Emily Cabaniss, company librarian and music assistant for the Seattle Opera. Photo: Kelly Clare Photography

Bookend: The Show Must Go On

January 2, 2019

“I hadn’t realized this kind of work was possible,” she says. “Every opera company has a person called a librarian, but they’re usually an orchestra librarian”—typically a music preparation specialist with ensemble experience who doesn’t, like Cabaniss, hold an MLIS. Hired in 2014 as the company’s first information professional, Cabaniss makes sure the artistic, music, … Continue reading Bookend: The Show Must Go On


Clifford Anderson, associate university librarian for research and learning, at the Vanderbilt Television News Archive.

Bookend: News to Peruse

November 1, 2018

This year the archive of more than 1.1 million abstracted segments—including the only known coverage of its kind of the Vietnam War, the Apollo spaceflight program, and Watergate—celebrates its 50th anniversary. “We want people to have an objective record of what has been broadcast,” says Clifford Anderson (pictured), associate university librarian for research and learning, … Continue reading Bookend: News to Peruse


Liz Quakenbush and students at Orchard Park Elementary School in Indianapolis pose in the library.

Bookend: Shaking up Book Sales

September 1, 2018

For nearly 20 years, she held yearly used book sales at Orchard Park Elementary School in Indianapolis, where she is the media specialist. As her community grew more economically diverse, she wanted to help children add to their home libraries year-round, and she turned to her students for ideas. They wrote a business plan, set … Continue reading Bookend: Shaking up Book Sales


Bookend: Midday Masquerade

July 18, 2018

Bethany Mitchell, technology assistant at Vestavia Hills (Ala.) Library in the Forest, peers through a jester cutout. From left: Aisha Conner-Gaten (instructional design librarian at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles), Tracy Drake (archivist at Chicago Public Library), and Aurelia Mandani (technology services librarian at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Boulder Labs Library in … Continue reading Bookend: Midday Masquerade


Left: Christina Bryant holds an invitation from the Mistick Krewe of Comus (1900); top left: a dance card issued by the Twelfth Night Revelers (1899); bottom left: a costume design from the Léda Hincks Plauché Collection. (Photos: Susan Poag (Bryant, butterfly); New Orleans Public Library (costumes))

Bookend: Conservator of Carnival

June 1, 2018

“The invitations are definitely one of the highlights,” notes Christina Bryant, department head of the library’s Louisiana Division/City Archives and Special Collections. “They are each a miniature work of art and sometimes engineering,” she says of the elaborately paneled and intricately drawn creations. Other standouts in the Carnival collection, dating back to the 1860s, include … Continue reading Bookend: Conservator of Carnival


Nancy Down, head librarian of the Ray and Pat Browne Library for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling Green (Ohio) State University Libraries.

Bookend: Pop Culture Paradise

May 1, 2018

When researchers need to study these or other pieces of American ephemera created after 1876, they head to the Ray and Pat Browne Library for Popular Culture Studies at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University Libraries. Founded almost 50 years ago, the library holds one of the largest comics collections in the country, as well as … Continue reading Bookend: Pop Culture Paradise


Alisun DeKock stands beside the species identification iPad in the Shedd Aquarium’s Amazon Rising habitat, as two South American tambaqui fish swim by.

Bookend: A Friend to the Fishes

March 1, 2018

The Shedd’s library of some 7,000 books is primarily for aquarium staff, interns, and volunteers and is not open to the public. The most popular materials in the collection are the field guides to various fish, plants, insects, aquatic invertebrates, and marine mammals. DeKock says that “staff members take them out on field trips because … Continue reading Bookend: A Friend to the Fishes


Archivist Tawa Ducheneaux stands over a quilt that dates to between 1913–1915. Each square was created by quilting club members from the Wounded Knee ­District in South Dakota and notes the maker’s identity, the date, and sometimes the family’s cattle brand.

Bookend: Tribal Heritage

January 2, 2018

As both the academic library for Oglala Lakota Tribal College and the public library for the reservation, the Woksape Tipi Library oversees 13 branch libraries scattered over nearly 3,500 square miles. “We’re all about local access,” says archivist Tawa Ducheneaux (pictured), one of six library employees. If a staff member isn’t present at a branch … Continue reading Bookend: Tribal Heritage


Miriam Tuliao (Photo: Todd Boebel)

Bookend: Making a Splash

November 1, 2017

On August 6, Tuliao competed at New York’s Rockaway Beach, where she helped raise more than $1,400 for the American Library Association’s Spectrum Scholarship program, which helps promote diversity in the library profession. “Going to library school meant a lot to me,” Tuliao says. “And those scholarship monies are not always there, so it’s an … Continue reading Bookend: Making a Splash


Christopher Goodbeer (Photo: Ann Schertz)

Bookend: Feeling the Music

September 1, 2017

Goodbeer—a 2007 graduate of Indiana University’s master’s programs in music and library and information science—is a Braille music transcriber. According to the Library of Congress, which certifies music transcription in Braille, fewer than 100 people are listed as having such a skill. “It was an uphill climb at first,” Goodbeer says of learning the work, … Continue reading Bookend: Feeling the Music


Attendees at the 2017 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago. (Photos: Rebecca Lomax/American Libraries and Cognotes)

Bookend: Conference Candids

July 27, 2017

Attendees captured on camera, counterclockwise from top: Chelsea Johnson, librarian at Marshall (Mich.) District Library, tries her hand at steering a drone through an obstacle course. Jos Holman, county librarian at Tippecanoe County (Ind.) Public Library, reads from The Inner City Mother Goose at Stand for the Banned, a banned books readout. Alison Griffin (left), … Continue reading Bookend: Conference Candids


Librarian Tara Murray (right) with Victorian-era stamp cases, stamps of the Duchy of Oldenburg from an 1863 album, and books from the American Philatelic Research Library collection. (Photos: Abby Drey)

Bookend: Philatelic Relics

June 1, 2017

For the most part, APRL does not include stamps in its collection, “but they are occasionally included as collateral material. For example, the library owns two examples of the famous 1918 ‘Inverted Jenny’ error stamp, one of which was just recovered in June 2016 after being stolen from a stamp show in 1955. The first … Continue reading Bookend: Philatelic Relics