Well, this is an interesting job!

Christy Karpinski is the digital librarian and museum manager at Busy Beaver’s Button Museum in Chicago, IL. As we enter the political season, we see all of the candidate’s buttons prominently displayed. Christy has the unique job of archiving all of those individual buttons. As the Button Museum and also its online presence grew, Christy transitioned into her current position.

The Button Museum was “created to show how people commemorated noteworthy times in their lives by creating and collecting these wearable mementos. The words, artwork, printing style, color, and size were the final result of a vision they wanted to communicate or be a part of,” according to Joel and Christen Carter, the brother/sister button team. The museum now has 9,000 different pinback buttons on display.

American Libraries magazine article on Christy

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/zrxw7dk, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0