This book is overdue! : how librarians and cybrarians can save us all

304 Pages·2009·0.37 MB·English

by  Marilyn Johnson

Johnson, Marilyn
This Book Is Overdue!
How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
To Dave and Dotty Johnson
Show me a computer expert who gives a damn, and I’ll show you a
librarian.
—Patricia Wilson Berger, former president, ALA
Contents
Epigraph

1. The Frontier
A blast of a six–shooter in the Wild West town of Deadwood sends us galloping
into the world of librarians who wrangle paper history and digital information,
and cartoon librarians who move and speak in real time on your computer
screen…how obituaries of librarians are tracking the changes in this topsy–turvy
profession…a silly and scurrilous entry on Wikipedia stands in for the mutating
web….and we cast an eye over some of the stories of heroic librarians and
archivists this book will tell
2. Information Sickness
Frothing at the mouth and keeling over from too much information: science
fiction or modern affliction?…on trying to understand social networking and
turning to reference librarians for enlightenment…who needs librarians in the
age of Google? we do!…the fools who projected the death of libraries…
computers level the information playing field, and librarians are their keepers
3. On the Ground
The uneasy alliance between librarians and the computer experts they rely on as
it plays out during a calamitous computer upgrade of the online catalog in
Westchester County, NY—complete with an apocalyptic storm!…librarians,
pressured to get out front with technology, scramble to retrain themselves…and
a few outlaw librarians drive the tech guys crazy
4. The Blog People
You might not think of them as mouthy and opinionated, but librarians have
taken to the blogosphere with a vengeance, networking, entertaining, instructing,
and venting…yes, they are venting, viciously and hilariously, about you, their
and venting…yes, they are venting, viciously and hilariously, about you, their
patrons…don’t judge them until you, too, have cleaned up the poop in the book
drop
5. Big Brother and the Holdout Company
An encounter at a glitzy benefit with two heroes of the library world turns into a
visit with the Connecticut Four, in which three librarians and a tech guy recount
their 1984–style nightmare as “John Doe,” who sued the government to keep
their patrons’ records private
6. How to Change the World
Librarians at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, give students from
developing nations, some of whom have never used a computer, enough tech
training to pursue a long–distance master’s degree and join the global
conversation on human rights…a visit to Rome, where the librarians crash–train
one group and graduate another
7. To the Ramparts!
Librarians to the barricades! Anarchist librarians leave the building and hit the
street, using smart phones and library databases to fight rumors and panic with
trustworthy information for protestors…a visit with the librarian who helped
launch Radical Reference and works to expand library service for those who live
off the grid and to preserve their self–published stories
8. Follow That Tattooed Librarian
Our enduring and, frankly, absurd fascination with sexy librarians and that
shushing business, and how some librarians deal with it…welcome to the exotic
world of librarians who mock themselves by performing precision drills with
book carts…and to pink–haired, tattooed librarians downing cocktails while ear–
splitting music shatters that stereotype
9. Wizards of Odd
In which your author becomes an embedded reporter among librarians in the
virtual reality site of Second Life, and discovers the vibrant and gender–bending
world of international librarians who meet in the 3–D Web’s corridors and dark
world of international librarians who meet in the 3–D Web’s corridors and dark
alleys to share resources and provide reference service to other avatars
10. Gotham City
A close look at the librarians of the venerable New York Public Library as they
hurtle at warp speed into the digital age…the reference librarian who helps
techno–stressed writers…the keeper of the treasures in a crumbling kingdom of
scholarship…the digital guru…the guardian of black history…the arts and crafts
librarian…and we discover which of them survives the great transition
11. What’s Worth Saving?
Toni Morrison’s house burns, and is anyone worried about her son? No, it’s her
manuscripts everybody cares about…a course in literary archives using the
papers of a writer considerably more obscure than Morrison…advice from an
archivist on a personal mission…how the world’s most extensive collection of
boxing artifacts survived hurricanes, fire, mold, and rats, thanks to a librarian
who loves boxing and a boxing archivist…the difference between librarians and
archivists, and how archivists are dealing with the digital age…creative
innovations from the Library of Congress…yet another way information
professionals save us
12. The Best Day
Outside in the cold with a crowd of happy revelers on a Saturday morning,
waiting for the thrill of the opening of a new library…the recession–battered
town of Darien, Connecticut, celebrates not just the new building, its dazzling
design and user–friendly technology, but its librarians, who promote “extreme
customer service” and who throw open the door to taxpaying locals and free–
loading strangers alike

Acknowledgments
Notes
Select Bibliography
About the Author
Books by Marilyn Johnson
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1.
THE FRONTIER
In tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste.
Down the street from the library in Deadwood, South Dakota, the peace is
shattered several times a day by the noise of gunfire—just noise. The guns shoot
blanks, part of an historic re-creation to entertain the tourists. Deadwood is a far
tamer town than it used to be, and it has been for a good long while. Its library,
that emblem of civilization, is already more than a hundred years old, a Carnegie
brick structure, small and dignified, with pillars outside and neat wainscoting in.
The library director is Jeanette Moodie, a brisk mom in her early forties who
earned her professional degree online. She’s gathering stray wineglasses from
the previous night’s reception for readers and authors, in town for the South
Dakota Festival of the Book. Moodie points out the portraits of her predecessors
that hang in the front room. The first director started this library for her literary
ladies’ club in 1895, not long after the period that gives the modern town its
flavor; she looks like a proper lady, hair piled on her head, tight bodice, a choker
around her neck. Moodie is a relative blur. She runs the library and its website,
purchases and catalogs the items in its collections, keeps the doors open more
than forty hours a week, and hosts programs like the party, all with only part-
time help. When she retires, she’ll put on one of her neat suits, gold earrings, and
rectangular glasses and sit still long enough to be captured for a portrait of her
own.
Moodie is also the guardian of a goldmine, the history of a town that relies
on history for its identity. She oversees an archive of rare books and
genealogical records, which, when they’re not being read under her supervision,
are kept locked up in the South Dakota Room of the library. Stored in a vault off
the children’s reading room downstairs are complete sets of local newspapers
dating back to 1876 that document Deadwood’s colorful past in real time. A
warning on the library website puts their contents in a modern context:
“remember that political correctness did not exist in 19th-century Deadwood—
many terms used [‘negro minstrelcy,’ for instance, and ‘good injun’] are now
considered derogatory or slanderous, but are a true reflection of our history.”