Our library is filled with staff and students ready to get their fill of treats for Halloween. Luckily no tricks, the joy of living in a fairly rural and polite region of the country. Earlier today I was at the administration building for a meeting and the children from the child care center came through. The halls were filled with laughter and talk, something unusual for a more serious and business-like building. There were dinosaurs, Iron Men, Spider Men, princesses, she-devils, chickens, construction workers and the like. There were rushes on candy and a lot of smiling faces. Everyone looks forward to their Halloween visit. I was glad to be there. I worked at a somewhat rural community college library as a reference librarian, and there was a period of about three years where the questions on October 31st took a decidedly macabre turn. I think it may have been the same group of young men trying to overset the librarians. Having grown up with three exuberant brothers and other prankster male relatives, I could handle that stuff without flinching. The questions weren’t that weird, but definitely a little off the usual research questions. “Did Mary Shelley do weird stuff with cats?” and the history of the electric chair were two of them as I recall. Our library celebrates this holiday very creatively. We use it as a fundraiser for our social events. It’s always been fun and creative. This year we had a department vs. department decorating contest. For my department, the librarian action figure emerged from her sabbatical to, as the picture demonstrates, to deliver information to the witchy and wicked. I would share their questions but that would violate their privacy and I would have to turn you into a frog.

Who needs a house to fall on you when there’s a copy machine. Don’t kill the trees or this could happen to you.
Alas, we did not win the contest, but we had a great deal of fun decorating, laughing, and touring other departments. And of course we had a party with lots of good food. Happy Halloween.