By A. Faulkner
What is your role in the GLBTRT?
I have been a general member of the GLBTRT for 8 years.
What does the GLBTRT mean to you?
I am very proud to be a member of the oldest queer / LGBT+ professional organization in the United States! The GLBTRT has done important work to fight discrimination against, and provide information for, marginalized communities, and I am proud to support this work.
Are you involved in ALA in other ways?
I am also a member of the Library History Round Table.
What professional work do you perform?
I work at a small public library and wear many hats – archivist, reference librarian, adult programmer, cataloger, tech support, and whatever else needs to get done that day! Collaboration, cooperation, and multi-tasking are essential skills for modern librarians as we see our need to provide services expanding while, in many ways, our resources are shrinking.
What would you like to share about your personal life?
I am also an antique dealer specializing in midcentury housewares, and I have two vintage travel trailers – a 1966 Serro Scotty and a 1972 Shasta 1400. I am a total textbook Taurus – loyal, dependable, faithful, and stubborn.
What are you most proud of?
Finishing my bachelor’s and master’s degrees while struggling with bipolar disorder. Long-term health issues can be debilitating and disruptive – but nevertheless, I persisted!
Who inspires you?
I am really inspired by other librarians nationwide (the library community is diverse, vibrant, enthusiastic, and fun!) as well as our patrons (especially teens and anybody who is excited about learning, literature, and culture!).
What are your goals? (Professional and/or personal.)
To stay patient, practice compassion, and remember to breathe.
What do you think (or predict) is the future of libraries?
I would like to think that even as the information needs of the future become increasingly digital and virtual, humans will still have analog bodies – we’ll still value physical presence and need a place to come together. My hope is that libraries of the future will continue to serve as portals to both virtual and analog worlds.
In what direction would you like the GLBTRT to move in the future?
As younger people with varied identities move into the workforce, I’d like to see the GLBTRT becoming more inclusive – perhaps becoming the GLBTQ+RT!
If you could be transported into the fictional world of any book, where would you go?
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Gender switching, 300 year lifespans, romance, poetry – what’s not to love?
What would be the title of your autobiography?
“No Feeling is Final: How to Keep Going When You Want to Stop”
If you could only choose one song to play every time you entered a room for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Though I identify as genderqueer, I’m going to have to go with Here Comes My Girl, by Tom Petty.
If you could have a dinner party with 5 culturally or historically significant figures, living or dead, who would you invite?
Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsburg, Kate Bornstein, and the Buddha himself. (Everybody probably says Oscar Wilde, right?)
What is the meaning of life?
“If you contribute to other people’s happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.” – His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
