narrator: How do I know which path is best for me?

Is it possible to take on these challenges and obstacles?

Where do I even start?

Where do I even start?

What should I do with my life?

Sometimes the only way to find out is to go see what's possible.

Since 2001, we've been sharing the stories of people who ventured out and explored different career paths and different possibilities for their futures.

This is one of those stories.

This is "Roadtrip Nation."

Jenny: So far we're halfway through our trip.

Maryan: We're traveling across country speaking to library leaders, and really just getting a better understanding of what libraries mean and what they could be.

Isabelle: Seeing all of these librarians who are making so much out of so little in their communities, it was so inspiring.

Jenny: It's been a really wonderful experience to meet different people, learn about their experiences, but then also during our stops, get to see life through different lenses in these different places that I've never been before.

Maryan: I feel like after every post-interview, we talk about like, "What was your highlight?"

And like, there are these highlights, but then I think for me more than anything are these little moments that we have together that it's completely unplanned.

We're catching all of the rainbow!

I love it.

Jenny: There's two!

Maryan: Ah, we got the double!

I think those have really just been like memories that I'm gonna take forever.

♪♪♪ We only have a few more interviews left.

Making our way over to the Midwest soon, so that's gonna be exciting.

Isabelle: Of the three of us, I'm the roadtripper that has like the least solid idea of what I want to do.

It's like, I'm the most vibey at this point, you know?

Like it's--I don't have a true plan.

I'm Isabelle Haines, and I am an incoming student at the University of Washington for their masters of library and information science program, and I'm also a derby girl.

Okay, so I am going to my last derby practice before hitting the road.

I've played roller derby for about three years, and I'm on Rainier Roller Riot, which is like, it's the most fun I've ever had, and my derby name is Trunchbull, like the villain from Matilda, so.

I'm on the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island, which is like a small town where I grew up.

My parents actually both worked in the maritime industry, so a lot of their careers they were, you know, not home.

They were sailing around to, you know, different countries.

During that time, our like local library was so important to us.

We did hours together at the White Salmon Community Library in White Salmon, Washington.

Isabelle's mom: Oh, it's a beautiful library.

Fabulous librarian, Jennifer Hull.

Isabelle: We love her.

We love you, Jennifer.

We think about you all the time.

I have been a library evangelist for years now.

There is nothing I am more about than the public library, so I decided to pursue MLIS in college first as a student job, and then I did some internships.

I'm a volunteer at Seattle's LGBTQ+ Center.

My coming out experience was so shaped by the librarians, archivists, and like scholars of queer history.

As a library volunteer, I get to help people find the things that really connect them with like a community and like a history.

That's been one of the most meaningful things I've ever done.

Yeah, and ever since I feel like my career has really been circling these loose themes of like information access, technology, education, but I feel very unsure about what type of librarianship is right for me.

I know that somewhere in this ginormous field, there is something that's perfect.

Sometimes it feels a little bit like the needle in the haystack, like where is the perfect job?

I know it is out there.

Where is it?

How can I find it?

Take me to it.

You know, there's so many different ways that you can use this skill set, so I'm interested to see the different ways that people apply it.

[music] So we're gonna talk to Sara Mawhirter.

She is a librarian at the Linda Hall Library, which is one of the most incredible science libraries in our country, and she plays roller derby, the best sport in the world, and we get to go do a practice with her, and I'm really excited especially for that.

Sara: I like to call myself the welcome wagon of the library.

I help folks understand what we have and why we have it, and how they can become library users here.

So I help to curate materials for class visits or for public displays, for book displays, basically trying to make this collection and the space feel accessible to the general public, hopefully to create, you know, new scientists or historians or researchers, but also just to create new library patrons, and I'm really excited to show you some of the pieces today with my colleague Bruce Bradley.

We have a whole rare book collection, including books in our rare book vault.

For example, we have two books from 1472 here in the library.

Bruce: This book happens to be the oldest book in the library, which is more than 500 years old.

It was published not long after Gutenberg invented the printing press.

Isabelle: Can we actually touch it?

Bruce: Of course you may, yeah.

Please do, turn the pages.

Isabelle: Thank you.

All: [exclaiming, laughing] Sara: What it really ends up being is this holistic view of how society has built this framework of information that has been accrued over time that lends itself to things that we take advantage of every day, and that makes us a really unique resource for the public, for researchers or historians, artists, poets, anyone really.

I like to say that we have something for everyone here.

Isabelle: Gear shift, but we both play roller derby, and I'm wondering why you think there are so many librarians and like English teachers and teachers in general who play roller derby.

Like, what's that about?

What's going on there?

Sara: You know, I feel like the cheeky answer is that it's always the quiet ones.

All: [laugh] Sara: But I think in a sense roller derby is a community.

