Among the comments to the last post this one intrigued me: In no other profession do you see such goofy foolishness as in the librarian profession. You don't see doctors, lawyers, politicians, even hamburger flippers making pedestrian videos in an effort to make their profession look cool or hip or relevant. I work in a public library and everyday I know we're relevant. I don't need some churlish stuffed-shirt in hip clothing to tell me how to be a professional. I don't encounter many churlish stuffed-shirts in hip clothing, but it's quite an image. I'm curious, though, whether the first statement is accurate: "In no other profession do you see such goofy foolishness as in the librarian profession." My experience with most other professions is limited to friends and family. Outside of librarianship, the profession I'm most familiar with is the academic one. It is indeed hard to imagine the average professor of just about anything putting out some of the "goofy ...
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In this crazy world of social media and excitable librarians, often enough it's a YouTube video that helps separate the wheat from the chaff in librarianship, or at least the serious from the ridiculous. They're Rorschach tests for librarians. Where some librarians see "enthusiasm" or "cuteness," others see "stupidity" or "total embarrassment to the profession." Guess which side of the divide I fall into on this one: What digital natives want from their library. In this, we hear from a genuine digital native! Well, sort of. I've transcribed the video, just in case you can't stand watching it for the entire minute. I wouldn't blame you. I watched it so you don't have to. It depicts a very cute 3-year-old girl holding a book and delivering the following plausible and impromptu monologue: "Hi, I'm Abby...and I love libraries...and books...and storytime...but I'm a digital native...and I want an on-line library...that learns what I ...
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Am I the only one who found this story inadvertently amusing? It's about a 17-year-old German girl whose best-selling, literary-prize-nominated novel is in part plagiarized from another novel. Partly what's amusing is the defense. I can't tell if it's the journalist of the novelist who's confused about terminology here. Best-selling teenage novelist Helene Hegemann rejected accusations of plagiarism in her debut novel “Axolotl Roadkill” on Tuesday, after it emerged she had taken slabs of text from an anonymous author and blogger. The 17-year-old shooting star of the German literary scene admitted she had taken “in total, about a page” from the underground authorAiren’s novel ''Strobo,'' but insisted she had not stolen the material but rather simply neglected to properly acknowledge it. The journalist says she rejects accusations of plagiarism, but what she seems to reject is the accusation of theft. She's guilty of both, though it's not clear to me ...
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It's not a good time to be in the education business, which to some extent most librarians are. The subjects librarians teach may vary, from "information literacy" to "Hulu," but being in the information business also means being in the education business. The education business is floundering. Public libraries are closing or cutting back hours and services. Public schools are getting rid of their school librarians and whatever remains of art, music, or languages they once had. Outside of rich suburbs, public schools themselves seem in decline. Rich private universities are firing people left and right. Public universities seem doomed, with the best of them, the Michigans and the Berkeleys, becoming more like privates than publics. The immediate reason is obvious: funding cuts. Because of the recession and the decline in tax revenue, states and communities have less money to spend, and they're cutting back on inessentials like education. For those who follow ...
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I'll come right out and say it. I want things on the web for free, especially my news. If I encounter a news site that even wants me to register, I think twice about it. But I don't want free just because I'm cheap. I like free because it vastly increases the amount of news and commentary I can access. Only rich people could afford to subscribe to all the journals and magazines I read. It's why I was a little concerned at a couple of recent announcements. One was that the New York Times will be putting much of its content behind a pay wall next year. A few years ago they tried that for their "Times Select" opinion pieces, which they tried to charge $50 a year for. My reaction was to stop reading the NYT until the experiment failed, which I knew it would. It was hardly worth paying to read their opinion writers when given any subject I could tell you what David Brooks or Maureen Dowd or Thomas Friedman had to say about it. I realize that the NYT has to support its ...
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School systems and libraries don't buy all sorts of books they deem age-inappropriate. The ALA, of course, considers such non-purchases censorship, despite the widespread availability of the books. In their propaganda about banned books, they slide down the slippery slope from challenges to bans to censorship. If they're right, and of course they aren't, then the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary was censored, at least for a few days. From a California news article: The Menifee Union School District is forming a committee to review whether dictionaries containing the definitions for sexual terms should be permanently banned from the district's classrooms, a district official said Friday. The 9,000-student K-8 district this week pulled all copies of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary after an Oak Meadows Elementary School parent complained about a child stumbling across definitions for "oral sex." The decision was made without consultation with the district's ...
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