My Favorite Superhero

Summer is well underway. The Art Fest is in full effect, basically turning the streets of downtown Ann Arbor into an open-air market. I believe it is a distinctly American habit to make ritual and celebration out of things that are never cause for ritual and celebration any place else. Here, when people sell homemade trinkets from stalls that line crowded streets we call it a "festival." In a lot of other places the world, the people there call it "a living." I feel the same way about apple picking. Listen, I am not going to go on any kind of "hayride" under the working condition of "ALL-U-CAN-PICK" unless I am guaranteed some kind of union representation.

At the same time, I think our culture tends to take for granted things that do indeed warrant celebration. Wireless internet connectivity is a miracle. We have at our disposal relatively tiny machines that literally pluck millions of bits of data out of thin air, but feel frustrated when this marvel is not running at peak efficiency. We complain about fluctuating gas prices, but forget to be thankful that we own cars. And, we turn to schools to remedy all of society's ills, but tip our teachers with apples. I suppose I could look at the silver lining and be thankful that most of us have some kind of union representation.

Summer also brings us superhero movies. We've had the X-Men: First Class, which sounds like a movie about education (it isn't). We saw Thor, who seems to be cheating at the superhero gig (he is a god). Now, it's Captain America, who is just a big guy with a shield. However, my favorite summer superhero is not any of these guys.

It is the librarian.

It just got real.

The librarian is truly great. She is the master of information, which in my opinion, totally trumps all the other superpowers combined. Like a superhero, the librarian has also evolved into someone superhuman. The X-Men inherited their abilities through genetics. Captain America was injected with a super serum. Librarians used to be those nicely dressed people who sat behind the circulation desk at the library, book scanner in one hand and due date rubber stamp in the other, head full of thoughts of the Dewey Decimal system. Then, the world changed. Technological breakthroughs have led to a flux of information. We can read books without actually physically possessing a book. We can learn about virtually any subject in a matter of seconds. We can create and publish our thoughts on anything. However, this horde of information is wild, a mass of gibberish that can overload the senses and assail the mind. Who will save us as the world falls under the dark shroud of over-information? Who will help us determine reliable sources from the flim-flam?

It is the librarian. She cast off her cat-eyed glasses, pulled the pencil from her hair bun, and emerged from behind the circulation desk. She traded the scanner and rubber stamp for a MacBook Pro and a smartphone.

I never really understood what librarians could do before I encountered Marija and Jan. When I refer to librarians as masters of information, I do not mean to imply their omniscience. Again, information is everywhere. Librarians' mastery of information lies in their mastery of the technology used to retrieve, organize, and create that information. I am consistently amazed almost every week. First, I discovered how RefWorks can produce instant bibliographies. Then, I was shown the multitude of databases within the Internet Public Library (ALL-U-CAN-PICK). I once made the mistake of saying the word "microfiche" while suggesting primary sources for the tsunami lesson plan, and was immediately disintegrated by Jan's eye lasers.

From the perspective of this teacher-candidate, my future career is pretty dire. I must simultaneously be an educator, a researcher, a reformer, a politician, a colleague, a savior, and a scapegoat. When I do a good job, there is no cause for celebration, because compared to art fests and superheroes, I am nothing special. It's a living. But as long as I have a librarian in my corner (to hold me), everything might actually turn out OK.