What a wonderful weekend. Thanksgiving weekend is when Americans do what they do best: eat too much rich food and spend too much money on things they don't really need. Americans are addicted to food and commerce. I spent my weekend much the same. It's possible I had turkey in four different manifestations over four days. However, I avoided the malls and superstores. Why mix with the sweaty masses when I can buy almost everything I need online? Not all of my readers are as enamored of American culture as I am, though. Reading back through the comments for last week, I noticed this one: It's "not philistines who orchestrated the phenomenon - that makes it seem unintentional. Why would people suddenly start considering abstract higher education to be worthless? As you inferred, it's bad for business to have a population full of scholars. It's also bad for politicians because the more well-educated people are, the likelier they are to be actively critical. Disdain for and devaluation ...
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I'm writing this from the ancestral manse, where I plan to spend the next few days eating turkey, relaxing, having cocktails by the fireplace, eating leftover turkey, relaxing some more, and generally not doing anything. When it comes to the pace of life, I'm glad I'm a librarian and not, for example, an emergency room physician. I did think about med school once, but realized that if I couldn't dissect a frog without getting queasy dealing with bloody people was definitely out. And the good thing about being a librarian is, if you make a mistake, nobody dies. Heck, most of the time nobody even notices. As a librarian, it's also nice to feel wanted. Believe it or not, there are times when people actually want a librarian, and not some pale substitute, like a library worker who looks up your library record and makes fun of your reading choices during break time. For example, perhaps you've seen this editorial from Tulsa, making the case that their library should be run by a ...
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Last week a couple of readers sent me this article from Inside Higher Education on "reviving the adademic library." In it, Johann Neeem, a history professor at Western Washington University, claims that academic libraries are abandoning their core mission to provide access to books, journals, archives, and other nifty scholarly stuff. We are told "that across the country deans of libraries are giving up the fight and changing their mission rather than fighting to save an important academic institution. Rather than make clear why we need academic libraries, the library’s leaders are seeking instead to become vague learning environments which, when boiled down to their essence, are nothing more than computer labs with sofas and coffee." The professor also seems to be angry that these library leaders think the library is the center of campus and have the ridiculous idea that student learning and interaction can actually occur in libraries. "But, of ...
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I'm a little late in coming to this story about two library workers being fired for stupidity. In the past couple of weeks I've been so dazzled by other examples of stupidity in librarianship that it slipped past me. You're probably all kept up on your library news and this is stale stuff, but the story involves two women working for a public library in Kentucky who were supposedly trying to keep porn from children. One of the former library workers decided she wants to protect Kentucky's children from graphic novels. Considering the stuff children can probably see on the Internet at her library, maybe she should be more concerned with that problem. But then again, maybe she doesn't know about that Internet thing yet. She challenged the book (maybe the ALA got to add another tick mark to their list!), but the challenge didn't work, so she tried another strategy. According to the article: "It all started in the fall of 2008, and she is still doing it. The proof is in her ...
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When librarians turn to politics having nothing to do with library issues, they often look ridiculous. This is one of the main reasons I've always opposed the ALA getting involved in non-library issues. A library association speaking on library issues speaks with authority. On other issues, it just sounds like a blowhard. Decades ago various hippies and radicals and other intemperate librarians began infiltrating the ALA to try to use it as a mouthpiece for political radicalism on non-library issues. Most of them got co-opted and contained within the SRRT. The Regressive Librarians Guild is an even more radical group, but they're much too pure to be a part of the ALA. They've all been keeping much quieter in the last couple of years. I don't know if they're weary of their weak positions being ignored or are just all retiring. I say that because the newer generation of librarians doesn't seem as enthusiastic about the ALA speaking up on every controversial political issue around. I ...
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From Alaska, we get another depressing article on library woes, which asks the question, "Are local libraries in process of checking out?" Yes, that's bad, but at least there's nothing in the article about librarians breaking out of their shushing stereotypes. Library branches have cut back hours. The city has to choose between closing the library some or firing firefighters or something worse. Times is hard. The article does a pretty good job of laying out the issues, which is surprising in a news article about libraries. We hear nothing about stereotypes or the librarian shortage. Two things stuck out for me in particular. They're not related, but I want to mention them anyway. First, there was a statement by the Anchorage Mayor, Dan Sullivan, quoted in a portion about computers in libraries: "That the public library should be a place where the poor and unconnected can get online, learn and hunt for jobs is a common thread throughout national library ...
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