Profile: The proselytizing librarian

Let’s see, she started working in a library at age 14, continued there through high school, took a four-year job in her college library as an undergraduate, worked in a library as a graduate student, had a close relative in librarianship and now works as a professional librarian.

So was it an open-and-shut case of born-to-be-a-librarian?

“No, it never entered my mind until I was a graduate student in English,” says Carrie Kruse with a smile. “As a teenager it was a nice alternative to flipping burgers, and I just kept doing it.”

For a very long time she planned on becoming an English professor. “I always loved to read, and I liked the idea of sitting around with students and talking about literature.”

But after a semester of graduate work in English at UW–Madison — “I cried a lot that semester,” she says — she decided that writing a dissertation and wading through eight-10 years of graduate school weren’t for her.

At the time, she had a part-time job in Mills Music Library. “I realized then that librarianship was a profession that could use my music background,” says Kruse, who’s sung and played cello since childhood. By the following fall, she had switched to the School of Library and Information Studies, with every intention of becoming a music librarian.

As intentions are wont to do, this one turned into something else. After graduation from SLIS in 1991, she worked for five years in Reserves Acquisitions in College Library and now serves as library instruction coordinator at College.

“I ended up doing what I always wanted to do — teaching students about books,” says Kruse. In fact, she does it so well that this spring the UW–Madison Librarians’ Assembly named her Librarian of the Year (under 10 years of experience).

One of the people proud of her accomplishments would likely be Evan Farber, head librarian at Earlham College, where Kruse matriculated. Farber is legendary in the library instruction world, because he pioneered the incorporation of a librarian’s presentation into every course at Earlham.

“When I was a student, I just assumed that’s what every college did,” says Kruse. “Now, when I attend a library instruction conference, people who hear where I went to school will say, “Oh, you’re from Earlham.'”

Kruse’s own power to proselytize for the cause of books can also be seen in a remarkable conversion: She turned a softball team into a book club.

She was talked into joining an all-women’s softball team in 1993, despite her dearth of athletic experience. “I even had to learn how to throw a ball correctly,” she says.

But she enjoyed it, and at the end of the season she asked everyone how they were going to hang out during the winter. Hearing no better idea, she proposed a book club, and the club — on both the ball and book sides — is going strong today.

“We’re sponsored by Borders Book Shop,” says Kruse, “and other softball teams — many of them sponsored by taverns — ask us, “Hey, what are you going to do after the game, go read a book?'” Well, as a matter of fact…

Like many librarians, Kruse has interests that are exceedingly catholic. They include, but are not limited to, the cello, the human voice, the kayak and the animal kingdom.

As a graduate student, she played cello in the UW–Madison Symphony and recently performed in the Sun Prairie Civic Center production of “Annie.” She has sung alto in the Madison Chamber Choir and the university’s Madrigal Singers and Choral Union. She also does what a colleague calls “helmetless kayaking” on nice safe lakes, and she and her partner have two dogs and three cats at home.

Not at home, but still in the Madison area, are a father (John, a retired United Methodist minister) and a mother. Actually, her mother is just yards away on workdays: Ginny Moore Kruse directs the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, a nationally known repository of children’s literature.

In other words, mother and daughter are both librarians in the same building.

“Our professional fields in librarianship are very different, but we go to conferences together, as well as Round Table and University Club lunches,” says Carrie. “My mom has mentored me on how to get involved in national librarian groups.

“She also loans me her car when I need it, since I take the bus to work. It’s like I’m 17 again.”

When Carrie first came to College Library, she wanted to make her own name as a librarian, though she had the same name as the national expert upstairs. “I felt such pressure to perform that I didn’t want to be always compared to Mom,” she says. “In fact, in library school I would often introduce myself as Carrie, not Carrie Kruse.”

But now, she says, as a professional in her own right, “I’m proud to be known as Ginny’s daughter.”

And can you think of a sweeter Mother’s Day gift than hearing that?