I’m not a serials librarian; I don’t even play one on television. But I’m a librarian, which counts for something. I’ve managed tech services, I’ve brokered databases, and I even remember sending serial slips through vacuum tubes at Newark Public Library, and checking the Cardex to see whether a magazine had been checked-in.
I also participate in the serial ecology as a reader — and I think readers’ views matter. In any given moment you might find me reading Atlantic, Vanity Fair, New Yorker, People, The Week, Time, Newsweek, Missouri Review, Poets and Writers, Antioch Review, American Scholar, Sunset, Southern Living, New York Times, Tallahassee Democrat, Slate, Salon, First Monday, White Crane, ZYZZYVA, Creative Nonfiction, Lesbian Connection, Tin House… the beat goes on.
But it is said that the difference between minor and major surgery is whether it’s happening to you, and it is through my experiences as a writer that I began to understand the serial ecology.