DYLAN M. HOLLIDAY  

After being directed to a tucked-away office in Radford University’s McConnell Library, I was greeted by a Mrs. Katelyn Burton, a librarian at the university.

 

“The common stereotype with librarians is that we’re usually quiet and shushing students for being loud,” said Burton.

 

“But here, we usually have students come to our office asking us to keep it down or to put in headphones!”

 

Of course, she was referring to the music that would come from the turntable sitting on Craig Arthur’s – her fellow librarian’s – desk.  She told me that on breaks, Arthur would usually be in the office sharpening his chops on turntables.

 

Craig Arthur isn’t your average librarian.  If he isn’t working at the library, he’s most likely DJing for an event in the area, adventuring as far as Virginia Tech, hosting a weekly show on Tech’s college radio station, WUVT.

 

Even with this second life, he tries to integrate music into scholarly work to reinforce his lesson.

 

“We try to move it [the teaching] beyond ‘If you don’t cite your sources, you’ll get kicked out of school’,” Arthur said.

 

“We encourage students to bring inspirations in, chop them up and put our own spin on it.”

 

This is a sentiment that Craig Arthur learned in his years in education, putting his own passions into scholarly work.

 

You can catch Craig Arthur, AKA DJ Cutty Sharp, every Monday at 9 p.m. on WUVT 90.7 FM.