The Summer Olympics are just a few months away, so here is a fun idea... What about adding a sport specific for us librarian athletes out there?!
Introducing.. Book Cart Dancing!!
The choreographed routines performed by librarians and graduate students in library science are an actual thing. This activity was popularized in the mid-2000s by Demco, the book-cart manufacturer, which sponsored a world championship competition at the American Library Association’s annual conference for several years.
Why such a craze about book cart dancing? Drill teams promote the library and build morale and teamwork, explains John Ison, who hosted competitions before retiring from Demco.
This fun, interactive library "sport" is indeed harder than it looks. In order to keep all librarians and their associated book carts in sync, you have to have hand signals and other visual cues, or else it looks like a bunch of librarians rolling on carts.
A signature Gettysburg move as shown in the image above: the pinwheel, in which 10 carts line up, five facing forward and five backward, and pivot around a center point like a propeller. Gettysburg won the bronze cart in the 2010 world championship and is a instant success for all other book cart routine sequences.
Currently, many graduate programs have adopted these book cart dancing routines into their school's homecoming parades.
My challenge to all of you reading this, whether you are a librarian or a devoted patron, is to get a book cart dancing team together in your community. It is a guaranteed fun time, both for the participants and for the spectators. So be fun, be creative, and get to dancing!
Let the games begin!!
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