Noting that "librarians perform feats of near-Olympian prowess every day as they lug books back and forth, tame tortuous piles of information and sustain long hours and complicated reference requests," the Smithsonian magazine reported on the University of Dayton's Library Olympics, which was held earlier this summer. Many libraries hold similar competitions.
The librarians competed in events like " 'journal Jenga' (stacking bound periodicals as high as possible and jumping out of the way when they collapsed. Then they faced off in a circuit of different events, including balancing bound journals on their heads, running a book cart through a twisty course, and tossing journals toward a target.... Brains had a place next to all that brawn, too, as librarians participated in a tricky speed sorting event in which they had to put books in order by their Library of Congress call number. To top it all off, they ran around campus finding objects that corresponded to different LOC call numbers. The winning team made off with the medal by a single point."
