Grooming, Personal

The reference desk is a great place to catch up on your personal grooming.  If you need to trim your nails, style your hair, apply cosmetics, or pick the remains of lunch from your teeth, wait until you are working at the reference desk.  Please reserve more intimate forms of grooming (like shaving, waxing, plucking, and flossing) for your office or cubicle.

Tact, Having

As a polite librarian, it is your responsibility to tactfully tell your library's male librarian that no one is fooled by his bad toupee.

Thanks, Getting

Always conclude each interaction with a library patron by handing them a "Library Feedback" comment card which you have pre-filled with self-praise documenting what an awesome librarian you are.

Ask the readers: What will you write about yourself on your patrons' "Library Feedback" cards?

Folksy, Being

A polite librarian should always refer to library patrons and colleagues with charming folksy names like darling, buddy, sweetie, sweetheart, champ, sport, honey, tiger, baby, babe, or dear.  Your deliberately calculated efforts to sound like someone's grandmother will be a great complement to your cardigan, your glasses on a chain, and the bowl of hard candy you keep on your desk.

Vacations, Describing

A polite librarian should return from vacation with an intentionally bland description of his or her time away from the library.  No one needs to be teased with thoughts of relaxing on a beach, traveling to foreign lands, or partaking in debauchery-filled adventures.  Instead, spare everyone and say, "I just spent some time at home sewing clothes for my cats and watching reruns of Golden Girls."

Online instruction, Mastering

If you are going to record your library instruction lectures and post them on YouTube, at least spice things up by doing the videos topless.  It won't make your talk any more intelligible, but it'll hold your students' interest and increase your video's view count.

Climate, Controlling the

Every librarian should be armed with a personal space heater beneath and an oscillating fan atop his or her workstation.  These may need to be run simultaneously to satisfy your extreme sensitivity to temperature and the library's nonsensical heating and cooling system.