The league that I'm in, you know, we try to uplift other nonprofit organizations that align with our mission and goals.

We all support each other.

We're talking about, you know, financial support.

We're talking about inclusivity.

We're talking about diversifying and uplifting our members, so it speaks more to the sense of serving the community that I think a lot of librarians and teachers feel that natural call to, and so I have to think that that has something to do with why so many of us end up there.

Isabelle: I like that.

Sara: Yeah Isabelle: That makes sense to me I'm the Trunchbull, and I'm gonna put you in the Chokey!

[punch sound] All:[Laugh] Isabelle: It's gonna be really cool for Jenny and Maryan to see this like weird culture of like, "Let's get on skates and beat each other up," but we like love each other.

Jenny: I'm Archival Rival, and I'll make you history.

Maryan: [laugh] Maryan: It's usually Frog and Toad, but today it's Frog and Rogue.

[laugh] Whoo!

Sara: Yeah, it's like riding a bike.

Jenny: I'm also like not good at riding a bike.

[laugh] Sara: I believe in both of you.

Maryan: I'm going fast, I don't know why I'm going fast!

Sara: You're going like the wind.

You're going like the wind.

Oh, come back to me, come back to me!

Maryan: [exclaming, laughing] Jenny: It was so cool seeing Isabelle in her element.

[music] Sara: Whoo!

[music] All: [exclaiming and laughing] Isabelle: Yeah, so next up, Iowa City.

How are you guys feeling?

Maryan: I'm feeling excited, but I'm also like, oh my gosh, we're like passing the halfway mark.

Like, I feel like we're just getting our groove.

Like, this can't be over!

So I think just savoring every moment now, yeah, yeah.

[music] So we're gonna do something that we haven't done yet, and we're gonna go on the most epic bookmobile tour, and I'm really excited.

Isabelle: We can't get away from large vehicles.

Isabelle: It's just our lives right now, you know?

Maryan: We can't, we can't Jenny: [laugh] Jenny: I'm so excited.

Isabelle: Me too.

Maryan: Ooh.

Is this something?

Isabelle: Oh my gosh.

Sam: We have 31 stops five days a week.

Maryan: I love that.

Sam: And so this is useful for transportation barriers, but there are other ways in your life where you might have a barrier to access.

You become a person's librarian.

This may be the only library they experience in Iowa City, and so they really care about us.

I had this moment where I realized that I was gonna love libraries for the rest of my life, and I was never gonna stop talking about it.

That led me to applying for a job.

It led me to serving on the American Library Association's Libraries Transform Campaign, and now I get to do that every single day at the Iowa City Public Library.

My 9-to-5 job is I'm the community and access services coordinator, and when folks are like, "What in the world is that?"

I tell folks that I advocate, resource, and support three excellent teams of staff: the outreach and bookmobile and book bike staff, the circulation and cards management staff, and then the public relations and marketing staff.

What's so great about librarianship is that whatever experience and expertise you bring to it, librarianship covers so many needs that that intersectionality will fit just perfectly.

Isabelle: Something that has surprised me about this trip is I was thinking a lot about like digital librarianship, and still am, but the thing that has kind of popped out to me as like a-- I feel like it's a passion that's like kind of coming together for me on this trip is like intellectual freedom, and when we were researching you, we saw so much about your work in that, and I would love to know more about when it first started to dawn to you that it was important work to be doing, and how you got involved in it.

Sam: Great question, Isabelle.

So Iowa is a chapter association of the American Library Association, and we vote on national policy at our conferences, and I was elected to become that, and at the same time by default and convenience, you become the chair of your estate or chapter's Intellectual Freedom Committee, and it really was my immediate deep dive into understanding that intellectual freedom requires at least three very distinct things in the public library setting, right?

The first is understanding that we have core values, and that ironically, Iowa wrote the Library Bill of Rights in 1938, and then it was adopted by the American Library Association a year later and became that international standard of free people reading freely.

So we need to have core values.

We also need to come to conversation in good faith, right?

So we understand that grievance in your government is a First Amendment right, and libraries have policies, processes, and procedures for us to do that effectively together, and we've done it pretty well over the last 250 years.

And then the third, I think, is just sort of having a community of support and recognizing that a board of trustees are either elected in public libraries or appointed in public libraries to support and represent the community in that space, and it's important for them to understand that it's a heated process, but it is necessary for it to come together with the people in good faith conversations productively, or it will cease to exist in the way that it has so, you know?

And then just trying to find a way for us all to come together to thrive.

But if we're not here to defend a process by which we can look at it, reconcile, and come together and really chew out a narrative, chew out social concepts through narrative, then the conversation is lost, which is why I think sometimes we hear librarians called "heroes" now and library workers called "pillars of our institution" because we recognize that-- we have said for decades that libraries are like a foundational stone of democracy, but really, the beating hearts-- sorry about the mic-- the beating hearts of those institutions are a pillar of democracy, and the more that we represent the communities we serve, the better we're going to be equipped to do that.

