Sex, Encouraging library-

Librarians should encourage their patrons to have sex in the library. Any additional housekeeping costs can be paid for with the advertising revenues you get from the live stream to your library’s security cameras.

Bite, Letting the bedbugs

The best way to keep your library from becoming infested with bedbugs is to burn the building to the ground and invest all the insurance money into your e-book collection.

Pics, LibGuides Profile

When constructing a LibGuides profile page, librarians should budget at least one hour for snapping an adequately flattering arm’s-length self-portrait profile picture with a mobile phone camera. If this hour proves fruitless, just use a picture of your cat.

Ask the Readers: Do you like your LibGuides profile pic? If so, share a link in the comments below.

Unpopular policies, Introducing

When introducing unpopular changes in library services, do so with intentionally bad grammar and spelling. Your library’s patrons will be so infuriated and distracted by the mistakes in the sign reading, “Their will now be a $5 fee for you’re use of the libraries staplers,” they won’t protest the policy itself.

Costumes, Library-friendly Halloween

A cheap Halloween costume idea for librarians is to come to work wearing the uniform from your second job at Starbucks, McDonalds, or Lady Foot Locker.

Teens, Books and

Librarians can play a pivotal role in getting more teens to like books by redefining video games as "books."

Instruction, Singing

Library instruction for first-year college students should be participatory and engaging. If you worry that students won't understand your technical terms and language, make your lesson more palatable by setting it to music.

Librarians should should celebrate Teen Read Week by clearing out all of the books from the library's teen section and using the space to host a real fight-to-the-death Hunger Games.

Ask the readers: What would be the grand prize for the teen winner of your library's Hunger Games?

Videos, Teaching with

Librarians should leave it to professionals to produce their library instructional videos. No one wants to watch your homemade, narrated web casts of EBSCO's Academic Search Complete when better quality productions are available online.

Banned Books Week, Promoting

Librarians should be wary of abbreviating Banned Books Week as "BBW" in their promotional advertisements, flyers, and signs. (Google it.)

Aww, Things that make you say

A new Japanese study suggests that viewing photos of cute animals at work may boost productivity. In light of this information, librarians should begin every library committee meeting, instruction class, and reference interview with a ten-minute slideshow of your favorite kitten pics.

Awards, Being nominated for

It is time once again to post the annual “I Love My Librarian Award” call for nominations at your library. Then, just sit back and wait for the hunky UPS delivery man to nominate you. His nomination will be really tender, and he’ll describe how you inspired him to volunteer at the local adult literacy center. After you win, he’ll be the one to deliver your $5,000 cash award. You’ll treat him to a "thank you" cup of coffee in the library cafe, and offer an impromptu invitation for him to join you on your trip to the “I Love My Librarian” awards reception in New York. He'll accept, and the two of you will spend the weekend together in the hotel room... reading, cuddling, and watching Internet cat videos on your laptop. While he is in the shower, you’ll sneak a peek into his open suitcase. Hidden among his folded UPS uniforms, you will see that he keeps a poetry journal. Upon returning home, you will blog about your weekend’s adventures. A publisher will read about your steamy weekend of passion and suggest that you write a book. Your memoir, Fifty Shades of Brown, will be a New York Times bestseller, make millions of dollars, and allow you to tour the world at your publisher’s expense. The book will be selected for Oprah’s book club and made into a movie (with your part to be played by Cate Blanchett). You will move to Paris and learn to speak French.

The nomination deadline is September 12.

Resume, Building your

If you graduate with your Master’s degree in library science but can’t find work as a professional librarian (due to lack of experience), build yourself a miniature library, fill it with your unsold library school textbooks, and appoint yourself “director.”

Library lingo, Celebrating

Librarians should speak to their colleagues using highly specialized, technical language. Your masterful use of the library lexicon, using terms like, “EBSCO discovery service,” “MFHD,” and “the 856 field,” should send perplexed patrons and lay listeners rushing in search of a library and information science glossary in the 020s (DDC) or Z1006s (LCHS) of your reference monograph collection.

Ask the readers: Share some of your library’s professional lingo in the comments below.

Travel, Professional

Library webinars are supplements to (not substitutes for) travel to conferences and professional development workshops. Challenge your library director to stretch the “social boundaries of the online community with a live, off-line event” where you can network and learn with your colleagues.

Cat, Adopting a library

Librarians should adopt library cats to live in the book stacks. Every library needs more self-obsessed,  neurotic individuals on the library payroll who like write blog posts and take naps in the stacks.

Vacation, Preparing for your

Librarians should always secure substitutes to cover their reference desk shifts before they leave for extended vacations. If your coworkers are unwilling to help you out, substitutes can be obtained commercially for roughly $125 (depending on your height).

