NOVEMBER 14th - Thank You, Librarians



On this day in 1732, Louis Timothee became the 1st professional librarian in America’s history, taking the position for Ben Franklin’s Library Company of Philadelphia. I’m assuming there had been volunteer librarians, but that is still a lot of pressure to put on a guy. I mean if Timothee would have messed up the whole profession could have been nixed in the country. Your books could have been sitting there unorganized and unguarded. Being the vanguard certainly has it’s advantages--ask Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. And there are a myriad of other things that are advantageous or at least cool to do before anybody else. Climbing Everest. Establishing a record in a sport. Landing on the moon. Landing on Mars. Travelling to the future. I’m not sure that I would put librarian on that list, but that is through no fault of the profession. It’s not like there hasn’t been innovation in the field. Am I right, Melvil Dewey? Of course Thomas Jefferson thought the whole thing was hogwash. “I have thousands of books, and I keep them all straight in the ole noggin,” he told Franklin despite the fact that he wasn’t born till eleven years after Timothee was hired. I dunno. Maybe TJ was a wizard. But I think Jeffy was looking at this all wrong. I have no idea exactly how much Benji was involved with his library, but I have to imagine that Timothee made lessened the responsibilities. And that inevitably freed him up to conduct experiments and invent things in the years to come. I’m sure you can connect the dots here. Basically librarians are responsible for electricity and the ability of the visually challenged to see near and far. Of course I cannot be certain of this. The only things that are certain are death and taxes. But if you venture into the land of uncertainty, we may only know that because of Louis Timothee and Librarians.

This day has been Marked.

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