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A cropped image of the covers of volumes 1 and 2 of The Librarian's Apprentice, resting on character sheets.

Libraries in fantasy literature and media are always magical and mysterious. In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, Unseen University’s library books have to be chained down for the safety of the students. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, the library in the Dreaming contains every book ever dreamt. In David Tennant’s Doctor Who run, the Doctor and Donna visit a freaky space library where people’s bodies are stripped to bone and others disappear, supposedly saved by the library itself. Libraries are weird and scary and cool, librarians have magic powers, and visitors never leave unchanged.

Prior to playing The Librarian’s Apprentice, my day-to-day work experience had sucked the magic out of libraries for me. The first time I volunteered in a library I helped with a teddy bear story time, where we donned pajamas and read books to children on the theme of teddy bears and bedtime. Before they left, each kid gave us a stuffed animal, and after the library closed we staged silly photos of the animals having a sleepover. They snuck into the workroom fridge for a late night snack, got up to shenanigans in the stacks, and I, a normal civilian, got to be in the library after closing. It’s super dorky, but I remember how cool that felt! Now I know my workplace intimately, I have good and bad memories there, and I curate the material that it contains. There is no thrill, just public service.

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