Meet the Librarian: Rick Brown

We are posting daily "Meet the Librarian" profiles to celebrate National Library Week. Along with information about his or her job duties, we also thought it would be fun to ask some offbeat questions so readers could get to know each librarian's personality. 

Here is our profile of Rick Brown, Library Technical Assistant.

Rick has worked at the Vise Library since January 2011. His primary job duties include ordering and cataloging library materials, maintaining the online catalog, handling course reserves, and designing promotion materials.

A few questions for Rick:

If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do?

Give half to charity and spend the rest building my long-delayed fortress of doom.

If you could be any fictional character (from a TV, movie, or book), who would you choose?

I don't know what character I might want to be, but I can tell you which one I wouldn't want to be: Henry Bemis in the Twilight Zone's "Time Enough at Last."

What grown-up job did you want to have when you were a child?

Author. I've yet to yield that ambition, in point of fact.

If you were a criminal master mind, what would be your criminal racket?

Book pirating -- but not online. No, I'd have literal shipments of "liberated" books in the holds of my antiquated pirate fleet, capturing new releases from publisher frigates with steel, shot, and obscenely sharp bookmarks. They'd call my flagship the Black Verso.

In what way are you superstitious?

Not really at all. But I do avoid ladders, because when you get right down to it, why would you walk under one anyway?

What do you have an irrational fear of?

Spiders--of any size really, but particularly the giant, fantastical kind.

What word do you have trouble saying?

"Solicitous." A pity, because the word is so useful.

What was the last book you read?

The Tower of Fear by Glen Cook (shortly after A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin).

What is your favorite way to spend a Saturday?

Reading and listening to film scores on LP.

What book can you read over and over again?

Dune by Frank Herbert. Richer with every reading. And if you can count series as well, The Black Company by Glen Cook.

What is the thing you like best about your work?

The ability to indulge my reverence for the written word in all its forms. There is a visceral satisfaction in handling books, but whether physical or electronic, information has a power all its own.

What do you do when you cannot sleep?

Read! A stereotypical answer for one in our field, but it's true.

What are you grateful for today?

Literacy. There is nothing that so cogently reminds you of literacy's benefits then being surrounded by information all day.

What are the perks of your job?

Among many other things: first dibs on new books!

Thanks Rick! Join us Wednesday for a profile of Library Director, Eloise Hitchcock