Down the street from the library in Deadwood, South Dakota, the peace is shattered several times a day by the noise of gunfire -- just noise.The guns shoot blanks, part of an historic re-creation to entertain the tourists. Deadwood is a far tamer town than it used to be, and it has been for a good long while.
Its library, that emblem of civilization, is already more than a hundred years old, a Carnegie brick structure, small and dignified, with pillars outside and neat wainscoting in.
Description:
It's a pleasure to read books about your chosen profession. As a librarian, I was completely engrossed by Marilyn Johnson's in-depth look at all things librarian in This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All.
Sound boring? Wrong! Believe me, there is a lot more to librarians than the stereotypes portrayed in film and television. The librarians who Johnson interviews are a diverse population of individuals dedicated to providing information while protecting privacy, even if it means standing up to the federal government. There are cybrarians involved with computer-based research and tools, reference staff who answer questions more accurately than any Internet search engine, and librarians who create avatars and set up libraries for meeting spaces and questions in Second Life.
These are people who have launched Banned Book Week, One Book One Community (where an entire city reads, discusses and participates in activities around a specific book), and Radical Reference to provide online information to activists, journalists, and organizations. In This Book Is Overdue Johnson describes librarians as:
This Book Is Overdue is chock full of other great stories of unusual librarians, tattooed librarians, the 89 libraries in the NYPL system, a dog library, the Digital Experience Group (to create a site to make online library resources accessible and readers could comment on anything), what materials should be saved in libraries, and so much more.
Sound boring? Wrong! Believe me, there is a lot more to librarians than the stereotypes portrayed in film and television. The librarians who Johnson interviews are a diverse population of individuals dedicated to providing information while protecting privacy, even if it means standing up to the federal government. There are cybrarians involved with computer-based research and tools, reference staff who answer questions more accurately than any Internet search engine, and librarians who create avatars and set up libraries for meeting spaces and questions in Second Life.
These are people who have launched Banned Book Week, One Book One Community (where an entire city reads, discusses and participates in activities around a specific book), and Radical Reference to provide online information to activists, journalists, and organizations. In This Book Is Overdue Johnson describes librarians as:
natural intelligence operatives....with all the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organizational and analytical aptitude, and discretion.It has not been an easy road for librarians. Johnson details ongoing struggles with computerization of data, fighting the FBI to protect the privacy of readers' choices, creating creating remote access to collections and reference services, and dealing with the dangers and demands of peculiar in-library readers. Throughout all challenges, these individuals have stood tall.
The profession that had once been the quiet gatekeeper to discreet palaces of knowledge is now wrestling a raucous, multiheaded, madly multiplying beast of exploding information and information delivery systems.Johnson provides plenty of quirky fun librarians face daily. There's the reference question one librarian received for "a book on bootyism" that couldn't be answered to the reader's satisfaction by Google. Turns out that, under skilled questioning, the reader actually was looking for a book on "Buddhism," not bootyism. Librarians are known for their humor that is "quirky, sardonic, and full of wordplay" as well as "self-mockery" as demonstrated by the elaborate, precision book-cart drills for competitions at conferences.
This Book Is Overdue is chock full of other great stories of unusual librarians, tattooed librarians, the 89 libraries in the NYPL system, a dog library, the Digital Experience Group (to create a site to make online library resources accessible and readers could comment on anything), what materials should be saved in libraries, and so much more.
A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a '"true reflection of our history," whether it's a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future.And that is why I was a librarian and why I love the concept and changing reality of libraries. I hope this book will inspire you in the same way about the people who preserve and make available the world's information.
Who can we trust? In a world where information itself is a free-for-all, with traditional news sources going bankrupt and publishers in trouble, we need librarians more than ever.
Happy reading.
Fred
Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Hanagame, Josh. The World's Strongest Librarian
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Hanagame, Josh. The World's Strongest Librarian
Memoirs of a 6' 7" public librarian who incidentally has Tourette;s Syndrome. Funny, compassionate, and challenging as readers follow Hanagame's struggles and triumphs in his personal life and librarianship. (previously reviewed here)
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