One of my (many) great coworkers in the library technology department this afternoon made a hilarious comment that got me thinking. He said that as a student who worked for our department many years ago he never ceased to be amazed by how messy librarians can be. One of the jobs of the student workers, a class of employee I also participated in, is to troubleshoot staff computers in-person. It actually can be a rather intimate experience since you need to go into a person’s office and quite literally “get all up in their junk.”

For a profession based in large part on its ability to organize information many of us would not pass an elementary cataloging class if our MARC records looked like our desks. Is the ability to organize millions of bibliographic records and coordinate all sorts of different electronic resources and reference services based in an organizational mind? I am not so sure that a passion for the information profession necessarily equates to an organizational discipline that it would seem to imply.

What do you other circulators think? How much organization exists in your personal sphere and how does it relate to what you do? I, for one, go through an ebb and flow (accumulate and purge?) based on the gravitation pull of the moon on sticky notes and random meeting notes I rarely look at again.

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In blog years, this one is ancient, but I was reminded of it by recent reading online. Michael Gorman took a lot of gripe for his comments about blogs and what it means to be among the Blog People:

A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web.

What jumped out at me, though, is whether Gorman broke his own rule in Our Singular Strengths: “Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated.” This is according to a wikipedia entry, and therefore I am not sure of how well it reflects what Gorman actually wrote.

Since I have not read this work and cannot answer it for myself, but I have just placed a request for the book at my library. To be continued…

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Well done, New Orleans and the American Library Association. The people were kind and event went off incredibly smoothly. Thank you for the chance to experience such a fascinating city and for enabling optimism and hope in the strength and resilience of people.

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A List Apart ran two articles this week of reader contributions about what they love and hate about the Web. Thomas Bleijendaal, student, writes:

Seeking real good information on the internet (school stuff for example) is still very hard. If you try to find some good information about aerodynamics, it’s your day-job. I have been searching for hours, and the only things I found were things I already knew. The idea of the internet being one big library maybe there, but finding scientific information is a pain in the ass. Luckily there’s still an old-fashioned library with books and stuff, so I have been able to find what I was looking for. The internet really needs to grow a lot before it can take the role of being a really good “info-dealer.”

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ALA announced yesterday that librarians attending the upcoming Midwinter conference will have the “opportunity to proudly proclaim their ‘radical’ and ‘militant’ support for intellectual freedom, privacy, and civil liberties” by purchasing a red, white, and blue button that reads:

“Radical Militant Librarian – Defending Access, Defending Privacy, Defending Freedom.”

The buttons will cost $2.00, unless bought in bulk (at which time the cost goes down). What a radical bargain! And in the colors of France!

ALA claims that the slogan on the button is a response to FBI complaints about politically “radical, militant librarians” who raised their voices over the PATRIOT Act.

My anticipation is that many of our least radical, and certainly least militant librarians will happily, jauntily purchase a button and sport it at work the following week. The kitsch value of this button is irresistible (”Must… buy… buttoon… must… have one for my blazer.”) I also anticipate that many of our most militant library spokespeople will not be wearing this button at ALA this summer.

From the OED:

Militant: 3. a. Combative; aggressively persistent; strongly espousing a cause; entrenched, adamant.

Radical: 3. e. Characterized by independence of, or departure from, what is usual or traditional; progressive, unorthodox, or revolutionary (in outlook, conception, design, etc.).

That this button is a fundraiser is a granted point. But the slogan strikes me as blind, purchasable flagwaving that can (and will) be worn by librarians who will hardly deserve the label. “Revolutionary”? “Aggressively persistent”? How many of us can claim such a thing? The trumpet is hardly loud enough to be heard over the wall, much less bring it down.

Maybe this button should be given by ALA to the deserving few.

My own button would realistically read: “Clean, Showered Librarian: Defending Thai Food, Defending Lost, Defending Wisconsin Cheese.”

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Well, happy New Year gang.

We started this thing back in May, and here is some of the ground we covered:

1) Kelli
2) Libraries making folks “prove their identity with a fingerprint”
3) Literary mixtapes
4) Library as compost
5) To mentor or not to mentor?
6) Job market? What job market?
7) Kelli?
Wiki vs. wookie
9) The teachable moment
10) OCLC partners with Baker & Taylor
11) Metadata in the “iPod era”
12) Anticipatory marketing for library catalogs?
13) Steve’s amazing projects
14) The “bookless library”
15) Behavior policies
16) The DaVinci Institute
17) Federal mandates to spy with our computers
18) Google Print! Oh no!
19) LITA
20) PATRIOT Act! Oh no!
21) Online news sources
22) Spyware on CDs and DVDs
23) Database international standard numbers?
24) Librarian salaries

And so much more! Thanks to you all for a provocative year. I hope to wrestle Steve (virtually) over many more issues in 2006.

I wanted to say to you all – if you read this – Happy New Year and best wishes for an exciting 2006.

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Hi all -

Pursuant to the past discussion about the eradication of “new books” shelves in libraries in favor of online lists, this came in an email from my library’s access services head:

“After complaints from readers and a conversation with the Chair of the Library Board, we have put in place a consolidated Selected New Acquisitions display in the Current Periodicals Reading Room. This physical display of selected new books is meant to complement the New Acquisitions web page.”

And so: new books, regardless of subject, are now displayed in a single location, whereas they used to be displayed on the relevant floors of the library. Meaning, they’re still essentially invisible. The books remain there for one calendar week.

This is food for thought when it comes to assumptions about how our patron-base – and our boards – will respond to certain initiatives. Even if we can’t survey the patrons about every issue, and even if we can’t run every decision past our board members, I think this is an interesting example of those two powerful groups speaking up for something important to them and making us accountable.

Thoughts?

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There is a sea-change in the works. Maybe?

Among the MacArthur Fellows announced today is Terry Belanger, cited for “making the world a more secure place for the irreplaceable legacy of the book.” This is the first MacArthur in librarianship and should bring visibility to the importance of preservation, books and libraries — a real cause for celebration — as well as richly deserved recognition of someone who has devoted his life to the cause.

Whether this is a precedent that will be followed, or a stray shot, we’ll have to wait to find out.

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This summer I was asked to lead a committee of staff members to outline procedures for handling behavior issues that arise in the library. By behavior issues, I mean incidents such as loud conversations on cell phones in the library, eating in the library, running, loud levels of noise, throwing materials, on so on, escalating to major issues of safety. I was wondering, what is your experience with these sorts of incidents? When working in public service areas of your library, do you ever have to approach patrons about their behavior? Are there certain behaviors, activities that are not allowed? Do you post expectations about library behavior? Or is this something you think is largely unecessary or uneeded in your environment? I’m especially curious about those of you who work in academic libraries, and how your experience might be different from the public library world.

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I have been meaning to write this post for some time, but with this new (to me) southern summer upon me like a swampy fog of sluggishnes I have been less inclined to turn on a computer that audibly gives off heat. In light of the recent hype surrounding the library job market and all the navel gazing that goes with it, what do you think of the current library employment outlook for new librarians. Now that we are all settled into our first professional positions, how do your experiences measure up to what you were either told or expecting to find? I’ll go first:

The job market appears to me to be steady and somewhat stable, though not quite the glorious applicant’s market I felt our library school [PDF] and national association tried to get me to believe in. I feel that the most important piece of information I would tell a current SLIS student sending out applications our someone considering library school is that you must be prepared to move. I think that people will continue to be hired, but the gamble will be location.

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