Some of the comments in this thread are the cruelest things I’ve read in a very long time.
I adore the library, love being a librarian. Worked my way up from shelver to supervising librarian!
Everyone has bad days! Hope y’all know that you’ll always belong at the library 💚 https://t.co/EEkTOgVbRE
— Mychal (@mychal3ts) December 31, 2023
Dude, you’re awesome.
You’re out here filling bowls with everyone’s favorite cereal and the pseudo-intellectual dark web is mad at YOU because they’ve only got sour milk to bring to the table.
— Jay Black (@jayblackisfunny) December 31, 2023
I cannot endorse this message strongly enough — and I suspect I’m not the only one!
Per the NYTimes [gift link]:
However relevant the stereotypical, silence-enforcing librarian remains in the popular imagination, Mychal Threets wants to dispel any lingering notion of the library as a dry, humorless place, lorded over by rigid pedants.
In fact, Mr. Threets has leveraged the power of social media to show that the public library is as joy-inspiring as it is welcoming, and that librarians — in his case, a 33-year-old man who sports quirky threads, tattoos and an Afro — are “so happy you’re here.”
Mr. Threets has taken on that mission by sharing videos of what he calls “library joy” on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms, telling stories about the everyday happenings at the Fairfield Civic Center Library in Solano County in Northern California, where he is the supervising librarian.
His videos have collectively garnered millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers across his social media accounts.
“Most of the time I’m either just retelling library interactions, library stories,” Mr. Threets said. “And then, apart from that, I just try to give people messages of hope.”…
Library joy, Mr. Threets said, is what has kept him going since almost as long as he can remember. A “true library kid,” he received his first library card when he was 5.
He was home-schooled by his mother through most of grade school using the resources at his local library — the same one that he now runs. And his earliest friends, he said, were the books, and voices, on the shelves.
“They’ve always meant the world to me,” Mr. Threets said. “They are how I kept on going day after day.”
He has adopted a line from one of his favorite childhood characters, Arthur Read, a mild-mannered aardvark from a book and animated series: “Having fun isn’t hard when you have a library card.” Mr. Threets even has Arthur Read’s library card tattooed on his arm…
Apart from offering a dose of joy, the videos remind people that libraries offer much more than a collection of books on shelves.
There is something in them for everybody, he said.
People can access the internet, check out instruments, check out video games or even obtain baking equipment. People without a place to stay can turn to libraries to protect themselves from the elements. They can spend time on their own, Mr. Threets said, or befriend new people.
The library is a “place for everybody to exist,” Mr. Threets said…
Snow! Open Thread
Alison Rose
He is an absolute doll and an angel, and anyone who says a mean thing about him can piss off into the sun.
Also he is somewhat local to me, so that makes me proud :
I like this reply to Mychal:
TeezySkeezy
Real people don’t typically want to spend all day being mean on the internet, so that’s where chatbots have their greatest application.
West of the Rockies
That young man is all kinds of awesome!
Harrison Wesley
What a great story! And he blew all my excuses right out of the water – especially since the local branch of the county library is about a 10-minute walk from home.
MattF
Note also that a library card gives you free access to various streaming services. Kanopy is a video streamer, you get a selection of Criterion videos plus a lot of other things including some current movies— I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once on Kanopy. Hoopla is another, includes music. Libby is focused on your local library’s services.
MomSense
He’s a stellar human. I absolutely love him. He has some videos about homeless people who were library kids and he welcomes them back into the library family.
TheOtherHank
Fairfield is a bit of a drive from where I am, but I’m really tempted to drive over there and hang out in his library.
pluky
Growing up as an overly bright, somewhat introverted, Army brat, the first thing I would do when arriving at my Dad’s next duty station was figure out where the base library was. There I knew was sanctuary.
TheOtherHank
@pluky:
I think I read every book in the children’s section of the base library in Taipei and was working my way through the “grown up” novels by the time my dad’s tour ended back in the early 70s. Having 1 hour of English language television per day tends to increase one’s interest in reading.
The Pale Scot
OMG, I’m watching the third Doctor Who special w/ David Tennant and Catherine Tate. The premise is that chaos and violence breaks out right around the world because everyone thinks they are right about EVERYTHING. Q-anon running rampant
This is going to be good
Captain C
As a librarian, I thoroughly approve of this post and Mychal Threets.
Sure Lurkalot
@MattF: Libby, Kanopy and Hoopla are awesome resources and where I live, you can even get your library card online now.
