Before I joined the library as a member of staff, I had a beard and ponytail, from my time in the circus, playing a pirate in Treasure Island! Here you can see us doing a group apple juggling routine, with me on the left...
When I got the job in the library I still treated it as a 'performance' job, so shaved and cut my hair short, to try to look like a librarian.
After the first couple of years I managed to get a job backstage, in the computer maintenance team. At this point I was still pretty clean and tidy, waistcoats and all.
I even wore a tie most days, even though I didn't meet the public that much...
And although it was a serious job, we also got to play with things like webcams...
I kept up appearances because I helped run training courses for staff and so on...
And would spend any wet lunch hours in The Stacks. As you can see, my hair started to grow out in what I considered a kind of 'Archivist' look.
When we moved into the temporary library in John Street, our original 'public internet access' experiment solidified into a cybercafe, and somehow the techie look seemed to allow a ponytail, so long as it was tidy, etc.
In fact, according the Wim Wenders, in Wings of Desire, 'library angels' all have ponytails...
And the technology carried on changing, with our RFID tag and reader...
Somehow the combination of library work and computers got me into writing a novel in a month, just for the craich.
And then, getting a Print On Demand copy or two from Lulu - just for the hell of it!
By the time we had moved into our state-of-the-art library, and became the universal computer support guy, I had a beard, the hair, and a bad attitude to uniforms, compulsory second language and other limitations... As the politicians try to eliminate libraries completely...
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When I got the job in the library I still treated it as a 'performance' job, so shaved and cut my hair short, to try to look like a librarian.
After the first couple of years I managed to get a job backstage, in the computer maintenance team. At this point I was still pretty clean and tidy, waistcoats and all.
I even wore a tie most days, even though I didn't meet the public that much...
And although it was a serious job, we also got to play with things like webcams...
I kept up appearances because I helped run training courses for staff and so on...
And would spend any wet lunch hours in The Stacks. As you can see, my hair started to grow out in what I considered a kind of 'Archivist' look.
When we moved into the temporary library in John Street, our original 'public internet access' experiment solidified into a cybercafe, and somehow the techie look seemed to allow a ponytail, so long as it was tidy, etc.
In fact, according the Wim Wenders, in Wings of Desire, 'library angels' all have ponytails...
And the technology carried on changing, with our RFID tag and reader...
Somehow the combination of library work and computers got me into writing a novel in a month, just for the craich.
And then, getting a Print On Demand copy or two from Lulu - just for the hell of it!
By the time we had moved into our state-of-the-art library, and became the universal computer support guy, I had a beard, the hair, and a bad attitude to uniforms, compulsory second language and other limitations... As the politicians try to eliminate libraries completely...
Since the library I work for acquired its own front ends (Twitter, Facebook, Blog) I decided to more or less retire this one - but I still enjoy to experiment. You can flip through the 7 new options yourself, but you can't revert to the old one, which also had links to favourite places to visit, blogs I like, etc. (sigh).
