"You Can Tell Your Kid Will Grow Up to be a Librarian When..."

by Richard Lee
Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1992.

This collection of cartoons about the library profession was published in 1992. Similarly to Unshelved, the punchlines much more funny if you're actually in the profession; this one references some out-of-date technology (DIALOG, anyone?) that may or may not ring a bell to librarians that are my age.

Not all of the cartoons have to do with kids who will become librarians, though the first part of the collection is about that. There's also a section on parents who are librarians, patrons, library school, and more. The ones that really gave me a laugh were the ones I related to, like the one that says "You know your parents are librarians when they make you take pictures in front of boring buildings," with a picture of an annoyed kid, hand to his face, with his excited parents taking a picture outside of the library. Seeing as I did that, um, just this year, I laughed aloud at that one. The line drawings are simple but humorous. Overall, I prefer the Unshelved strips by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, though I spent a pleasant few hours paging through this collection.

Running the Books

by Avi Steinberg
New York : Nan A. Talese, c2010.

The last thing Avi expected to become was a prison librarian. This former Orthodox Jew without an MLS applied for the job because, well why not? It was full time and came with benefits, which was more than he could say for writing obits. But the job came with much more than the description in the ad could entail.

As a librarian in a public library, I usually skip over books that are about working at a library. It feels too much like bringing work home. This memoir intrigued me, however, reminding me of a class I look en route to my MLS on serving underserved populations. Our class even visited a prison library as a field trip. And, I figured, his job was different enough from mine not to feel like bringing work home.

Well, soon after starting this book I realized how much of an understatement that was. At first I was put off by his casual use of swear words and his attitude towards the religious life he left behind. After he got the job, however, I became fascinated with some of the details of his interactions with inmates, his struggles with "the right thing to do" in various situations, and what his job entailed. It's about as different as a job in the same field can possibly be; we both work with books and try to have materials on the shelves that interest our patrons, but that's about as far as the similarities go. The high stress of his job and the constant battle between serving the inmates and keeping the guards happy gets to him after awhile. The descriptions of prison life and the lifestyle and choice of the men and women who were in that prison are not pretty, and drained me just reading the book. By the time I got to the end, the book started to feel disjointed and hard to follow. I wasn't sure if I ran out of steam or the author did. Still, this is a profession that doesn't get a lot of notice, and I enjoyed this look into an aspect of librarianship that is often fraught with difficulty.

The Library at Night

by Alberto Manguel
New Haven : Yale University Press, 2008.

You know those books that you finish, and you liked it so well that you can hardly say why? This was one of those books for me, but here's my best attempt:

I so enjoyed this book, an homage to libraries of all sorts - personal, public, national, and even imaginary. Each chapter is almost an essay in its own right, though Manguel often builds on thoughts from one to the next. This book was as much over my head when it came to literature as Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was over my head in science (and I was an English major!). Manguel's erudition often intimidated me, yet he is never stuffy. His musings become an interesting mix of philosophy, history, and literary criticism that made me wish my mental library was a little closer to his so that I could follow more of his thoughts. I most loved the book when he was meandering, talking about personal libraries or love of books, and I wish the book was my own so I could underline passages or revisit it whenever I like.

Librarianship in a Wired World

This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
by Marilyn Johnson
Harper Collins, 2010.

This review refers to an uncorrected proof borrowed from a co-worker.

So many people subscribe to the notion that libraries are falling by the wayside. Who needs books, they argue, when just about anything can be found on the Internet now? Marilyn Johnson explores ways in which libraries are not only continuing to be relevant in a wired world, but using technology to promote and extend library services. Just a handful of the topics covered include blogging, Second Life, and archives.  What ties these all together is where librarianship and technology meet - and make great services for their patrons at that crossroad.

I expected this to be a book for librarians, written by a librarian, but that first impression had to be revised in numerous ways.  Marilyn Johnson is not a librarian, but got the idea for this book when she was writing about obituaries and some of the more interesting ones she came across were the obits of librarians.  Furthermore, the book is broad in scope, and reads more like a series of vignettes than an in-depth look at any one issue.  My only real disappointment was that she spends a lot of time talking about the New York City libraries, and personally I am more interested in and find more relevant how small-town libraries with smaller budgets and fewer connections would serve their public.  Many librarians have probably heard of most of the technologies, issues, and ideas that she covers.  Does that mean that librarians won't like the book?  No, but I would more readily recommend this book as perhaps being more helpful for folks who are thinking of going for a master's in library science - in fact, I learned about much of these topics in my M.L.I.S. program - and it's a great introduction for them to see the breadth of what librarians do, including the sometimes crazy balancing act between research, archives, traditional services and shinier things like blogging, Second Life, and circulation numbers.  Alternatively, I would suggest it to those folks who think librarians are still in the shushing business to open their eyes to all that librarians can do, even in a wired world.