Denver Public Library has all sorts of discount passes to museums and such, you can check out a go-pro or a park pass and numerous other things. Also access to ProQuest to read the big boy newspaper articles…alleviates the need to pay the FTFNYT for access.
Good on this infectiously joyous person getting the word out about libraries…they’re not just book repositories anymore (though I was happy, happy kid in a library when they were mostly just that).
Bill Arnold
@pluky:
Whenever visiting a new city, I try to find and go inside/look around the main public library.
It’s a bunch of hints about the priorities of a community and its taxpayers.
Brachiator
Ray Bradbury on his relationship with Libraries…
Subcommandante Yakbreath
@Captain C:
As the spouse of a librarian, I concur.
bbleh
So, let’s see, people can:
— Spend time doing their own thing instead of doing as directed to increase profits,
— Learn about things of their own choosing instead of the Approved Curriculum,
— Obtain things for use at no cost instead of purchasing them and stimulating The Economy, and
— Shelter from the elements instead of experiencing incentives that will improve their character,
and all at public expense?!?
It’s an OUTRAGE!!
Mike in Pasadena
Mychal is my kind of guy with my kind of enthusiasm. When I was eight we moved to So Cal and within easy walking distance of the library. We didn’t have A/C in our home, but the library did. Summers were spent reading in the cool air conditioned library or at the city pool. I still read books from the library, that way I buy only the ones I really like. Mychal is a librarian and a salesman. Cool.
Rose Weiss
When I was a kid, our library wouldn’t let kids below a certain age (16 maybe?) check out adult section books without in-person parental approval. I was so proud of my ultra-conservative bigoted Southern parents for approving everything, telling the librarian, ” she can borrow anything she wants.” I looked up previously banned books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
trollhattan
@Rose Weiss:
Remember once having to pass the librarian’s test in order to check out some books from the adult/not-kid section. Test was to read a passage out loud to her.
I’d already read all the kids dinosaur books and needed to move out of that box, man! Latin names, here we come.
Mike in Pasadena
@pluky: McQuire AFB in summer 1973, I got off the bus, found my barracks room, and next – the library, even before I found the chow hall. I mean, I had to have something to read at lunch, right? Then it was back to the library to read the newspapers on that long spindle thing.
TheOtherHank
My first season as a whitewater guide I didn’t have a car and being low on the rotation, I wasn’t on the schedule as much as I wanted to be. This meant I could hang out in the un-air-conditioned guide house or hitch hike into Placerville and hang out in the blessedly cool library. It made my days off tolerable.
TBone
I am reminded of a favorite Kurt Vonnegut article “I love you, Madame Librarian,” published at ‘In These Times’ in 2004.
UncleEbeneezer
Welp, Day 8 of Covid. Paxlovid did it’s job and now we are both testing negative. We still feel pretty damn tired and out-of-sorts. I hear it takes another week or two before we can really expect to feel close to being back-to-normal. Thank the FSM we were both fully vaccinated and boosted.
MattF
@Rose Weiss: In the English University librairies, the custom is to add a ‘Φ’ (i.e., ‘Fie!’) to the catalog ID of any ‘dirty’ book.
Rose Weiss
@Rose Weiss: My very right-wing father told me he was so enraged about any book being banned that earlier in his life he had sought out black market copies of banned books to buy.
NotMax
Mourn for the demise of the card catalog.
Pleased to see it lives on in the Library of Congress.
Mike in NC
We lived in Fairfax County, VA for many years and after reading book reviews in the Washington Post, I could wait a week and find several new books on the shelf. It saved me from spending hundreds of dollars buying books every year. A friend who once worked as a librarian in NYC claimed we had one of the best public library systems in the whole country.
catclub
We see a nice library in almost every small town in our new region – central mass.
C Stars
Wow, I watched a few of his videos back when I had twitter, but had no idea he was (somewhat) local.
My sense is that Fairfield isn’t as overwhelmingly progressive as a place like Berkeley. I mean, all their elected reps are Dems but there are also definitely some Trump signs, so it’s so cool to think that he’s out there being a radically neat-O library person to whoever walks in the door.
MomSense
There is a wonderful family story about my great grandfather. When he started school, he had to walk and between his house and the school was the town library. His mother was the town librarian so he walked with her, stopped at the library with her on his first day and never made it to school. After a few months his teacher, who was also his aunt, called on his mother (her sister) to find out why he hadn’t been to school His mother explained that he was so enthusiastic about reading she just couldn’t bear to make him leave the library.
