About

I’m Erica Firment. I was born in Flint, MI. I live in San Francisco, CA. I am a User Experience Designer.

I have a Master’s in Information Science, and a B.A. in English. I also have a Master Beekeeper Certification from Cornell’s agricultural extension. Guess which one I’m most proud of?

Librarian Avengers started in 1997

Librarian Avengers started in 1997. In Internet time, that’s about 50 years ago. I was a young English Major when I wrote an essay called Why you should fall to your knees and worship a librarian and hooked it up to the domain name I got for my birthday. The positive response from the library community was one of the forces that propelled me into graduate school.

I blogged grad school, where I stole free food from SIG-CHI meetings, studied Human-computer Interaction, and joined the Community Information Corps. I wrote long boring papers, taught classes, learned some web-devery, and worked as a researcher/professorial indentured servant.

The name Librarian Avengers was adapted from the Lesbian Avengers, a group of activists whose hellraising I admire. I learned about them as an undergrad working in the Michigan State University American Radicalism collection.

I owe that library many great things, including my love of comics, my first Cutter table, several Professional Heroes, and the chance to hold a first edition copy of The House on Pooh Corner.

*Saying “I am a librarian” is like saying “Please, remove $80,000 from my paycheck” so let’s keep the librarian thing between you and me. Seriously. This profession is rough.

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