This article set of an interesting chain of events.
When I was a kid, my library system used to have a dialup storytime. Every 24 hours (except weekends), a new story would be read and recorded on the line by one of the youth librarians. I loved the storyline. I remember I'd call it several times a day, especially in the morning because I'd call so early that the librarians hadn't even had a chance to record a new one yet. I can see myself sitting on my sister's bed listening to the storyline instead of watching tv. I remember listening to it even while my mom was vacuuming - now that's dedication! I called it so often that it was the only other number besides my best friend's and my own that I knew by heart. Having that connection to the library as a child gave me a good feeling about the library and made it a place I wanted to go to all the time. Often, the storyline was my only connection to the library - we lived pretty far north from what was then on the main branch.
So one day, shortly after reading this article, I was working at the youth services desk at the main branch with one of my colleagues. We were both engrossed in our computers, but were chatting too. All of a sudden, as I was listening to her voice, something clicked. I asked her how long she'd been working for the system and if she had ever read stories on the old dialup storytime line. She looked shocked and said, "How do you know that?" I said, "I remember your voice!" Considering that this was about 25 years ago, it was a surprising recollection for me, but altogether genuine. She was so excited to hear this and we fell into a conversation about the service and why we stopped offering it years ago (it seems to be fear of copyright violation that keeps us from offering it now.)
For me, it was a definitely a moment of reflection about the things that made me love books as a child and what led up to me becoming a librarian. On top of that, I'm a librarian in the system in which I grew up. There's something that feels very special about that. And then to find out that one of my colleagues was actually a person who shaped my earliest feelings about the library through her work as a children's librarian - wow, I don't know how to explain how much that touched me. I hope that someday I, too, will have such a lasting positive impact on someone's life through my service as a librarian.


