To be perfectly honest....

To be perfectly honest, I am not a librarian.

Not yet.

I'm only a library page who facilitates the flow of materials at the Omaha Public Library. (We have over 10 branches, in case any visitors were curious, but still our name remains in the singular.) I love working in libraries, and have volunteered for the Elkhorn Public Library for four years, and worked for Omaha Public Library for about three years (This count is consecutive--volunteered from 2002 to 2006, and worked from January 2006 to the present.)

Obviously, I am a book addict, and have been a regular library goer since I was a baby. It just makes sense for me to continue to be in libraries.

Would it any surprise if I tell you I plan to become a librarian? After I finish my English degree here at UNO in Spring of 2010, I will continue on to a masters in Library Science from Mizzou that fall. I've known that I wanted to be a librarian since I was a sophomore in high school.

So, yes, technically I am not a librarian in job title...yet. But I am a librarian in spirit, so grant me this concesssion--I am Holly the Librarian.

Librarian: Quest for the Spear

In HBO's made-for-TV movie, Librarian: Quest for the Spear, Flynn Carsen is what we would call "a professional student." By the time he was 31, he has 22 degrees, including 6 Masters and 4 PhDs, and would have continued, if one of his professors hadn't kicked him out of school to get some real-world experience. So, what kind of job does a professional student get?

Of course, Flynn became a librarian.

Being a librarian is like being a teacher; it's one of those jobs that guarantees life-long learning that best suits people like Flynn. I imagine if you're reading a blog with the name "librarian" in the title, then you probably are just like Flynn and me--somebody who simply cannot imagine living life without learning something new everyday.

Learning makes me feel alive, it's worth getting up in the morning for, it expands my worldview, understand the mindset of others better. Learning makes the air tingle with freshness, and adds sparkle to the clouds, and allows me to skip around campus while carrying a 30-pound backpack. Learning is addictive--have you ever gotten side-tracked while googling "library" and ended up reading Jorge Luis Borges' "Library of Babel?" Or when looking something up on Wikipedia, and click on a hyperlink to another article, and then click on yet another link to yet another article, until it is 1 o'clock in the morning?

This is why I chose to take a Web Development class this semester at UNOmaha--it sounded tricky, but I knew once I learned it, I would be addicted to developing websites. And sure enough, I went in on a webhosting account on GoDaddy.com, with my boyfriend. (We can have unlimited domain names under the same webhosting account.) I am working on a final project, a website, for my web development class about libraries and books. When it is finished, I will transfer that site over to my own that will soon be coming, www.hollythelibrarian.com.

I'm just so excited now, thinking about learning, as corny as that may sound! I'm doing my happy dance in my seat, because I am also working on figuring out more Internet-related stuff for the Omaha Public Library now, too, with the O! What a Geek program, because that means the library as an institution, and all of the other librarians, are eager to keep on learning, too. We're keeping on keeping on toward the future, and we've accomplished so much.

I'm eager to keep on getting geekier--who would have thought that this bookish girl would be such a nerd about websites and blogs?