I received a pleasant surprise about a week ago when ALA Publishing colleague Ben Segedin forwarded a voice-mail to me from a librarian who had phoned to request a few copies of American Libraries’ May/June 2011 issue.
It would have been routine except for one detail: The caller identified herself as the heretofore unidentified woman gracing the cover of that AL issue.
Catherine Dooley, of Brookline (Mass.) Public Library’s Coolidge Corner branch, was photographed June 23, 2006, during ALA’s first-ever Libraries Build Communities volunteer effort to lend a hand (hundreds of hands, actually) in Annual Conference cities. ALA’s conference photographer Curtis Compton “caught” Dooley in the act of sprucing up New Orleans Public Library’s Children’s Resource Center, which reopened several days after the affectionately dubbed “Yellow Swarm” of conference-goers were done helping out.
Dooley mentioned that she had never been on a magazine cover before. What better way to debut than as a professional role model?