Maybe I’m just growing complacent in my old age, but this seems to be my week for not understanding what all the fuss is about. Is there something annoying going on in a library? I’ll let you decide for yourself. Let me give you the general picture before filling in the details. A Kind Reader sent a link to an invitation to participate in a “cataloging party” at a library. At the cataloging party, librarians and library school students are invited to come to the library, enjoy coffee and pizza and help with a large amount of cataloging that has to be done for a migration project. Kind Reader considers it a “cataloging sweatshop,” and comments, “I think I found another reason why libraries no longer hire librarians or don't replace them once they have retired.” To compound the offense, the same librarian in charge of the cataloging party recently bragged at a conference about doing part of this migration project through volunteer labor, saving $3,000 on consultants ...
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The Annoyed Librarian is in something of a pickle. Usually when Kind Readers send me tidbits about libraryland that annoy people, I can see immediately why they’re annoyed. The persistent low level annoyance so many librarians feel drives this blog. A Kind Reader sent me an exchange from the ALA Council listserv on Friday. The first thing I read was a response to an email with this subject heading: “RE: A question and a suggestion about the global warming issue.” Oh, no, I thought, what’s happening now? Is the ALA Council going to pass a resolution that the globe should stop warming? If so, the globe would be even less likely to listen than all the other groups who ignore the ALA. Here’s the opening: Dear Council: At the risk of setting off yet another firestorm, I have to ask, What On Earth does this issue have to do with the business of this library association? With the mission of the ALA organization and this Council? Don’t get me wrong; I believe that global ...
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Some website that seems to exist only to make lists of jobs has once again made a list of the “top 200 jobs” in the U.S. Librarian somehow made the list yet again, at #88. Here’s the profile:  88. Librarian Selects and organizes materials to make information available to the public. Overall Score: 571.00 Income: $55,158.00 Work Environment: 49.000 Stress: 10.000 Hiring Outlook: 3.58 It’s not that I’m ever surprised that Librarian makes lists like this. I’m always more surprised by how low Librarian ranks, and what ranks above it. For example, Sewage Plant Operator is the 87th job on the list, with a supposedly higher scoring work environment, but about $30,000 less in income. The only thing that makes sense is that the “hiring outlook” is a lot better, but how could that possibly make it a better job? Paralegal assistant is at #41. Could being a paralegal assistant be twice as good as being a librarian? That’s crazy! Hair Stylist makes the list at 83. ...
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I can’t figure out precisely what crazy shenanigans are going on in Soldotna, AK, but one thing’s for sure: some people there sure love their librarian. Rather, they love their former librarian and are protesting at her being fired. It's kind of touching to see so many people stand up for a librarian. The basic facts are that without giving a reason the city manager fired the public library director who had worked for the library for 28 years, and lots of people showed up at a city council meeting to protest. There are a lot of protests in the comments to the news article as well, with such deliciously small town comments like “First dumb move was to hire a new york lawyer to run Soldotna.” Those New York lawyers can’t catch a break, although another story on the firing indicated he'd been a lawyer in upstate New York, which is hardly the image conjured up by "New York lawyer." Not everyone is protesting the dismissal. One person described how the librarian in question was ...
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Somehow I missed The Slow Death of the American Author last week, a touching attack by Scott Turow on everything that doesn’t turn the reading experience into a cash making enterprise for authors. The problems are legion, we’re told. Pirates downloading illegal ebooks, presumably while saying “Arghhh!”; search engines that deliberately point searchers to the illegal content they want, because that couldn’t be done by machine or anything; publishers not paying authors the same royalties on ebooks as they do on hardbacks; libraries lending ebooks without even forcing people to come into the library to download them; and scholars who want to be able to use writing for educational purposes without having to pay each time. Darn them all! It’s a sad list that compares libraries with greedy publishers or downloaders of illegal ebooks. The problem? Devaluing their copyrights, or something like that. Authors practice one of the few professions directly protected in the ...
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It’s National Library Week, which I’m naturally very excited about. Or at least I would be if the sort of library I work in was actually acknowledged in any way during the celebrations. Actually, I still probably wouldn’t be, but it’s the principle of the thing. Here’s a brief history from the NLW fact sheet: First sponsored in 1958, National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country each April. It is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries and librarians and to promote library use and support. All types of libraries - school, public, academic and special - participate. If any academic or special libraries participate, the appropriate question is, good god why? They’re as invisible in the made up celebration as they are in ALA activities, American Libraries magazine, and anything else the ALA plasters its logo on. The sample press release even drops the ...
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