Lemme tell you what I need, after a day of trying to figure out what patrons want/need, what archivists 100 years from now will applaud me for keeping, and how to use limited resources to do the most good. I need cat macros with animals talking in horribly misspelt and grammatically challenged ways. I need that Shortpacked comic where Batman says “I’m Batman” like 13 times in 6 panels. I need that Wii game where you race the cows. In short–I need entertainment. Just as badly as someone with less education than me needs it–dealing with customers all day is the same, whether you’re doing it in a library environment, or retail, or a car shop. Having your brain turned to total mush by school or work or homemaking is having your brain turned to total mush. And if I can help relieve some of that burden by assisting a patron in killing 42 zombies in 30 seconds via The Umbrella Chronicals, I’ll be more than happy to assist. And maybe, while they’re checking that out, they’ll see other useful things the library has, and I’ll have to work that much less to advocate the usefulness of our “enrichement” materials to someone who would have thought that the library wasn’t for them, except a friend told them that we rent videos/games.

There’s also a level of presumption that there is no value in “entertainment.” I believe that entertainment is valuable for entertainment’s sake–especially if other people’s work days are as brain-melting as mine, sometimes. But there’s larger cultural value in entertainment. If we look at it from a purely pop culture sense, entertainment is a reflection of where we are now as a society and how we wish society really was. That’s a pretty powerful lens through which to view, say, The Cosby Show or, say, The Sarah Connor Chronicals, or Batman or anything else that appears, on the surface, to be a waste of time. Pop culture is still part of our culture.

We are going through the exact same situations as you are – the conflict of getting people in and also providing “improving” literature. We have standards set which are generally around number of visitors and number of issues – not how many lives we enrich! BUT, I like to think that if I get someone in through the door on their terms then they might just discover something that they werent expecting. For instance, we run Teen Zones with PS2s, DJ workshops etc – we have had a number of kids come into these (because libraries are not cool to come into when you are 14)and who have then moved on – they become comfortable coming through the doors and sometimes come in at other times, read books etc…I would prefer to catch a couple of these kids whilst offering non-core activities than miss out on the chance of getting these kids at all!

First read “Librarianship: the Best Career.”

Now this.

Wow. Hello new best friend.

:D

Today’s stupidity is merely a product of an era were everything can be taken for granted, so it seems.

It’s called stupidity.

The rise and fall of humanity is well seen through “The Good Earth” – in that image you see how the poor become rich and how the rich become poor. The simple matter is that the rich do not want to heed the warnings by those who are not as well off. In their position they have both power and comfort, yeilding them nothing more then complacency and arrogance. The poor thin man, however, lacks either the arrogance or complacency that comes so well when you can simply buy your way out of every problem that comes your way.

You may cry about my Solution merely being the result of a Rat Cage Experiment with neither rational nor historical significance. And yet it is upon the events of human history that I made my claim.

The second world war, for instance, transformed the Youth of the Jewish Population; no longer were they to sit around and wait for some magical messiah to come forth and rebuild Jerusalem and reinstall the nation of Israel, as the synagogues preached. After the war, they went where they could and became educated in all matters of survival, including politics and National defense. They formed their own Federation, raised the funds to create the state of Israel, and put in place an army that has withstood up to five opposing armies simultaneously and only in six days.

Great events have the impact of naturally removing those who are either unable or unwilling to confront change by changing themselves, and do nothing more then stand in the way of those who are actively seeking real solutions to real problems. Eleven libraries in Boston are slated to close; state budgets are projecting historically record setting deficits. Yes indeed, it would appear that the next famine-bearing drought might be striking Librarians quite soon as more and more libraries either cease to be or cease to be as often. But how can libraries protest these closures?