What a weekend! I feel so proud and happy I almost don't want to think about libraries. Finally, the nation is restored and middle class white people like me can exercise our civil rights. It's about time! This doesn't make all librarians happy, though. Sometimes, I just think librarians need something to complain about. I understand their frustration. I need things to complain about to, so as usual I’ll complain about librarians. Last week, we who follow Libraryland news noticed the JSTOR kerfuffle, well documented in this article from Inside Higher Education. Though its search features are as reassuringly clunky and 1980s-retro as ever, JSTOR has a new interface that is making some librarians just plain angry. JSTOR now shows search results from the entire JSTOR collection rather than just from the modules of JSTOR to which a given library happens to subscribe, so students at smaller libraries see a bunch of citations with no links to full text. This, apparently, is traumatic ...
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When skimming the library-related news, I came upon bit after bit about the “death of the book.” Everyone from Nicholas Negroponte to Jeff Bezos to every over-excitable librarian who wants to seem profound is predicting it. Jeff Bezos told us this summer that Kindle books outsold hardcover books for the first time this year, and predicts they’ll outsell paperbacks by the end of next year. At first, we weren't told how many of each were sold or how the sales of both were dwarfed by paperback sales. He also didn't bother to point out the very obvious pricing differences, either. A question critical, informationally literate librarians might ask is, Why would anyone pay attention to anything Jeff Bezos says about ebooks? It’s not like he doesn’t have a very obvious agenda: plugging his proprietary ebook reader. It’s not like he’s some neutral trend analyst. And yet, Negroponte cites Bezos' claim when predicting the death of the physical book. I find it amusing and ...
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Last week someone commented to the effect that one of the many things I didn’t know about public libraries was that there were people there doing real research.  The comment in part: Then, there is another class of people who use the public library for research purposes, because they have no access to the ivory tower libraries with their superior clientele wiping their noses, getting tintinitis from their ipods and wearing their tattoos like honor badges. If you notice, as I did, that the comment drips with resentment, it won’t surprise you to learn that it’s by a public librarian who couldn’t find full time work in academic libraries. Maybe the problem wasn’t the lack of available jobs, but the attitude. But I digress. Whether all, or even most, universities and colleges could be called “ivory towers” is seriously open to debate, but I’m certain there are people with serious research needs or reading interests trying to find intellectual sustenance at their ...
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A kind reader forwarded a listserv conversation about moving from public to academic libraries. It seems some public librarian out there would like to make the transition, but has heard it’s difficult. Many thoughts spring to mind when I see this question. First of all, does anyone ever try to go the opposite route? I’ve seen and heard discussions for years about librarians wanting to move from public to academic libraries, but never the other way around. I don’t know of any academic librarians who’d want to work in a public library. Why might that be? For most of the public, for a large portion of the profession, and for groups like the ALA, public libraries are the only libraries that exist. That odd belief is behind any grandiose statements about the importance of libraries, or, worse, The Library. “The Library provides something for everyone. The Library is the cornerstone of Democracy. The Library is Blah Blah Blah because Everyone Can Use It.” I guess ...
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I was trying to look on the bright side of the recession, to point my feet to the sunny side of the street, to not worry and be happy, and all the other hippy-dippy, feel-good, perky things that stupid people do because they can’t face reality. For example, in a recession, jobs are more scarce, and the greater competition means that the better and more qualified people end up with the jobs. That’s a good thing for everyone except the worse and less qualified people. In librarianship, this should mean that the best and the brightest are getting the jobs. I know there are a lot of librarians and library school graduates out there who have had a hard time finding jobs for years, but having seen a lot of resumes and cover letters in my day, and heard about many more, I can say with some confidence that the good librarians get good jobs eventually, often commensurate with their abilities and talents. Though the ALA and library schools have done there best to over-recruit into ...
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Apparently, librarianship has “social media celebrities,” and one library-related blogger has kindly linked to a blog post that helps social media “celebrities” and the companies they work for realize they need each other. It’s introduced: “Read it if you’ve got a Facebook star or celebrity blogger on staff (and I know many library bloggers who have this status in our field – You know who you are).” Wink, wink! Would anybody think it mean of me to say that this is utterly ridiculous? However, it’s a great reminder that many in our profession believe that there are celebrity librarians and continue to think libraries have something in common with profit-making businesses. First of all, librarianship doesn’t have social media “celebrities.” Pick any supposedly well known “Facebook star” or “celebrity blogger,” and you can be pretty sure that person is well known strictly within a smallish subset of one profession. After all, if most librarians ...
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