Isabelle: Sam just-- everything Sam said was amazing.

Like, the values of libraries, you know, like making a community where people can come and learn, grow, change, change their mind, I think like that's been the most impactful thing.

You all have the power, and I'm gonna be honest, the responsibility.

I'm gonna Spider-Man this up.

Maryan: Yeah Sam: With great power comes great responsibility to make librarianship what it will be, which is why it's an honor to talk to you three.

It is.

It's a delight because you all know the challenges of being library workers in the information age, and like Mr.

Rogers says, you look for the helpers, and you all are running towards it.

That's incredible.

And it wouldn't be a signature without.

Maryan: Yes!

Sam: Thank you.

Maryan: Thank you, we got this!

Sam: All right, safe travels.

Keep writing those stories, okay?

Isabelle: Thank you so much.

Sam: It was so nice to meet you all.

[music] Jenny: We're in Chicago, which is our last stop of this trip.

[music] Isabelle: It's kind of overwhelming, yeah.

We get to meet Commissioner Chris Brown at the Chicago Public Library.

It's like our grand finale.

I feel like it's a really-- it feels like a good one to end on.

Maryan: For me, I'm really excited about the new media lab because it's like, okay, like what type of programmings are you doing?

How are you incorporating like youth programming and family programming, and the intersection between like service and technology?

I don't know, we're gonna have a time.

Hello, nice to meet you.

You know, librarianship looks different for everyone, and how people enter this world could be different, so we'd love to hear your journey if you could tell usa little bit about yourself.

Chris: My journey.

Yeah, in the librarianship, so I was a literature major as well.

I kind of got interested in that because I worked in a bookstore in high school, and the manager of this bookstore was a lead singer in like a major LA punk band, and so you know I was-- Isabelle: Wow Maryan: Whoa I read because I had to read in school.

It was, "What am I getting assigned?"

And then I met this-- you know, I guess, I don't-- he probably didn't think he was a mentor, but I started reading stuff like Borges and William Burroughs, and I'm like, oh, like, my teachers have been like gatekeeping what's out there.

It was just having my eyes open to what's out there, what's been written, and wanting to be a part of that.

I didn't know what part of librarianship I wanted to be in.

I just knew I wanted to be helping people find books, which sounds very like simple and maybe naive.

I've probably done every like job in a library.

Like, I've been a shelver.

I've worked in teen services.

You know, I've been like a central library director.

I've been a collection selector.

I think the thing that I love the most, though, is the outreach work.

So we're in our YOUmedia flagship space.

Close to 15 years ago, they basically learned that we need kids to have a place that they can just be.

It's not like a heavy-handed curriculum and prescriptive, but a little bit more like a place that they could just choose to be, learn from peers, learn from mentors, and that's where this idea of YOUmedia came from.

Brenda: So it's incredible to think that this used to be like an old storage area.

Of course we are always focused on what is beyond the book, but we really want the books to be central so that our teens are really engaged in reading and they're also sharing with each other what they're reading.

Chris: We now introduced a Teen Lit Night up in the Winter Garden.

We got all these hundreds of teens together celebrating reading.

And then over the summer, we also do this thing called Best of the Best.

All these teen interns, they come in and they help us decide what's like the best teen literature this year, so they get to kind of help pick it out.

So they started this space, and they brought in all these teaching artists and mentors, and I think what was really special about it is kids got to learn from somebody who was doing the things that they wanted to do.

Brenda: So it was really important to the teens that these music areas existed.

Chris: Yeah, we've had so many just amazing artists come through this space.

Chance the Rapper actually got his start here.

Some of his first like mixtapes were made in our recording studio, and I know Chance even has some lyrics where it's like, "And I'm still Mr.

YOUmedia," so just to like show like how kind of the library space has stayed with him.

It's not like he was a, you know, polished MC.

He--you know, I think he bombed some open mics here, which I think that's also what's special about libraries.

It's where people are really, you know, emerging.

So young kids are learning to read or developing a love of reading, and so that was sort of where it started, and it's completely evolved.

Now we have like our Radical Fit program where queer fashion designers come in and work with teens to have more inclusive fashion portfolios, and then they have a whole fashion show for youth.

It's incredible.

We have Gamer's Universe where, you know, gaming is this incredible storytelling field.

We activate the whole building and a couple thousand kids come through and do gaming tournaments, and it's chaotic and wonderful.

Jenny: My brother would really like this space.

He games all the time, but he doesn't have gaming consoles or anything.

I wish he could experience, you know, a space like this.

Oh, sorry, I didn't see you there.

Maryan: Sorry.

Nice to meet you, my name is Maryan.

