published in VenusZine.com on 7/21/08
From the rough-and-tumble stacks of the Los Angeles Public Library, Candice Wing-Yee Mack is a 4-foot-10 library card–swingin’, information cowgirl. In addition to being a proud bookworm and teen services librarian, she’s also a culture vixen with her own weekly Web radio show. Wing-Yee Mack talks here about the secret lives of tiny librarians and getting kids hooked on books.
Are there enough tiny librarians to form a collective and/or army?
It's fabulous being a tiny librarian! I get the opportunity to work with a huge variety of people and answer a huge variety of questions. The diversity is what makes it fun and challenging. The tiny librarian collective is coming to an information center near you soon, if we're not already there. We lurk on a bevy of online answer services like Yahoo! Answers, ChaCha, Wikipedia, AskNow, Ask A Librarian, etc.
There has to be more to the job than shushing youngsters and telling them to use the online card catalog. Tell me something awesome that’s happened on the job.
A few months ago, on Free Comic Book Day, I saw a teen wearing a T-shirt with a bunch of comic book characters on it and asked if he wanted a gift bag. We got to talking, and it turns out he wasn't really into comic books (he said the shirt had been given to him as a gag gift), but that he was interested in the graphic novel, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
For those who are not familiar with the book, it is Bechdel's autobiography about growing up, coming out, and discovering after his death that her father was secretly gay. We didn't carry the book at my library, but I happened to have my own copy at my desk because I was going to donate it to my branch. I ended up loaning the teen my personal copy of the book. A few weeks later, when he returned it, he told me how much he enjoyed the book and how he and Bechdel had been e-mailing back and forth. This is just one example of why I love my job and how libraries can impact people's lives.
Tell me more about yourself. What are your off hours like?
I love learning new things and having a good time, so I tend to haunt foodie blogs and sites like yelp and citysearch to learn about the new places to eat and hang out. As a teen services librarian, I need to keep up on pop culture — that, and I love pop culture in general — so, I watch a lot of TV and films, listen to all types of music, and go to concerts and clubs. I also do a show on the community-based Internet radio station imradionetwork.org on Sunday mornings from 10 a.m. to noon.
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Read the article here.