Comments on: Gaming with the Very Special Librarians

By: Mr. Kat

Mr. Kat — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:29:45 +0000

Soren, you're right; Google is not the Great Answer source.

The Great Answer source is of course Wikipedia. Have you seen some of the pages lately? And the citations!!!

By: marvinteller

marvinteller — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:26:26 +0000

Oh yeah…and librarians are SO much more superior to everyone else in the whole entire world—except for the professors half of us once wanted to be…but let’s not talk about them…they’re so narrow- minded anyway. It’s much better being a generalist, right?

By: marvinteller

marvinteller — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:22:41 +0000

Hippeman, I bet you haven’t touched as many lives as you think you have. When your accountant saves you from going to jail…that’s public service, man.
Aren’t you supposed to love everyone the same and want to help them follow their bliss? I am not sure if your post was a joke or for reals, man. I dunno…I guess everyone should become a public librarian…even though we are working DIRECTLY for the government and for the people who work for the Man.

By: marvinteller

marvinteller — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:11:48 +0000

I always use exclamation points when writing emails to my supervisors. It is super important! To make your ENTHUSIASM come across real big!

By: soren faust

soren faust — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:53:43 +0000

patron-ized, To clarify, I was using hyperbole to get across the point that Google is not the Great Answer to all information needs.

By: Happily Anonymous

Happily Anonymous — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:00:24 +0000

patron-ized, I don’t understand why you seem to both criticise the AL for whining and bring up the same points re banned books week etc. Also, there are multiple issues blended together in your rants.
1. Librarians grouching in blogs- Librarians, like everyone else get stressed at work and seem to be turning to blogs as ways to vent. I would hope that people would try not to mix their explicit professional communications (eg the director’s blog linked to library page) with their more personal griping. (try to bear in mind though that in the director’s whine about the bike rack there was no identifying information, and whilst it could have been put more professionally I don’t know that I’d be terribly upset if I’d been one of the non-rack using riders.) However, I don’t think it is possible to assume that just because people whine in personal, anonymous or pseudonymous formats that they are necessarily rude or unprofessional in their work and interaction with patrons.
2. Obnoxious Librarians – there are no doubt many of these, as librarians are people and there are plenty of obnoxious people around. I personally haven’t seen any evidence of greater levels of rudeness in librarians than elsewhere, and most librarians in my experience are in the job because they like helping people and think it is important (it certainly isn’t the money). There are wider social issues regarding increased cultural acceptance and expectation of selfishness and self-righteousness, but these are not restricted to librarians or patrons or the interactions between them.
3.I take issue with the concept that people don’t appreciate libraries and reject librarians, but this is something which varies with populations and no doubt many factors interact even when true.

By: MLIS student

MLIS student — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:16:41 +0000

I am a month and a half into my first semester in a highly-ranked MLIS program. It is one of the dullest experiences of my life so far. I think I will finish up the degree just for the hell of it, but after that I am going to law school.

By: patron-ized

patron-ized — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:12:40 +0000

"it seems to me that you're caught up in the Pollyanna, highly naive view that the Internet will solve all the problems of the world. Please, save the Utopian thinking for the far leftists out there; you're starting to sound like one of them."

Huh? What problems?

By: HippieMan

HippieMan — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:16:32 +0000

Libertarians are for suckers.

By: liberalgirl

liberalgirl — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:15:33 +0000

Yes, I used to work for Bill Clinton.