I recorded my initial reaction to Mr. Lowry’s column this morning over at LISNews and thought I’d share it with you, in case you hadn’t stumbled across it.

After all these years, it looks like I’ll finally live out my dream of joining a Greek organization. No, not the Omega Mu’s, the Beta Phi Mu’s. That’s right, apparently the UIUC GSLIS faculty has deemed me worthy of being part of the renowned (had you ever heard of it?) international LIS honor society. Not that this is a particularly unique distinction – up to 25% of each graduating class can be nominated – but it’s nice to think I made a good impression in the two short (yet long enough) semesters I was in grad school. [cue announcer voice] “And a lifetime membership to the national organization is available for the low, low price of $50! Join now and we’ll give you a one year membership to your school’s chapter…absolutely free! So what are you waiting for? Pick up the phone and join Beta Phi Mu today!” No seriously, it’s cool. I’m honored.

I’m sure this story is going to be all over the LIS blogosphere, but I can’t help myself this time. It looks like OCLC, apparent owners of the Dewey Decimal System, are suing The Library Hotel, accusing the hotel of trademark infringement for their egregious use of DDC. Here’s an article about it: Newsday.com – Library catalog system owner sues book-based New York hotel

And here’s a quote from the article: “I would term it straight-out trademark infringement,” said Joseph R. Dreitler, a trademark lawyer with the Columbus office of Jones Day, which represents the Online center.

“A person who came to their Web site and looked at the way (the hotel) is promoted and marketed would think they were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system.”

OK, first of all, the average website visitor will be surprised to learn that the DDC has an owner at all. In fact, I think most librarians-in-training are surprised to learn that. Then the aforementioned visitor will be surprised to learn that our profession, working so hard for the propagation of the public domain, is largely under the thumb of a corporation (calling itself nonprofit) that goes out of its way to maintain its singular domination over a system of representing/organizing knowledge. They won’t be surprised, however, to see that the library profession is represented by classification militants with a penchant for bad publicity and an ability to squeeze the fun right out of any good idea. Just the message we need to be sending…

Well, in another astonishing development in my very brief writing career, my Webjunction article was featured in the Clips and Pointers section of this month’s D-Lib. I am humbled, again.

Also in Clips and Pointers, there’s a link to the Music Information Retrieval Research Bibliography (MIRBIB), which happens to be a project of my friend, UIUC GSLIS Professor J. Stephen Downie. MIR is a really interesting multidisciplinary pursuit that concerns, amongst other things, constructing music as searchable data and developing methodologies to search and access that data. Check out this book chapter Downie wrote (warning: .pdf) that provides a nice introduction to the field.

Following up on my last post, here’s a more reasonable (and favorable) occupational outlook analysis in a law.com article entitled Library Economics 101:

“Staff costs include permanent staff, contractors and temporary help that may be called on through the year to assist with particular projects. Although some predicted that desktop access to information would eliminate the need for library staff, just the opposite has proved true. Educated, trained, and experienced staff members are needed more than ever to review and choose electronic products, train users, select content and update intranets, enter and manipulate data in library software, provide sophisticated research services, and handle the many other tasks necessary to operate a high-tech library.”

Link courtesy of ResourceShelf.

About.com’s Career Planning section offers an overview of careers in library science this week, culled from the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Most of the info will be familiar to those of us already inside the profession. This passage, however, should prove alarming:

Employment of librarians is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations over the 2000-10 period. The increasing use of computerized information storage and retrieval systems continues to contribute to slow growth in the demand for librarians. Computerized systems make cataloguing easier, which library technicians now handle. In addition, many libraries are equipped for users to access library computers directly from their homes or offices. These systems allow users to bypass librarians and conduct research on their own.

These last few sentences should confirm all of your worst fears. Users have been “allowed” to bypass librarians for years now, but it’s never been the best approach, nor will it be anytime soon. Will anyone ever comprehend this?

At least the host of the Career Planning section seems to have some semblance of a clue: “If you think all librarians wear their hair in buns and walk around in their comfortable shoes saying “shhhh” you’ve been watching too many movies. Librarians are professionals who are experts at finding all sorts of information and presenting it in a form their clients can utilize.”

I’m amazed that almost two months after initiating discussion about the now infamous librarian action figure, the debate goes on.

I felt the need to respond to one of the comments, so excuse my use of this forum to do so.

Here is what was said by someone named Tiare:

“While I respect your offense, I object to you complaining how stereotypical the action figure looks. The action figure was modeled after a 100% real and authentic librarian. If you have any problems with how she looks, please go ahead and talk to Nancy Pearl about her style choices. She really wears spectacles and that is one of her real outfits she chose to wear when molded.”

Now I clearly state in the original post, “I’m certainly not offended, just disappointed.” I just hate it when people don’t read what you’ve written before they comment on it. That offends me far more than disagreeing with my perspective possibly could.

As far as objecting to my complaining, well, this is my house. I’ll complain if I want. Objection overruled.

So what was I “complaining” about anyway? It’s not so much that they chose a stereotypically-fashioned librarian to be the model, since that decision makes some degree of sense. [I'm not sure why Tiare felt the need to inform me that Nancy was a "real and authentic" librarian; I made that pretty clear in my post, even mentioning her position. I also really don't care about her personal stylistic choices. That's not the point.] My complaint was that they could have done so much more with the action figure, simply by coupling that archetypal image with a cooler action: the ejectable hair bun rather than the shushing motion.

Nancy is an dynamic, innovative librarian and it would have been funnier (and more action-packed) to let that show (although she doesn’t actually have a hair bun as far as I can tell, but what the hell, it’s an action figure, not a statue). I just felt that it would have done more for fun AND more for recasting stereotypes. That’s it.

Anyway, Nancy will be in the area soon and I’ll be sure not to ask her about fashion, contact lenses or action figures.

Well, I’ve been home for two days now and I’m still catching up on the news. There were about 3000 headlines in my aggregator, which I’ve whittled down to about 900. By the time I get home tonight, there will likely be about 400 more.

Looks like lots of good things happened in my short absence from the blogosphere:

1. My dmoz LIS Weblog category has been fully updated and now shows 277 entries. Thanks to Steven for noticing/promoting.

2. My response to the Distributed Library Project was given linkage by Jessamyn and subsequently Rory. Thanks!

3. My WebJunction article was mentioned in the most recent Internet Resources Newsletter. Again, thanks. I should also take this opportunity to thank Walt for his gracious write-up of the same article in the latest Cites and Insights (pdf).

4. I learned that two of my fellow Kentucky librarian bloggers, Catherine Lavallee-Welch of Englib and Anna Creech, the eclectic librarian, will be presenting at this year’s Kentucky Library Association conference, which is conveniently located in Louisville. I’m definitely hoping to attend (perhaps making use of the aforementioned funding opportunity).