Summer Reading shirts/Relay for Life

Today I'm feeling especially comfortable because I am wearing jeans to work. We all paid 5 dollars a day to wear jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers to work for the Calvert Relay for Life. We're trying to raise money for the American Cancer Society and also have a "white elephant" table and a table with baked goods to sell. I paid $20 for four delightful days of relaxed attire and will wear my Summer Reading T-shirts Today and Wednesday. For Tuesday and Thursday, I am planning to wear a collared polo shirt and jeans with sandals, because I only have two non-Christmas Library related shirts to wear. I really wanted to get a shirt or make a shirt that said "what happens in the library stays in the library", and one that said the same but with storytime. Oh well. Just wearing jeans at work for a few days makes me really happy. I think that in this day and age when all libraries are changing and becoming more progressive, that it's ridiculous to expect the same librarians who no longer stamp books and shush people to continue to wear the stereotypical, dressed up, nerdy librarian outfits. If we want to reach out to teens and kids who are younger, it would help if we looked and felt less out-of-touch, as well as more comfortable. I have always noticed when someone looks uncomfortable in their clothes. I wonder how that comes across to the kids we help? I suppose the main reason that we are supposed to dress up is that it helps to differentiate us from our customers. However, we all are required to wear name tags, so that solves that problem right there. I don't think that anything will be done about this, nor do I think that it's the most important issue at hand, but I do feel strongly about it as someone who hates dressing up for anything. There is a wellspring of material for me to blog about with this one topic.