Meet Leah Langby, Library Development and Youth Services Coordinator at the Indianhead Federated Library System since 2004, and the administrator of this blog.
What do you love most about your job?
I love learning new things every day (or at least every week). I love making connections with librarians and helping them with whatever they need help with. I enjoy feeling like some of the things I do have a ripple effect. I am happy to be inspired by so many terrific people in our system and state (and world) who are doing great things in their communities through libraries.
What do you miss most about working in a real, live, library?
Interacting with the public! I love it when I'm helping weed in a library and someone asks me for help. I know if I was in a library now, I would do so many things differently than I did--but a highlight would still be making connections with kids and families and helping them find what they need (in whatever medium, be it program, information, just the right book, or human contact!).
A book you've read recently that you especially loved?
Book: Chloe and the Lion by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Adam Rex. Hilarious. And my 13-year-old loved it so much she read it several times herself, then made each person in the family read it and watched while they did!
Audiobook: Just finished listening to The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. I enjoyed the way she created such a compelling setting, and the plot had me engrossed enough I didn't notice I'd taken a wrong turn (on a trip) till 15 minutes later. Hmmmm...maybe not such a good thing to admit...
What are some of your current passions?
- Working on a grant about Autism and libraries has been fabulously eye-opening for me--I'm learning so much about autism and my own assumptions. I can't stop thinking about the movie Wretches and Jabberers and its stars.
- My family continues to be a time-consuming and delightful part of my life. I have 2 amazing teenage daughters (13 and 15), and a multi-talented and loving husband. We eat well, we live on a hard-scrabble, run-down place in the country, we make music together (we have a family band), we laugh a lot, last year we all acted in a Shakespeare play together, we work a lot...
What do you wish?
I wish civil discourse and finding common ground was easier and more common-place and we could see more progress on some of the intractable problems we face as a world. I wish I had more time to read and even more time to write (I have a few kids' books percolating around in my brain). I wish libraries had all the funding they needed to continue to bring communities together and keep folks informed and educated. Also, I wish I had a sheltie puppy.
Labels: meet a librarian