ON BEING A LIBRARIAN
A little over four years ago I became the American correspondent for the online London Mall magazine, writing a weekly column called "My Word's Worth" which has since moved to Quad Cities Online. In my opening column, I explained how I got to be the way I am. I'm reprinting it here for you.
John Ciardi once wrote about the perfect way to insure peace and quiet on a plane trip. When his seatmate asks, "What do you do?", Ciardi replied, "I'm a poet." End of conversation.
But the second-best conversation-killer surely has to be "I'm a librarian." Now, notice, we do not say, "I'm a librarian--SHHHHH!" But that's what they're thinking. They're thinking librarians are little old ladies in sensible shoes with their hair in a bun, dedicating their lives to hiding the books on reproduction away from the children, leaving only the cryptic notation in the catalog, "For sex, see librarian."
Hey, guys, that's not us. Honest.
One of my favorite cartoons is Charles Addams' rat maze, where a little lady rat sits at a desk in the middle with a sign saying "Information."
Now, THAT's us, your guide through an increasingly overwhelming maze of information, your finder of needles in haystacks.
As a consequence, I can't think of a single librarian whose brain is not filled with a totally random collection of odd bits of information. Many of us can passionately recite, with or without sock puppets, the entire works of Dr. Seuss ("I meant what I said and I said what I meant--an elephant's faithful, one hundred percent!).
I know the cost of burning a heretic in 13th century England (ten shillings sixpence). I know three separate formats for footnotes and bibliographies. I know about the New York theater riots of the 1800's. I know who the lead singer of Metallica is, how to read a box score, what the defenestration of Prague was, where to find financial ratios, and who to read when you've finished reading everything Dick Francis ever wrote.
An odd thing about librarians is that most of us got here by accident. Not a one of us was a starry-eyed ten-year-old thirsting to become a librarian. Most of us spent our college careers reading Euripedes, painting still lifes, and pondering on how we know we exist (to which our parents naturally responded, "I pay your tuition, therefore you exist"). Then we graduated and discovered that employers had very little need for people who understood the finer points of dialectical materialism. So we went back to college and became librarians, because librarianship is the last remaining profession for the generalist, the last place where one can be a dilettante for fun and profit (though not a whole lot), the only possible career where all the odd things we know might actually be of use someday.
So, yes, I am a librarian, but I think, in spite of that -- nay, BECAUSE of that -- I have some interesting ideas I'd like to share with you.
**************
COOL QUOTE
We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
Jacob Bronowski. The Ascent of Man
**************
FAVORITE SITES: RECOMMENDED READINGS
There's so much great stuff to read on the web, but it's buried in the sheer volume of verbiage. Who has the time and patience to root through all the drecch to find the good stuff? Actually, quite a few people, bless their hearts.
If you're interested in the arts, you can find links to news items and features for art, dance, music, and literature in both Arts Journal (http://www.Artsjournal.com), which scans some 7000 articles each week to come up with its reading recommendations, and Arts and Letters Daily (http://www.cybereditions.com/aldaily/), which goes through numerous online magazines and major newspapers for feature articles, opinion pieces and book reviews.
The science equivalent, put out by the same New Zealanders who do Arts and Letters Daily, is called SciTech Daily (http://www.scitechdaily.com/); it scans newspaper science reporting and science journals also linking to interesting features and book reviews.
A more news-oriented site comes from the editor of World New York, (http://www.worldnewyork.com/) looks through magazines and newspapers for provocative, intriguing lines and ideas, quotes them, and links you to the stories themselves.
For important news and features about technology and information, I rely on Tara Calishain (you'll remember her from my very first guru interview. Check out her Research Buzz at http://www.researchbuzz.com/news/index.html. Jessamyn West is traveling these days, and is updating on an occasional rather than daily basis, but her Librarian.Net points out articles of interest to information professionals -- I will always be grateful to her for introducing me to my favorite columnist, Jon Carroll, as well as to much interesting professional reading. Check her out at http://www.librarian.net/.
**************
You are welcome to copy and distribute or e-mail any of my own articles (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement:
Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999.
