new item added every day, at IntraLibris.