Librarians Who Love Pop Culture

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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 8/15/2007

Don’t go trashing pop culture, at least not within earshot of Sophie Brookover. Teen librarian at Camden County (NJ) Library, cofounder of the blog Pop Goes the Library, and soon-to-be coauthor of a book by the same name, Brookover believes in embracing popular culture and integrating it into library services. Not only can this help upgrade dusty programming, but it shows respect for your patrons.

“To regard pop culture as something beneath us is a calamitous mistake,” she says. “Taking the temperature of the interests of our community can make a difference to our patrons.”

The book, set for publication in summer 2008, is a joint effort by Brookover and fellow librarian blogger Elizabeth Burns, who recently surveyed librarians on how they use tech tools such as photo-sharing site Flickr.

Lest anyone think that the book is a duplication of the blog, Brookover says no. Instead, she and Burns are going to offer librarians ideas on how to not only build pop culture collections, like DVDs of popular shows, but also how to push these materials out in new ways to forge deeper connections with their regulars. One idea? Holding a library red carpet event during award season, encouraging patrons to dress up and make an evening of watching the show on a big screen.

“Sometimes you need to set aside your own personal tastes,” she says. “You don’t have to love rap to collect it. But if we are, in fact, facing tough times, we need to steep ourselves in pop culture too, and provide materials our patrons want in additional to what we believe, with our formal education, that they can use.”