Job Posting: Frivolous Technologies Librarian (Annoyed Librarian Flea Library and Infotainment Center) Description: The Annoyed Librarian Flea Library and Infotainment Center (AFLIC) has an immediate opening for the newly created position of Frivolous Technologies Librarian. The AFLIC seeks a dynamic, enthusiastic, charismatic go-getter with healthy teeth and no unsightly rashes. The Frivolous Technologies Librarian will join our Library Technovangelist to create an absolutely state of the art waste of space. S/he will be allowed to spend vast resources desperately needed elsewhere on frivolous technologies that no one else in the library will ever use, including the patrons. Sample Duties: Purchase multiple iPads and experiment with them in the Frivolous Technology Center (formerly known as "the basement"). Create a library blog no one will ever read, aFacebook fan page no one will ever join, and a Twitter account no one will ever follow. (Other libraries have been ...
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I've just started looking at the ALA's 2010 State of American Libraries Report, and it is a wonder to behold. Partly, it shows that the ALA is finally getting serious about the state of libraries while the twopointopians are still engaging in the same frivolous activities they have been for years. As I noticed in The End of Silliness a couple of months ago, the ALA seems to have realized that feel-good stories about libraries and videogames weren't helping anything. Nor was coming across as defenders of child pornography with their wasted time and money fighting CIPA and DOPA, or passing silly resolutions. Instead, they seemed to be realizing that people support libraries for serious purposes, and no city would ever fund a library just to provide free DVDs and videogames. Now they notice that during the recession more people are using public libraries while their funding is simultaneously being cut or threatened just about everywhere in the country. As the economy has worsened . . ...
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I've been reviewing various commentary on last week's Computers in Libraries conference and had to wonder, why does anyone bother going to this thing? Surely we all know by now that there are computers in libraries, and there certainly doesn't seem to be anything new going on. My favorite bit was from the keynote speech, quoted by the Librarian in Black: "Trust is based on character, competence, confidence, credibility, consistency, and congruence." To which I could only say, how coincidental! And convenient! Trust couldn't possibly be based on anything not beginning with a "C"! Actually, that might not have been as catchy as another acronymical offering from that speech: "FOCUS: Flexible, Observable, Courageous, Useful, and Supportive." Awww...things like this make it so much easier for librarians to remember important stuff like this, at least those of us restricted to a 6th grade education. The strangest might have been a panel on "dead and ...
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The biggest news of last week - if we exclude the Icelandic volcano delaying flights all over Europe, the Chinese earthquake that killed or injured thousands of people, and Larry King's seventh divorce - was the announcement that the Library of Congress was going to waste our tax money archiving Twitter. According the the New York Times article covering this wasteful government spending, both Twitter and many historians think it's a great thing.The dominant ideology in history these days derides old style history as "elitist," and decades of academic historians have tried to find out how unimportant people in the past lived and died. This partly explains why nobody reads books by academic historians any more. Nobody really cares what unimportant people did. We're interested in people who have distinguished themselves from the herd in some way. Nobody cares about unimportant people now, either. That's why the unimportant people turn to Twitter hoping someone will pay ...
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Ahh, it's National Library Week again. It's bad enough having yet another fake holiday, but at least my mother or father or administrative assistant won't be expecting a card, which is good because I've been too busy celebrating NLW to dispatch my administrative assistant to buy herself a card and some chocolate. This year's theme is "Communists thrive @ your library," which really shows the nurturing spirit of the library, because communists don't tend to thrive in most places but they always do well @ your library. And what a time it's been. Because we at the Annoyed Librarian Flea Libary know that libraries are fun, essential, heavily used centers of the community, we felt it absolutely necessary to spend a lot of money promoting libraries in our community. We figured, what the heck. We're a bit strapped for cash, but there's a library-related tax referendum coming up and how would people know they needed to vote "Yes!" to libraries if we didn't blow their ...
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Last week someone commented on the post about school librarians asking whose side I was on. That answer should be obvious. I'm on the side of truth, justice, and the American way. Librarians are supposed to help people critically assess the comments they find on websites. That's what I was doing. The school librarian last week lamented that school librarians have to be their own propagandists, which is true. What's also true is that they haven't been very successful. If you keep up with school librarian news, you'd know that the situation in California isn't unique. When cutting education budgets, states all over the country often want to cut the libraries first, figuring that if the choice is between the librarians and the teachers, they'll keep the teachers. The threat of funding cuts is so common the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has a "Crisis Toolkit." They have a section of their website dedicated to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, where ...
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