The Secret Lives of Librarians

The Secret Lives of Librarians with Jenna Freedman, Travis Fristoe, Jenn Phillips-Bacher, Keith Helt, Celia Perez
 
Monday June 27th 7:00PM
 
25,000 library workers will invade Chicago the last weekend in June to attend the American Library Association Annual Conference. Five librarians will break away from the madness of the McCormick Place on Monday, June 27, 2005 to share their passion for those photocopied, cut and paste productions we all know and love–zines! Join this group of zine-making librarians as they read from their zines and reveal the inner lives of librarians that give lie to the stereotype of the repressed bun-wearing, Dewey Decimal obsessed shusher. Donations to benefit the Alternative Press Center are welcomed!
 
Bios:
Jenna Freedman, the Coordinator of Reference Services at Barnard College Library in NYC, NY, started a zine collection at the college last year. She is also a member of the library worker activist group Radical Reference that supports activists and independent journalists “online and in the street.” Her zine is the Lower East Side Librarian Winter Solstice Shout-Out.
 
Learning at a tender age that astronauts had to have perfect vision, Travis Fristoe accepted his bespectacled fate and instead devoted himself to libraries, amateur protest music & salvaging discarded bikes. He’s been doing zines for half his life now, which seems a really long time.
 
Riot Librarrrian busted out from the minds of two underwhelmed and underworked library school students, Jenn Phillips-Bacher and Sara Pete. Armed with typewriters, glue sticks, and a novice’s moxie, the girls pounded out Issue #1. Team RL left the publishing world for real jobs in Library Land once the zine hit the stands and degrees were in hand. Jenn Phillip-Bacher currently works as a reference librarian at Skokie Public Library (IL).
 
A librarian-in-training, Keith Helt feels weird about bios in general, but has been making zines since he was a wee lad of 15. When he’s not learning how to archive, he’s fretting about his band, the Rories and the long overdue next issue of his zine, Flotation Device.
 
Inspired by “Sassy” magazine, punk rock, and the the silly notion that other people care to read all about her business, Celia Perez started making zines many years ago. She still can’t figure out layouts to save her life, but she continues to publish zines including I Dreamed I Was Assertive, and most recently, Skate Tough You Little Girls, a zine about women in skateboarding. She is a reference and instruction librarian at Harold Washington College in Chicago where, in addition to helping students find information, she spends much of her time asking them to turn off their cell phones.
 
Links:
Alternative Press Center (http://www.altpress.org/)
Barnard College Library Zine Collection (http://www.barnard.edu/library/zines/)
Radical Reference (http://www.radicalreference.info/ALA)