New librarians, Hazing

When your academic library hires a new librarian, he or she should be subjected to a one-semester hazing period. If wedgies, swirlies, and noogies aren't your style, just have the person conduct all the freshmen tours, record the minutes for your library staff meetings, and tally your five-year backlog of hash marked reference desk statistics.

Ask the readers: Do you have other suggested activities for hazing new librarians? Share them in the comments section below.

Read, Being well-

Use your experience at the library's reference desk to get the pulse of what people are reading.  If you want people to read and cite your writing, consider writing an article entitled, "The Effects of Global Warming on Marijuana Legalization: Can Childhood Obesity be the Next Diabetes for Autistic Serial Killers with HIV/AIDS."  If you can publish this in The Academic Journal -- Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Research Articles, that's all the better.

Note: If you are a desperate undergraduate who stumbled upon this page in a Google search, stop right now and go see your local librarian.

Dissatisfaction, Faking

Librarians should celebrate National Library Week by pretending to be dissatisfied with their profession. Admitting that you actually like your job is a sign of weakness, and it will open you up to ridicule and resentment from your library colleagues. You'll be much happier if you pretend to be miserable.

Tweets, Writing archive-worthy

Librarians should celebrate National Library Week by tweeting their support for libraries.  Your public Twitter posts will now be recorded for posterity by the Library of Congress, thus cementing your writing in the cultural record alongside tweets from @glennbeck, the unofficial @MTV_JerseyShore, and @fart_robot.

Posters, Motivating with

Celebrate National Library Week by staring lustfully over your glasses at your hunky celebrity READ poster while absentmindedly filing vendor invoices in your lonely cubicle.

[Link updated 4/9/12.]

Yourself, Celebrating

Librarians should celebrate National Library Week with desperate, self-congratulatory behavior, like begging patrons for written compliments about the library and ghost-writing pro-library letters to the editor.  If you think you have done an especially good job of patting yourself on the back, consider nominating yourself as a "National Library Week Star."

Without, Doing

Librarians should celebrate National Library Week by temporarily closing their libraries.  Nothing will make your patrons appreciate their libraries and librarians like going for a whole week without free books and movie rentals, free wireless Internet, and online pornography.

Management, Classroom

A librarian should begin each library instruction class by plucking headphones from students' ears, confiscating cell phones, and searching all bookbags for contraband food.  If there is any time remaining, show them all how to become fans of the library's new Facebook page.

OL, L

Librarians should never LOL in a library.  If you hear, see, or read something in the library that requires you to LOL, quietly dismiss yourself from the room and LOL into a paper bag in your office. If you excuse yourself to ROTFL, be sure to straighten your skirt before returning to the circulation desk.

Books, Smelling

Never let your library patrons know that the romanticized "book smell" they love so much is actually just a mixture of burned popcorn from the staff microwave, carpet mildew from the children's section, and sweaty teenagers making out in the stairway.

Traps, Setting

Count the Skittles in your candy dish each morning and evening to see if the library's after-hours custodial crew is eating food from your desk.  If you determine that they are, in fact, eating your candy, hide a note at the bottom of the bowl that says, "You have just been busted by a very petty librarian."

Briefcases, Beware of rolling

Librarians should beware of patrons toting rolling briefcases.  Those briefcases are loaded with so much unspent hostility that they can't be lifted.  You don't want these bags to be opened in the reference room.

Expertise, Establishing

Always begin your answer to a reference question by stating your educational credentials.  Your master's degrees in library science and English literature will lend credibility to your directions to the nearest restroom.

April Fools' Day, Celebrating

Celebrate April Fools' Day by telling playfully outlandish tales to your library patrons, like, "The library web site is a good alternative to Google!" or "I would love to hear about your family genealogy!"  Hilarity will ensue.

Ask the readers: What outlandish tales will you tell this April Fools' Day?

Yums, Yucking

The best birthday gift you can give a library coworker is to refrain from discussing your Irritable Bowel Syndrome, food allergies, eating disorders, and/or vegetarianism during her office birthday lunch outing.

Drinks, Dribbling

If you are going to spill dribbles of tea or coffee onto the floor as you leave the library's break room, please be kind enough to leave a trail that leads all the way back to your office.  This courtesy will allow the custodians to easily track you down and beat you mercilessly with their mops.

Booktruck dance teams, Avoiding

Never agree to be on a library committee without first reading its charge.  Sometimes an innocuous sounding group, like the "Collection Assessment Revisioning Team," turns out to be the code name for your library's secret book cart dance troupe. And, yes, costumes are mandatory.

Handouts, Displaying

Never clean off your library's service desks.  Your display of outdated flyers, bookmarks, maps, comment cards, business cards, fast food coupons, calendars, newsletters, free newspapers, path finders, search tip sheets, and database help guides can just be buried beneath their new, more up-to-date replacements.

Victories, Celebrating

Librarians should celebrate monumental workplace victories with Gatorade showers. A meeting that lasts less than one hour? Give the committee chair a Gatorade shower! Faculty members who return books before their due dates? Give them a Gatorade shower! A class in which students make eye contact and respond to you? Give yourself a Gatorade shower! While costly clean-up can be an issue, the rarity of these events should minimize any damages.

Ask the readers: What "victories" would deserve a Gatorade shower @ your library?

Law, Being above the

As a librarian, you have the authority to flagrantly disobey your library's food and drink policy. Have pizzas delivered to the circulation desk, answer reference questions while gnawing on a fried chicken leg, and shelve books while eating cotton candy. No librarian should ever have to go hungry while vigilantly enforcing the library's prohibitions on bottled water.