Hamilton has ruined my life in a variety of different ways over the past few weeks including, but not limited to, impromptu sing-alongs, inspiring my mother’s apparent rap career, and my newfound love for not one, but two founding fathers of these here United States. It has truly been a struggle, but nothing—nothing—has been as tragically affected as my work life.
You see, I work at a library for a fairly large city. The local college has one of the best theater departments in the country, so we know when a new musical comes out and we know when it reaches the success that Hamilton has. It’s just how things are. There were some local Hamilton parties, people were checking out the soundtrack—usual things.
But then. One faithful day, while I was working in the back room, I found this in my returns:
THIS. BOOK. HAS CAUSED ME SO MUCH STRIFE. If you were to scroll through our library catalog, you would see somewhere around twenty Alexander Hamilton biographies. He was, after all, crucial to our country’s founding, so he’s gonna have a book or two. However. Those other books have, in all likelihood, not been checked out in years. Those other books are lucky to have holds placed on them—are lucky to even come off the shelf.
But. This book.
This book (and it’s copies) has been checked out a total of sixty-three times in the past three months. There are currently forty-two holds on this specific biography. Do you know how rare it is for a biography to have more than a few holds on it? And even when it doeshappen, it’s usually Amy Poehler’s book or someone with an active twitter account. BUT NO. We’ve had to order new copies of this founding father biography, just to accommodate our patrons. I have checked it in at least once every shift for the past week. Patrons—teenaged patrons—have stopped me to ask if we carry “the Hamilton book.” Just the other day a little girl, no older than seven, asked me if I liked Aaron Burr.
I don’t know how to handle this. My commuting co-workers don’t understand why teenagers are asking them for an Alexander Hamilton biography. We can’t keep up. WHAT FORCE OF THE UNIVERSE ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN?
I checked the last copy in our system out on term loan to read it over the holidays. We have 6 copies across 11 libraries and all of them have multiple holds. I live in Canada. This is insane.
