“Movers and Shakers” is a regular award the Library Journal has conjured to apparently honor (typically) left-wing political activists in the library world. We here at the Underground Library Free Thinkers Association hereby announce our own prize (worth nothing), with a little different emphasis. You’ve no doubt heard the term “book worm,” a term of endearment benevolently assigned to those who are avid readers. We’d like to spin off from that worm motif a bit. ULFTA is creating a “Library Nightcrawler of the Decade” honor. The long timeframe underscores our reluctance to subjectively deem someone the “best” at anything, and the fact that we’ll need years to assemble the many viable candidates for consideration.

What can best be said about a nightcrawler? Well, it is a favorite of fishermen and has value in aerating dirt. Transcending any complicated gender issues, each one has both male and female organs. A nightcrawler doesn’t maintain its own body heat, but absorbs the temperature of its surroundings. It is afraid of light and, significant to our esteemed honor, a nightcrawler is blind.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of our Nightcrawler candidates are former “Movers and Shakers” at the Library Journal and award-winners in other institutional library contexts. And as Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm opines about worms generally, “Worms can turn your garbage into gold.”