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Lola the Librarian

This video project has been percolating for many, many years. In the early 2000’s, Molson Beer came out with a wonderful ad featuring Joe the Canadian. Joe stood on a stage and expounded on what a Canadian is, and is not, with music playing and images flashing behind him. The ad was very comedic and ended with Joe shouting, “My name is Joe and I am Canadian!”

My first reaction to the ad was to laugh heartily and run out to buy some Molson. Shortly after that, I thought, “We need to make a similar ad about Librarians! Let’s dispel the myths and tell the audience what a Librarian is and is not!” The script started writing itself in my head and soon I found myself saying, “My name is Lola and I’m a Librarian!”

In 2004, a small group of librarians who shared my desire to change the stereotype got together to discuss the project. Multiple priorities caused it to shift to the backburner. Then in 2017, another small group of librarians dusted it off and decided to have a go at the project. We assembled a group of Utah Library Association members and held a conference call to discuss and refine our script. We assigned lines to each participant. We arranged a location and with the expert videography help of Bryan Hull, we captured it. Further fine work of editing by Bryan, plus the addition of the public domain music, Pomp and Circumstance, and there we had it. The core values of librarians, as stated by librarians!

Know this: we aren’t in the dusty stacks anymore!

Our Librarian participants, in order of appearance:

  • Nancy Lombardo, Associate Director for Digital Collections, Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah
  • Vern Waters, Manager – South Jordan Library, Salt Lake County Library Services
  • Erin Wimmer, Teaching and Learning Librarian, Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah
  • Ernesto Hernandez, Jr, Instruction and Reference Librarian, Stewart Library, Weber State University
  • Jami Munk Carter, Director, Tooele City Library
  • Liesl Seborg, Senior Librarian, Life Long Learning, Salt Lake County Library Services
  • Tallie Casucci, Innovation Librarian, Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah
  • Shirley Zhao, Data Science Librarian, Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah

Thanks to the Utah Library Association (ULA) for their support on this project. The video made its debut at this year’s ULA Conference last week.