Nice to meet you!

Chris: What are you guys like-- in this whole process, what have you kind of wished you could come away with having insight about?

Jenny: Ooh, this is I think our first time being asked a question.

Maryan: Yeah, I can go ahead and answer.

The reason why I decided to do this was because I'm very passionate about this idea of reimagining what librarianship is for me, and I also went into this with this idea that I wanna go into youth services, and I wanna talk to someone who's gonna remind me that youth services is it and kind of bring that joy again, but I think what I really took out of this was I might be just limiting myself to only youth services, and there are all these different types of librarianships, and I have all these different interests, and there's a way to bridge all of this.

Even if that position isn't out there just yet, you know, it could very well be for me, so I think that's what I've appreciated.

Jenny: Yeah, I've really seen Maryan and Isabelle both like flourish and bloom, and just see like their perspectives expanding, including like my own.

I think the reason why I really needed this like amazing experience was just the fact that there were still a lot of uncertainties within myself that felt like, is this the right choice for me?

Our programs are completely online.

Like, I didn't really have a network or like a community to feel like I was supported, you know, so I just felt like the sense of maybe like needing validation, and like, I really wanted to understand people's journeys and like how they navigated maybe like those feelings of uncertainties and doubt, but also like how they grew and were able to blend their external interests beyond like maybe a career lens into their careers, because I think libraries are such a--I mean, it's a place where anything can happen, and that's what I've like really begun to learn and feel more confidence in how I can, you know, really pursue that for myself.

Isabelle: Totally.

I feel like I've found this experience to be really like grounding, and like, honestly like kind of humbling too.

I think like, you know, it's a stressful time to just be a person, and I think it's been so great to like remember what strength there is in this community of librarians.

I've just felt that on like every step of the trip.

Honestly, like I don't know, replenishing is Isabelle: maybe another word I would use, you know, yeah.

Jenny: Ooh [laughs] [music, crickets] Maryan: Oh, yes, tonight is our last night in the RV.

[music, crickets] What will I miss the most?

I'm gonna miss like our cozy like craft sessions, our movie nights, our conversations, our girl talks.

Isabelle: The true slumber party vibes.

I loved that because I always wanted to be at a slumber party.

Jenny: I can't believe I got to be able to have this experience and have this time to really just focus on my career, but also have fun with other people who are experiencing like similar things on their journey.

I really loved asking questions about if they ever had any doubts, even while they were pursuing, you know, like their degree or a certain job, and sure enough, like a lot of them did.

My perspective has changed.

Now I feel like I have a newfound sense of confidence that creating my own pathway is more possible than ever.

Maryan: I think at the start of this trip I felt like there was a missing piece, and I think now I'm laughing because I'm realizing like I think that missing piece was-- I think I was just trying to box myself into a type of librarianship.

That's not all I have to be, you know?

Like, maybe there's gonna be a role that opens up for me that hasn't existed before, but it's exactly what I've been building up to, and yeah, I think just knowing that like all of my hiccups up until now have just been like moments of growth and not necessarily moral failures.

I think that's kind of been like the biggest "a-ha!"

for me.

Isabelle: One of the mindsets I was coming into the trip with was very technically focused, like what technologies are gonna be useful to libraries, you know, like--and how's AI gonna be like used in libraries?

But what's changed is what's important to me is like the values of libraries.

It was so lovely that it was about like this much higher aspiration, and also something that's so much harder to execute, but just the thought of it makes you wanna try for it, you know?

Like, that was just beautiful.

[music] Maryan: Get in here!

Jenny: I want people to know that they belong in libraries.

There's something for everyone, and there's value to be gained and to be created, but that-- like, the value in community spaces lies in how much we ourselves pour into our communities.

Even if you're not interested in ever pursuing a career in libraries, is knowing that like you belong in these spaces, not only just existing there, but like contributing something.

Like, you have something to offer in a community.

You have something valuable to share with other people.

Maryan: I just feel like if you want community, if you're looking for belonging, if you're looking for guidance, if you're looking for just a place to be, that's what the library is, but also like the library needs you.

You, my friend, the library needs you, okay?

You're interested in fashion, you're interested in books, kid lit, horror, sci-fi, whatever it is.

You're interested in community building, gardening, right?

All of that, we need it, we need it real bad, so please come to us.

Join the club.

Isabelle: Dude, go to your library.

Like, go, go right now.

Like, walk, walk out of the theater or wherever you're watching this and go to the library because no matter what you wanna do, like, your librarians love you and they wanna give you a space to learn about that thing or do that thing, so get thee to the library.

narrator: Wondering what to do with your life?

Well, we've been there and we're here to help.

Our website has some awesome tools to help you find your path, and you can check out all our documentaries, interviews, and more.

Start exploring at roadtripnation.com.

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