Between the Lines: July Member Spotlight

Geo Flores

Collections & Resource Management Librarian – McLennan Community College

1. What inspired you to become a librarian?

On a field training exercise with the army, I thought hard about what I wanted to do when I left the military. Librarian was one of the jobs I listed. When I got back from the field, I researched the jobs on my list and learned that music librarian was a job. Having my Master of Music already, I thought “I’m halfway through the door.” By the time I was back in the world, I was practically giddy getting to work on my MLS.

2. What is an innovative practice at your library/organization (current or former) would you like to share with others?

I created a graphic novel and manga collection at my library, and with it an original classification schema. I presented it at TLA and ALA 2026. The lack of uniformity in graphic novels classification and shelf-listing always frustrated me, so I wanted something that was built specifically with the needs of Graphic Novel & Manga shelf-listing in mind.

3. If you could have dinner with three authors (living or dead), who would they be and why?

• Mary Shelley because Frankenstein is my favorite book.
• George RR Martin because he seems like a fun guy to talk sci-fi and fantasy with.
• Blind date with an author. If I picked only authors I like, I’d never learn anything new. I’d like to have dinner with an author I don’t know and see what I could learn from them.

4. What are you reading right now?

I’m a US Soccer fan watching the World Cup on home soil, so I’ve been reading a few soccer books. My personal favorite was The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts by Leander Schaerlaeckens.

It is an excellent history of the U.S. men’s national soccer program interspersed with features on the Americans playing at the 2026 World Cup. In fiction, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky has now cemented his place as one of my favorite current authors. As in his other works Tchaikovsky excels at exploring how non-human intelligences might think and experience the world around them.

5. What is your most memorable Texas Library Association experience?

You know that thing where you’ve seen a word written a billion times, but you’ve never actually heard it out loud and you don’t really think about it until you’re confronted with having to speak it for the first time in casual conversation?

Well, Mychal Threets stood in line with me at TLA one year (pre-Reading Rainbow revival) and not being into social media and having only ever read about him, I said “Oh hi! Are you Mee-shawl Threets?” He corrected me that it was pronounced like Michael and I swallowed my embarrassment long enough to get a selfie and bother him no further. It was great.

6. Advice to new librarians?

Don’t let romanticized, nostalgic notions of librarianship blind you to the reality of your work. Weeding is essential, most of your collection lives on a server or in the cloud, social skills are a must, and every niche of librarianship (cataloging, archiving, reference work, subject librarianship, etc.) is going to have important aspects that don’t conform to that idealized vision of librarianship. Don’t shy away from those things but lean into them.

Librarianship will never look like that again if it ever did, and you’ll get a lot more out of the profession if you push librarianship forward professionally and live out your librarianship fantasy on your own time (like I do).

7. Share your hobbies, hidden talents, or anything people might not know about you.

After several years of writing essays, research, and other miscellany, for school or work, I realized that I was now an exceedingly competent writer on a technical level. In October 2025, I decided to try my hand at my old childhood love, creative writing. I am proud to say that my first mature short story was published in Kreatif Magazine in January 2026 and that I was a finalist in The Writer’s Workout Fiction Potluck competition in June 2026, though I did not place. I’m very excited to see how far I can take my writing.

8. Please finish this sentence. “I am a TLA member because…”

I like knowing there is a local community of librarians to continually teach and learn from.