"As pinup calendars go, it has many of the standard features: models in black leather perched on beefy motorcycles. But the men and women on display here aren't exactly firefighters, or the Girls of 'Baywatch,' or any other known species of cheesecake or beefcake.
They're librarians. With eyeglasses here, gray hairs there, and in several portraits, a purple tote bag full of books tucked into a corner.
The 2003 calendar, titled "Easy Readers @ Your Library," introduces the Librarians of Ocean County, who came up with the idea as an eye-grabbing way to help raise the library's $1.6 million share of a $12.9 million expansion of the library system's main building here. For $10 ($15 with shipping and handling), readers — and nonreaders, for that matter — can enjoy 12 months of their favorite local information specialists.
But there was another motive behind the move.
'We wanted to show people we've changed,' said Nancy Dowd, the head of public relations for the library system, who snapped the photos with her Olympus C-3000, a digital camera. 'People's ideas of librarians is conservative, and this just blew it out of the water....'
On top of a red Harley-Davidson XL 1200, in a black leather bustier, is the county's library director, Elaine McConnell (Miss December), who normally prefers Talbots' fashions and turtlenecks. Miss May is Heather Andolsen, a senior librarian, who sports a choker collar and tattoo. Fourteen women and two men grace the pages — some doubling up in the pictures — and are often outfitted in do-rags, tassled gloves and sunglasses....
There has not been much discussion of a possible 2004 Librarians of Ocean County calendar, but Ms. Sulikowski offered this possibility: 'Hard hats, tool belts and shorts.'
Another librarian chimed in: 'I'll do shorts. That might get more sales.'
Or as Becky Schoonmaker, who appears on the March page, put it, referring to her plans to wear skimpy cutoffs, "Daisy Dukes, woo hoo!' "
Wednesday, January 01, 2003
