“The librarian as information priest is as dead as Elvis,” Needham said. The whole “gestalt” of the academic library has been set up like a church, he said, with various parts of a reading room acting like “the stations of the cross,” all leading up to the “alter of the reference desk,” where “you make supplication and if you are found worthy, you will be helped.”
Via.
That’s my contribution to the Springfield Public Library meme that Michael Casey and Laura Savastinuk started over the weekend. springfield public library, the simpsons, simpsons, cartoon character, cartoon, smartypants, funny, librarian, librarians, bar, moe, moe’s bar, self portrait, casey bisson, springfield » about 100 words
Via Librarian Way I found the LiS Radio webcast of a conversation between Sandra Erdelez and Karen Fischer, two of three editors of Theories of Information Behavior from ASIS&T and Information Today. Unfortunately, the interview focuses on how the book came to be more than the content, but the description reads: overviews of more than […] » about 100 words
It used to be you could identify the librarian by the sensible shoes, but times they are a changing. Witness this ad from Library Bar. Sure their “librarians” are bartenders, but what cultural shift changed to thrust librarians up the sex appeal scale? Yeah, this is old. After all, it was the Spring 2004 of […] » about 200 words
Jenny Levine is talking about an example of The Perfect Library Blog over at The Shifted Librarian.
The posts are written in the first person and in a conversational tone, with the author’s first name to help stress the people in the library. The staff isn’t afraid to note problems with the new catalog, the web site, or anything else. Full transparency — nice. You can feel the level of trust building online. They respond to every comment that needs it, whether it’s a criticism, question, or suggestion. And some of the comments are fantastic. Users are even helping debug the new catalog.
Jenny quotes some examples, go look.