Quotable, Being

Make your words more memorable in your library instruction classes by typing them onto photos of yourself and making them available for your students to share on Facebook. Here’s one to get you started.

Update: 6/28/12, 2:45 PM
More "library instruction via word pictures" are available on the LGTE's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/polite.librarian

Loner, Being a

If you see librarianship described as a “job for loners,” it is your professional responsibility to quietly tweet your disagreement from your dimly lit acquisitions cubicle in the basement of the library.

Jobs, Searching for

Unemployed librarians should check the ALA JobLIST, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and state library associations' Web pages regularly for library employment opportunities. Never apply for a library job for which you are grossly underqualified unless you have powerful connections who can work miracles on your behalf.

Dress, Professional

A librarian should always dress professionally. Use this great Web tool to help you match your sandals to your cardigan.

Hashtags, Air

Librarians should pepper their face-to-face conversations with air hashtags (similar to air quotes) to simulate discourse in the online environment. Because the American Library Association has been completely silent -- hashtag FAIL -- on developing a standardized air hashtag for professional library discourse, individual librarians are left to choose between the static hand sign and slightly more dramatic hand gesture. Until the ALA makes a recommendation, librarians should choose one air hashtag method and use it consistently. Doing otherwise will make your library colleagues think you are uncivilized.

ALA, Not attending

If you are not able to attend the American Library Association’s Annual Conference, you may live vicariously through conference tweeters, webinar sessions, and conference synopses on library blogs. Also be sure to treat yourself to a virtual "exhibit hall" experience by wandering through your home library, stopping to have superficial conversations at your coworkers' desks, and then wildly shoving fistfuls of their office supplies into your tote bag.

Name tags, Decorating

It is never polite to ask library conference attendees what insecurities their excessive name tag ribbons are masking.

Marketing, Direct

Libraries shouldn’t waste time updating their Web sites, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds. If you really want to reach your patrons with important information, write a letter to Dear Abby.

Ask the Readers: What do you want Dear Abby to tell your library patrons?

Education, Defending your

Librarians should not be vindicitive and cancel subscriptions to magazines that demean the value of their library educations. Instead, a librarian should write a letter to the magazine's editor describing all the non-monetary benefits of the profession. For maximum effect, write your letter with a borrowed pencil on the back of your worthless master's diploma.

Books, Disinfecting

A library’s circulation staff should always be equipped with industrial strength rubber gloves and a holstered can of LYSOL. It is safe to assume that all borrowed books have been read in the bathroom and are covered in your patrons' feces. Spray liberally.

Book carts, Maintaining your

Librarians should have their library book carts serviced annually to keep them in good working order. While it is important to rotate and balance the wheels every 7,000 miles, do not let the service technician pressure you into replacing the wipers or purchasing expensive fuel additives.

Parties, Search

A polite librarian should always arm the library’s summer intern with a loaded Camelbak, a survival knife, and a bag of bread crumbs before sending him or her off into the stacks to begin the summer-long quest to find the items on the “lost books” list.

Staplers, Celebratory

In honor of National Library Week, librarians should break out the fancy staplers that are kept in the storage closet for special occasions.

"You're Welcome," Saying

Library workers should celebrate National Library Workers Day by passive aggressively muttering "You're welcome!" after refilling the stapler, unjamming the printer, and unclogging the public restroom's toilet for unthankful library patrons.

Ask the readers: How are you celebrating National Library Workers Day?

Quiet, Peace and

Librarians can avoid confrontations with unruly patrons by offering courtesy earplugs to people who complain about noise. If your library can’t afford to supply all patrons with earplugs, just buy enough for the library staff. Then you won’t hear anyone complaining about the anarchy taking place in your building.

Boredom, Alleviating

If you are bored by your work at the library, spice up your day by reading tweets from other librarians who document their boring workdays on Twitter.

Theft, Preventing

Librarians will occasionally find themselves needing to stop a patron who attempts to leave the library with an uncharged book. If the security gate chime sounds and your first attempt to get the patron’s attention fails (“Excuse me, sir? Sir?”), you may then resort to the use of lassos, TASERS, and/or throwing stars.

Ask the readers: How does your library stop patrons who set off the security alarm?

E-books, Reading

Librarians can avoid having their e-book reading experiences interrupted by curious passersby by disguising a Kindle to look like a folded newspaper. Alternately, you may print your Kindle books onto paper, sew them together, and hide them between two pieces of leather- or cloth-covered board.

Skills, Refreshing your

All librarians should take advantage of Photoshop training sessions provided by their employers. Nothing looks better on a librarian’s resume than being able to create original LOLcats, fake Ryan Gosling quotes, and glamorously blurred LibGuides profile pictures.