Thursday, July 10, 2008

Come, fellow librarians, and join the Library Society of the World. They're nice! And Cory Doctorow is an honorary member!

Merriam-Webster has announced their new words for 2008. Some seem like a long time in arriving. Pescatarian? Wingnut? (M-W has it as "wing nut," two words. Weird.)

Tim of Geistweg pointed out a neat library question making the rounds: what do you do in a normal day as a librarian? I'm trying to figure out if I can go into any detail (the first rule of being a law librarian: don't talk about being a law librarian, or at least not about the specific stuff you're researching), but I encourage other librarians to talk about what they do in a typical day!

If you want to see a lot of librarian infighting, check out the recent post in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Google and its partnership with libraries. If you want to see some really ugly journalist infighting, read the comments in this post about layoffs at the Tampa Tribune. I think many of the issues are similar.

And finally...thanks to Matt's suggestion, I did a quick interview with Ekaterina Sedia, author of the just-published The Alchemy of Stone, as part of the ongoing interview meme. The questions and answers are over at the Steampunk Librarian - or it will be, once I wrangle Vox into submission. There may be more of these sorts of things in the near future over there!

Tomorrow, back here at HQ, there will be links from others. Stay tuned.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What does a librarian do? Hmmm…Is this a philosophical question? Do they mean literally or figuratively?

(Imagine that the words 'All day' are being chanted by a Greek chorus).

1. Clear paper jams from the copier machines. All day.
2. Remind patrons over and over and over again of their library borrower numbers. All day.
3. Sell copy cards. All day.
4. Override internet filters for patrons. All day.
5. Be an audience for the bombastic library users. All day.
6. Daydream. All day.
7. Search the web for painless ways to end their librarianship existence. All day.