He read through the entire library and then went to Colby College. Ironically he married a teacher and became a teacher and superintendent of schools in Massachusetts. He started the first school cafeteria because he realized children couldn’t learn with empty bellies. Some of the regulars at his weekly poker games were big shots in business and politics in Boston and based on his experience Boston soon started offering school lunches in Boston schools. The written word was his first love and food his second.
I grew up with so many stories about my gr gr grandmother Mahala the librarian that I gave my oldest her maiden name in her honor.
trollhattan
@C Stars: I go though, not to Fairfield but my hunch is when your biggest employer is an Air Force base, things will trend conservative compared to the bulk of the Bay Area.
Spanky
Growing up in the Pittsburgh region, I had the distinct pleasure of having access to Andy Carnegie’s (arguably) greatest endowment. Plus, while my elementary school had an OK library, I couldn’t wait for the occasional visit from the BOOKMOBILE! Looking back, it must have been an absolutely ancient converted bus wheezing along with one loaded aisle of books, but man, I loved that thing.
Almost Retired
@UncleEbeneezer: good to hear. Day 7 for me and my last day of Paxlovid. That metallic taste thing is real. I feel like I’ve been chewing on Reynolds’s Wrap. Super mild thanks to vaxxing and boosting -and as a bonus it’s a delightful excuse to avoid bothersome humans after a hyper-social holiday season.
Spanky
@NotMax: I loved card catalogs for the treasures they exposed while you were looking for something else.
MagdaInBlack
@MomSense: That’s a wonderful story. Thank you ❤️
C Stars
@MomSense: That is a really wonderful story! Thank you for sharing.
It would be interesting to read a book of essays/memoirs of people like Mychal Threet and your grandfather, or those from countries without public education, who got their education at a library and not a school.
Peke Daddy
les
Fucking awesome guy. I still remember the corner of the pub library in small town, NW Iowa where I discovered the wonders of sci-fi that I still love, 60+ years later. The current conservative love of ignorance will kill them, one way or another.
UncleEbeneezer
@Almost Retired: You’re lucky. Our cases weren’t super-mild. More like: knock-down flu experiences (for two-three days) and better but still fairly miserable for another three.
trollhattan
@Spanky:
Schwann Catalog at the record shop was a similar treasure hunt. “Kids, back in the days before the web….”
wjca
The same for paper (“hard copy”) dictionaries and encyclopedias. Electronic lookup is great if you just want something specific. But serendipity can’t happen there.
pluky
@TheOtherHank: Heaven was the library at Camp Zama, Japan. As the headquarters for US Army – Japan (USARJ for those used to acronyms) it was a full fledged research facility. I used to crib my World Affairs class reports from its collection of State Department briefing monographs.
Dorothy A. Winsor
My parents had no money, so everything I read as a kid came from the library. And now I live in a building next door to the library. I go there to write. There’s always something going on. The under-5 crowd swarms in a couple times week.
Mousebumples
I love that our library started doing book bundles (and curbside pickup) during covid. Bundles for kids are where we’d fill out a Google form and ask for X number of books on this or that topic since we didn’t know what to browse for in the online catalog.
And now we use it for things like books on nightmares, or dogs, or potty training, or new school, or… or… or…
Libraries are a treasure.
C Stars
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I prefer to write/work at the library as well, as opposed to a cafe. For one thing, the people watching is a lot more interesting.
pat
Our library has a snack bar, mostly for the homeless and those who come in to nap for a while in one of the easy chairs. I toss in a couple bucks once in a while, there is a plexiglass cube on the front desk.
Also a book sale once a week in the basement. Also accept old books and magazines, also give books away, also have magazines, music CDs, videos, etc etc. Can not imagine life without it, well until I spend a few weeks in Austria….
And I too used to love just looking through the card catalog, all those notes! Sadly no longer available.
eta: Thank you Andrew Carnegie!!
hells littlest angel
Gee, this Josh Lekach is a reallly shitty human being. He lives in a house his father built in Costa Rica and doesn’t care for the Costa Rican “work ethic.” May he find a more simpatico place to live — Maybe Russia or North Korea.
eclare
I want to punch whoever said cruel things about Mychal. Really, really hard. Something is broken in someone who doesn’t appreciate him. Of course RWNJ’s also thought saying Joe Biden was like Mr. Rogers was an insult. Who the fuck are these people?
prostratedragon
@eclare: I have no idea either who they are, but get ready, because they are out in force lately and their god has given the signal to them that anything goes. On which point, a masterpiece of tv directing; note the chyron.
eclare
@prostratedragon:
I wish that that chyron were true.
