We librarians don't find many books and movies that glamorize our profession, though Desk Set and The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag at least don't portray us frowning, with our grey hair in buns and a finger to our lips, shushing. The action figure of Nancy Pearl does and that's a crime as a librarian less likely to shush and with more of a sense of humor probably doesn't exist.
So it was a delight to discover This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson, who a while back wrote that fascinating collection of obits,The Dead Beat. She said she got the idea to write this book because the obituaries of librarians she found depicted people who led such interesting lives.
And so they continue to do.
The librarians and archivists she interviewed for this book will be a surprise to those who haven't been keeping up with the clever world of cyber-librarianship. These young people (and a few oldsters) use the web to find the darndest things.
And the old "cite your source" rule still applies, even if the source is a web page posted by an author for a 4-hour period back in 2008. While many of us Google a topic and then wallow in pages of less than useful sites or rely on Wikipedia, which is not always as reliable as one might imagine, these librarians can link us to solid sources like Radical Reference. One of Johnson's discoveries is Second Life, a virtual world created, maintained, and peopled by librarians (you can join, too.) Librarian avatars go about with "Reference" signs over their heads and if you ask a question he/she will find you some dependable information.
Blogs are popular these days with hip librarians. Free Range Librarian, Annoyed Librarian, The Librarian's Rant, Effing Librarian, Miss Information, Infobabe, The Obnoxious Librarian from Hades, they all have a lot to say and say it in a most amusing way.
One librarian Johnson interviews who works in a public library creates signs to address specific behavior problems that have arisen at her library:
Iguanas are not allowed in the building.
You may not take the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue into the washroom.
While waiting for your ride home, do not set fire to your homework to keep warm.
It sounds like patrons, as we librarians patronizingly call library users, are up to the same sorts of tricks they were pulling when I was working in the juvenile room (shows how old I am) of The New Bedford Free Public Library, at left.
The stories go on and on and the profiles of remarkable librarians and archivists are many. We pass by Patience and Fortitude to visit the back rooms of the New York Public Library, where many and sometimes alarming changes are being made by the library board behind closed doors. That's Patience to the right. We learn some of the nitty-gritty about those on-line catalogs our local libraries have all migrated to. (We learn what it means to migrate in library lingo, and that it's never as easy as it sounds.)
We travel with a Brooklyn archivist who is able to save the world's largest collection of books, clippings, and memorabilia about boxing that miraculously escaped destruction in a Florida hurricane. We hit the streets with blackberry- and portable printer-carrying librarians at a political demonstration who can provide maps to nearby restrooms, tell you what's happening where, and steer you away from the spots where the police are cracking down (sometimes literally.) We meet people who are struggling to save information that has been stored on media that is now obsolete.
Where do I stop? The book is crammed with anecdotes and sources like these.
I rate it five on a scale of one to five.