A Shelfie Experience

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August 21, 2014
OUR VIEW: Racism, brutality spark anger in America
August 21, 2014
Elections sign-up period now open
August 21, 2014

My first experience with a library was at PS 152Q in New York City, and I remember to this day the excitement that came from opening the books and smelling the print on them.


They told me at the library that books were my friends and I believed them, so much that despite the fact that I do most of my research on Kindle books when available and that I am resigned to future books written by me being in electronic form, and possibly not in print on paper, I still thrill to the feel and smell of a book.

These days I have particularly been fond of very, very old books reeking of cigar smoke such as can be found in law libraries and the offices of court clerks.

So yes, books still give me a thrill.


Yes, the world is my oyster when my fingers play on a computer keyboard, but there is an authority in the books on the shelves that just can’t be beat. And these days the libraries, most of them, have found their information age niches.

The most successful ones marry new technology with the old standby practices and values, giving researchers and readers the best of all worlds.

So libraries, where large communities of books are still found, are still quite important to me.


They are important as well to April Rome, who works at the one operated by Nicholls State University. April and I once worked together in the newspaper business, but she had better sense, which is why you can find her at the second floor information desk.

Her work is especially satisfying because, there at the university, she plays a direct role in shaping the study habits, minds and acuity of students trying to do the best they can to find a place in the world, which makes her special, like all librarians.

Watch her at work and you will see a fiery composite of energy and compassion, eager to aid anyone who seeks her guidance. That she is able to be so energetic is a wonder, being as she is the mother of a 9-year-old girl named Savannah, whom she refers to as “Kiddo” in her Facebook posts. And then there is the matter of her patient husband, Cedric, an instruments technician who, friends say, has no doubt of her worth.


So in the midst of Kiddo and Cedric and just plain living, along with the job, April comes up with a gimmick that has been catching on profusely in the library, and which she hopes will have continued success.

April began inviting people to come to the library and take pictures of themselves in the stacks, posting on its Facebook page a photo of themselves with a book, which is now referred to as a “Shelfie” – just like Selfie, which is now accepted in the lexicon, except it’s with a book and next to some shelves.

There are adult Shelfies and kid Shelfies and recently when I visited for some research there was an April and me Shelfie.


“It was mostly that stuck in my head,” is April recalls the Shelfie genesis. “Selfie” is a song by the DJ du The Chainsmokers, extolling the virtues of the practice of self-photographing with one’s mobile phone. Conversations with some folks in the Terrebonne Parish library system revealed that the concept had already been worked with, to a limited degree.

So April gave it the old college try at the college.

The response, she said, has been excellent. And if it’s just another way to connect people to the library, to be a part of it, then so far as April is concerned it’s worth trying to promote. One professor confided that she plans to use it as a means of determining if students actually went to the library.


For April, the best Shelfie ever was the one she did with the Klingon reverse-language dictionary, Klingon to English and English to Klingon.

In her youth, April had two over-riding loves. One was New Kids On The Block. The other was Star Trek. So promotion of the Klingon translation tool, forever to exist in cyberspace, was kind of a coup.