Chapter 1: The Thing with Feathers: Small Moments, Hope, and Purpose in a Career in Libraries

This chapter looks back over my more than 20 years as a librarian, considering how the often unexpected opportunities I’ve had to work with youth and families have been centered in connectedness, hope, and love. As a youth services librarian working in the library with families or providing outreach to the most vulnerable members of the community, and currently as a community college librarian, I can think back over my career in libraries, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve shared, and feel blessed. But there are also times I feel like Sisyphus, pushing the rock that continues to roll back on me. It is disheartening to see the same struggles getting worse in our communities, to have to fight to keep our doors open every time there is a budget crunch, to hear our work diminished by others. But I have come to understand that having hope doesn’t mean not understanding how trying times are or passively accepting the ways things are until they magically change. Hope means pushing through anyway, stubborn in our love for our patrons and our peers, in our belief that books and reading can help us through, in our faith that the world needs libraries.