Here’s a quote to remind us all about the uphill battle that is librarianship:

“”Libraries are not safe places, and the reason for that is there are ideas to be found,” Bookman said.”

I don’t think further comment is necessary, but here’s a link to the article from which this progressive statement came, courtesy of LISNews:
DenverPost.com – Sex-education book won’t be banned at library in Weld County

Michael Farrelly shares why you should Spend the Winter in Your Library.

“Bundle up the family and get out of the house to a place of education and fun and warm, warm rooms. You can let the little angelic hellions run rampant for a bit while you peruse an art book from Italy, a place where the only snow is for skiing and cold means needing a light jacket.”

Anyone happen to catch Boston Public tonight?

Interesting storyline: The Assistant Principal tries to track down porn sites that kids are checking out on the library’s computers. In the process, he discovers that someone has been visiting Al-Qaeda’s website. Under the auspice of doing the right thing to protect his students, the Principal contacts the FBI, who arrive at the school prepared to investigate. With predictable racial profiling, the lone Arab male student is interrogated and admits to visiting the site. He speaks credibly of his desire to learn about his culture and why his people have so much hatred for the USA.

It’s not long before the word gets out and the kids begin their own brand of terror on the boy and his sister. By the end, the father has pulled his kids out of the school and the Principal gives a predictably moving sermon to the student body showing that they are the real terrorists.

I thought it was noteworthy the way they portrayed the FBI’s anti-terror investigations as creating more problems than solutions. And of course, I was pleased to see one teacher demonstrate outrage at the privacy violations that would clearly compromise future library usage (Huzzah!).

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.

Warning: This post is so long that I have, for the first time, employed the Extended Entry option. Read on…

There’s a thread on Slashdot today that promotes something called the Distributed Library Project. The basic premise is that Bay Area people create accounts and list their collections for other’s perusal. If the potential borrower and owner can coordinate times, items can be checked out.

Here’s the “What is the DLP?” blurb from the project’s site:

“The Distributed Library Project is an experiment in sharing information and building community in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Unfortunately, the traditional library system doesn’t do much to foster community. Patrons come and go, but there is very little opportunity to establish relationships with people or groups of people. In fact, if you try to talk with someone holding a book you like – you’ll probably get shushed. The Distributed Library Project works in exactly the opposite way, where the very function of the library depends on interaction.”

Now of course, you’re horrified by the assertion that libraries do little by way of community building, as was I. Fortunately, the Slashdot community agrees.

Read the rest of this entry »

More on Bibliophilia from the Washington Post: So this is a sex-romp. Or a sex-something. It favors verbs like “diddle” and “swive.” And nouns like “merkin.”

I want to say to this writer, “What’s your point?” Or, “Get a life!” Or even more harsh, “Get out of school!” The verb “diddle” does come to mind here. There’s more to this world than “a Barbie doll wearing Band-Aids for bra and panties; a white chess rook against which two shiny golf balls leaned.” There is, actually, life.

This is sure to be a must-read:

Bibliophilia by Michael Griffith.

Some excerpts from the San Francisco Gate review:

A librarian stuck in a sexless marriage is deputized to thwart student hanky-panky in the stacks, a man afraid to tell his parents he’s gay gets trapped in a chimpanzee cage, and a father literally becomes a pawn in his teenage son’s life-size chess game at a county fair. That’s just a sampling of what goes on in Michael Griffith’s “Bibliophilia,” a novella and five stories that are only occasionally credible and always sardonic, clever and beautifully stylized.

In the title novella, for example, Myrtle, the middle-aged librarian/sex policewoman, demands that the real police use a rape kit on a mangled grapefruit in order to prove that a student with a duffel bag filled with fruit and vegetables has been copulating with citrus at the school library.

I can imagine the dialogue:

Student – ‘Hey, I don’t see a sign that says “No Fruit Copulation in the Library”. ‘

Librarian – ‘Doesn’t the sign clearly state “No food or drink in the library”?

Student – ‘Does it look like I ate the grapefruit?’

Sadly (or perhaps mercifully), only the title story is library-related.