Citizen Alan
@The Pale Scot: I loved all three of the 60th anniversary specials. Let us know what you think about the Christmas episode!
karen marie
I made a donation to the Maricopa County Democratic Party today (through ActBlue). Here’s a link to their calendar, if John Cole and/or Joelle have the time or inclination to participate.
ArchTeryx
Library used to be my only real haven as a kid, and I still use it to tutor and do research. The web is not a proper encyclopedia (not even Wikipedia) and the library has newspapers, journals, and other things that are not paywalled. The library is one of the most important community assets you can have, it absolutely needs librarians like this dude to function properly, and the bookburner godbotherers can fuck right off to Uranus.
Currants
Oh THANK YOU, AL. I love Mychal—one of the few Instagram accounts that are not my friends that I regularly look for. 😍 He is the BEST. Would that all librarians were more like him. (One near my house—but thankfully not my home library—has staff that go around policing library friends and they aren’t always even polite, much less nice about it. THOSE people could take a few lessons from Mychal.)
PaulWartenberg
(Librarian ears perk up)
Did someone ask about libraries? Support your local public library. We got books!
SteveinPHX
I work in a library. I love schmoozing with the public. I meet some of the most fascinating people there.
They just wander in, and they have incredible backgrounds and tell me amazing stories!
kalakal
Libraries are the mark of civilization and I think this guys great
Speaking of libraries up date on The Great Library Flood of 2003.
We finally reopened on Jan 2nd and its really gone pretty well. The stock is still a bit chaotic but it was heartwarming how many people came in/phoned us to say how happy they were we were open.
The only real fly in the ointment is we have a new phone system which should be launched from a trebuchet into the nearest volcano, it’s appalling, and makes it an absolute pain to do things like transfer calls.
On a personal note, probably due to a clerical error, I have been awarded Employee of the Month
Geminid
@kalakal: That’s quite an honor! Just don’t forget the little people at Balloon Juice.
eclare
@kalakal:
Yay! Congratulations!
Timill
@kalakal: 21 years to reopen! You’d think the entire site was washed into the ocean :-)
I assume 2023 not 2003…
kalakal
@Timill: It was a very big flood.
Yep, that was a misprit
Lyrebird
@kalakal: WOW, you all pulled off the reopening!!!
Congratulations, and so glad you are getting those phone calls. And big applause for your award, too!
satby
Mychal is great, I follow him on Twitter. And he started a small boom of male black librarians all talking about their libraries and the great community resources they provide in their neighborhoods. All the videos are so fun.
In my part of Chicago, the library was a mile away and we weren’t allowed to ride our bikes there until we were the advanced age of 11 or so, so we walked to the Bookmobile that came twice a week and parked next to the firehouse. And then we’d take our books to the park to read before we went home.
satby
@kalakal: Congratulations!
rikyrah
Mychal is the current incarnation of Mr. Rogers
XeckyGilchrist
What a great guy! Sorry to hear that he got a bunch of abuse from a site optimized for Nazi shitheads.
SWMBO
@UncleEbeneezer: When I had Covid over a year ago, my friend from high school was a nurse supervisor at a hospital in Arkansas. He had already seen a LOT of Covid by then and he recommended paxlovid. Then he told me to keep taking the otc meds for at least 2 weeks after. (Otc meds being Robitussin, Motrin, and guaifenesin.). He told me if I kept up the otc meds for at least 2 weeks, I wouldn’t get rebound Covid. And I didn’t. I kept to an every 6 hour schedule and was pretty much over it after a week. Still took everything for another week or more and was fine. He told me don’t give Covid (or anything else going around) any mucus to grow in. Most folks were stopping their otc stuff just long enough to let it get a hold on you again. Hope that helps.
also lemonade or cranapple helps with the bitter taste of paxlovid
Alison Rose
@rikyrah: 1000% agree. And I bet Mr Rogers would have loved Mychal.
Anne Laurie
If this site had a ‘like’ button, I would smash it for this comment!
Glory b
Another shout out to Andrew Carnegie!
I live literally around the corner from my neighborhood (Homewood) Carnegie Library, coincidentally the one I grew up with. As a kid, I’d rather go to the library than the store. I’d chase my mother around with books, asking her to read to me before I learned how. My sister, who loves books as much as I do, volunteers there, something I plan to do when my retirement kicks in.
Glory b
Also, Carnegie, Mr. Roger’s, Steelers, Spanky, me, all Pittsburgh!
Coincidence? I think not…